Interviewee: Crissy

Hi there everyone my name is Crissy, and they have asked me today to speak to you about being the Network Leader for English As Spoken International, aka Easi English.

First question, describe the network and what you do.

So basically, I am Network Leader and I am privileged to be leading this group of language learning professionals, um, they are a wonderful bunch and we teach managers, employees and executives from uh, myriad of companies in Italy, and not. Our mission is to make every learner communicate effectively in the global workplace because this is so important today.

Second question, how do you recruit the right people for the network?

Now I’m sure this question was asked because I don’t really get to meet people face to face. We are an online company mostly, we do deploy umm language training on-site as well but I, I have people all over the world so it’s not always possible to meet with them and basically, I screen for um, technical skills so I want to make sure that they are functional experts but the most important part of my job when I’m interviewing is to see if they have the right um, competencies with regards to people and relationship building ‘cause that is so fundamental in our job, like people put their trust or, like trust us with one of their biggest weaknesses which is communication and so the people that join the network need to be really caring and have a sense of purpose. They need to give me the impression that they want to make a difference in other people’s lives and that is probably the most important thing that I screen for when I’m having interviews.

Question number 3, how do you build relationships with your people?

That’s a really good question. Um, I have a geographically dispersed team, uh which means that I’ve got to use uh, unconventional uh ways to build relationships with them and I basically do that through really good communication and frequent communication so, uh, we are hyper connected, always connected, um trying to give people the information they need. I try my best to speak through my cluster leaders, those are my managers, uh to make sure that everyone within the network gets uh, all of the communication necessary, gets clarity uh, with regards to what our ultimate goals are um, relationship building can sometimes be tough because you don’t really physically get to touch or see people uh but we manage to do it pretty well. Effective delegation is another way that we manage to do this and um, I must say that um, giving them autonomy and trust and making them accountable for the the things that they do also helps. I think that um, the most important thing with regards to building relationships is to be generous, generous with my time, with my knowledges um as their as their network leader because they baptized network leader. Funny story, um when we when the group became a little bit bigger, then everyone said “Cris, like what do we say you are?” and I said “I don’t know, pick a name, as long as it’s not Managing Director because I don’t like that name.” And so, all of them got together and they came up with Network Leader and I said “Oh my God, that sounds like really cool I like it.” And so it stuck.

So that’s it for today. My name is Crissy, for Learning English Matters. Have a great day.

Words in this story:

Myriad: many

Effectively: doing something in a way that brings the best or most positive outcome

Face to face: being in the same room with someone

Competencies: describes having the required or needed skills

Regards: referring to something; concerning something

‘Cause: because

Sense of purpose: having the determination or desire

Dispersed: to be spread out or scattered

Unconventional: doing things differently than the usual way

Clarity: clear

Delegation: splitting up responsibilities between a group of people

Autonomy: doing what you need to do on your own

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