Leading Language: How Language and Culture Shape Inclusion
For Karen Longley, CEO and founder of Leading Languagein South Africa and Amalingo in France, language is far more than a tool for communication. It’s a foundation for workplace inclusion, a mechanism that shapes identity, cultural understanding, and business relationships.
“Language isn’t just how we communicate,” Longley explains. “It’s how we view the world. It shapes power dynamics, social expectations, and workplace belonging.”
Her business, operating in diverse corporate environments in Africa and Europe, was built on this principle.
Longley’s business naturally integrated diversity and inclusion principles from its early days, employing multicultural teams and working across multilingual communities.
“We’ve always been a diverse, multicultural group,” she notes. “Our work revolves around connecting people who speak different languages and come from different places.”
The company’s shift towards formal DEI practices emerged during the COVID-19 lockdown. “That pause gave us the space to reflect on how we were working, and how we could do better,” she says. This led to the formal launch of an ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) program and clearer DEI guidelines. “We already knew what we did and how we did it, ESG forced us to ask why we do it. That clarity changed everything.”
One of the first areas Longley addressed was unconscious bias, particularly where it intersected with language.
“Once you unpack unconscious bias, you realize how many assumptions you’ve been making every day without even thinking about them,” she says.
This was especially visible in how businesses requested language training. “We were getting corporate requests to ‘fix’ people’s accents,” she explains. “We stopped doing that. An accent is part of your identity. What matters is pronunciation, being clear and understood. But you don’t need to erase someone’s background to make them intelligible.”
Her experience highlights how seemingly neutral corporate language policies can reinforce inequality.
“Take a simple example,” she says. “In French, when you enter a shop, you greet the staff first. In English-speaking cultures, you expect the shop staff to greet you. It seems small, but those assumptions shape workplace culture too. Who speaks first? Who’s expected to lead a conversation? Who’s corrected for speaking ‘wrong’? These things carry weight.”
Longley believes that DEI efforts cannot succeed without cultural literacy. Her teams receive annual training on unconscious bias, anti-corruption, and DEI, helping them confront hidden assumptions and improve collaboration. In her language programs, culture is never treated as an afterthought.
“When we teach French, we don’t just teach vocabulary,” she says. “We explain why the word ‘bonjour’ is the most important one you’ll learn. It’s a social contract. Without it, you close doors, literally and figuratively.”
She recalls a moment from a workshop in Senegal where a participant, struggling in French, switched to Wolof to make a point. “I didn’t understand the words, but her message was so passionate and clear that the whole room felt it,” Longley recalls. “That’s what inclusion means, allowing people to speak from the heart, in the language they’re most comfortable with.”
Longley argues that successful DEI practice relies on visible leadership, not just policies.
“You can’t run DEI from a memo,” she says. “Leaders need to model these values daily. People follow what leaders do, not what’s written in a policy.”
This belief shapes her company culture. “It comes down to how you respond when someone makes a culturally insensitive comment, how you celebrate multilingual employees, how you create spaces for people to speak up,” she explains.
Beyond ethics, Longley insists inclusion makes business sense. In a volatile global economy, resilient companies will be those that reflect their markets, understand multiple cultures, and make space for all employees to succeed.
“More than ever, companies need to show that they support inclusion and equity,” she says. “When you create a workplace where people feel safe and valued, productivity, innovation, and loyalty follow naturally.”
Longley’s company now offers custom DEI, unconscious bias, and anti-corruption training for clients, adapted to their industries.
“Off-the-shelf workshops don’t work,” she says. “We work with our clients to identify the pressure points, language, cultural assumptions, accessibility, and address them head-on.”
For Karen Longley, language and culture are inseparable from workplace inclusion. Her experience proves that diversity is most effective when built into the way people communicate, lead, and work together daily. By integrating cultural literacy and genuine respect into business operations, Longley’s companies have demonstrated that inclusive leadership strengthens resilience and future-proofs companies for a changing world.
