He came to the Summit afraid of questions. He left as the person everyone wanted to speak to.
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Eight years before we met, Markus had stood in front of a room of American investors and lost the contract.
Not because his English was poor. Not because his engineering was anything less than excellent. But because the questions came fast, full of idioms and phrasal verbs he couldn’t follow in real time. He answered wrongly. The room moved on. The deal was gone.
“It nearly bankrupted the company,” he told me. “My company.“
The emphasis on that last word said everything.
From that day, Markus Brandt had protected himself the only way he knew how: preparation. Every word scripted. Every answer rehearsed. Nothing left to chance.
By the time he came to me – CEO of Präzision Engineering GmbH, six weeks away from a keynote at the Global Manufacturing Summit – he was fluent, precise and completely unable to speak without a document in front of him.
The problem with the script
His grammar was flawless. His vocabulary was advanced. But when I asked him to explain the same information without his notes, his shoulders tensed visibly.
“I prefer not to speak without proper preparation,” he said.
“And the question-and-answer session after your keynote?“
Silence. The unspoken concern settled between us.
What he described next wasn’t perfectionism. It was protection. A perfectly rational response to a genuinely painful experience – one that had shaped every English conversation he’d had since.
The solution wasn’t to push him into spontaneity. It was to give him something better than a script.
Precision English
“What if we develop a framework of clear, direct English – without idioms, without phrasal verbs? Language that cannot be misinterpreted.“
He looked sceptical but intrigued.
Instead of “The market bottomed out” – “The market reached its lowest point.” Instead of “We need to ramp up production” – “We need to increase production.“
A flicker of interest crossed his face. For the first time in our sessions, he leaned forward.
We called it Precision English – clear structures, careful word choices, no unnecessary complexity. The kind of language that works across cultures, across accents, across boardrooms in Seoul, São Paulo and Stuttgart.
Markus took to it with the same methodical dedication he applied to engineering. He began recording his business calls and we analysed them together – identifying moments of confusion, replacing idiomatic expressions with cleaner alternatives.
“When I avoid these expressions,” he said during our fifth session, “I can concentrate on the content, not the language.“
He was speaking without notes. He hadn’t noticed.
The panel
The day before his departure for Frankfurt, Markus logged on with barely contained stress.
The conference organisers had called. The programme had changed. Instead of a prepared keynote, he was now part of a panel discussion – no script, no prepared remarks, only questions from a moderator and the audience.
“I considered cancelling,” he admitted.
“But you didn’t,” I said.
“No.”
We spent the next hour building a framework – not scripted answers, but structured thoughts on likely topics: innovation, sustainability, market challenges. Core statements, clearly expressed. Solid ground to return to if the questions went somewhere unexpected.
“You understand these topics better than most people in that room,” I told him. “The language is just a vehicle for your expertise.“
He nodded – not entirely convinced, but steadier than before.
Frankfurt
Three days passed. No word. Then, late on Friday afternoon, a Zoom invitation landed in my inbox: “Urgent session.“
When I connected, Markus was smiling.
The panel had started conventionally. Then the moderator – a native English speaker – began asking questions dense with idioms and colloquialisms. Other panelists shifted in their seats, visibly uncertain.
Markus calmly rephrased each question before answering it. Clearly. Simply. In language that worked for everyone in the room.
The moderator apologised and thanked him. Said his explanations were “refreshingly clear.”
Afterwards, executives from Korea, Brazil, and India came to find him. They appreciated his English – not despite its simplicity, but because of it. He had become the person who made the whole conversation possible.
“I understood something,” Markus said. “Clarity is not a limitation. It is a skill.“
He paused.
“Perhaps the most important one in the room.“
