It started with not wanting to waste money. My son used an online tutoring service in high school to help with the final push before graduation 2 years ago. Now our family had 40 hours to use up in 90 days before they expired. When I discovered that Spanish was a subject they tutored in, I switched the student from him to me. I hadn’t officially studied Spanish for 15 years, and I was ready to jump back in. I have dreams of living in a Spanish speaking country for parts of the year in retirement, so I probably have 10 years to prep. No time like the present.

One year after I used the tutoring hours, my friend Erin announced that she would host a yoga retreat in Spain. Naturally, I had to sign up to support her (the perfect excuse).

After signing up, I found a program for immersive Spanish: a live-in-your-teacher’s-home program near Barcelona. I decided to attend Spanish Express pre-retreat to pre-extend my trip across the ocean. I became an adult study abroad student. I walked into the apartment on day one and no more English.

As a leadership coach and trainer, there are often 7 big picture leadership skills I help people to hone. Apparently, I could stop coaching and instead send folks on an immersive language studying program to gain these skills in real time. Here are the skills.

1. Receiving and implementing feedback.

Wrong tense. Wrong word. Wrong sentence structure.  This feedback is not only direct but given in real time. Openness, resilience and non-defensiveness are key to learning language and effective leadership. However, one of the most important components often not taught in leadership course is that carefully selecting who to invite in to give free flowing feedback matters tremendously. It involves copious trust, and it’s easiest to extend trust when can feel in our bones that the reason feedback is being given is because the giver truly believes in our success. If my teachers, Monica and Lydia had not been kind and optimistic, it would have been an energy depleting instead of energy giving experience.

2. Creative thinking.

As leaders, being solution oriented is key. But sometimes the potential solution is not crystal clear, so we need to innovate. I was talking in Spanish with Natalia who works with postpartum mothers. I wanted to ask her a question which involved me saying newborns. I didn’t know this word, so using the words I had, I came up with fresh baby.  Apparently, this was quite funny, but at least it got the point across.

3. Learning from others.

In the world of leadership, the concept of mentorship is often thrown around as one of the best ways of learning. And somewhat provocative, it’s been encouraged that, for certain skills, to get a mentor who is half your age.

When we ask roomfuls of seasoned leaders if they official have a mentor (of any age) to learn a nuanced skills, few raise their hands.

As adolescents finding our way in the world, “copying” is something we often don’t want to be accused of.  Being seen as unique is often an aspiration. But then somewhere along the way when we become adults, we discover that the other way to see copying is actually utilizing best practices created by others or being inspired to get similar results. Boiled down, it’s being a lifelong learner. When learning a language, we hear someone use a new phrase, and we store it in our memory banks to copy and use.

4. Communication beyond words.

Visual communication, as well as vocal tone, become key. Intentional body language can sometimes even replace word specificity, and tone communicates the emotional tenor.

5. Steadfast focus.

Consistency allows us to build muscle and there is no quick fix or shortcut to success. Routine step by incremental step brings progress; this is the practice of grit.  Sometime goals lose their luster, challenges arise, competing priorities surface, or we forget our why. Habit creation and having an accountability partner can be the two most important ingredients to success with not giving up after a while. It is said that native-like fluency can be reached by studying weekly at home for 8 years or by immersion after about 3 years.

6. Making brave choices.

It is human nature to have fear. But what we do with that fear matters. Culture and language immersion allows for daily bravery crossroads. We can have a fear of judgement or of lacking competence, so we stay comfortable by just practicing with Duolingo or the like. But when we communicate with people and get on the other side of speaking up, we often see that there was less to be afraid of than we thought. The only way out is through. And we keep trying with humility and overcome embarrassment, and we know that there will be more embarrassment in the future, but that it’s all okay.

Also, bravery can involve in-the-moment presence, sometime called leadership presence, executive presence, gravitas, or confidence. This looks like not shrinking, being loud enough, and using body cues to hold the space to communicate that you need a moment to search for in your head for how to say it.

7. Assumptions aren’t all bad.

We’ve heard it: assumptions make an ass out of you(u) and me. But reading between the lines, assuming, is taking context clues to attempt to understand. Reading into something is a skill that involves paying good attention. That word looks or sounds similar to a word you already know so you are guessing what it means. There is a picture of a scooter so you are assuming that that word near it means scooter. This is where risk-taking comes into play, as sometimes we are only 30% sure, but we try anyway. This is where I could list my most embarrassing stories, for example, using the word excitar for excited, when it actually means aroused. Dios mio.

If we choose to take it, leadership as well as language learning, gives us the opportunity to be lifelong learners.