The main challenge we found was that people, not surprisingly, were rather nervous about what this coaching might lead to. There was also a fair amount of discomfort—again, not surprisingly—about language coaching.
We never took the view that we were trying to do things that people have done in the past, like eradicating accents and so on. We weren't trying to do any of those things, because we thought those weren't appropriate. But we really want to make sure that everyone is conversant in, and able to function in, the workplace language.
One of the issues we noticed was that people were resistant as to “how informal” we seemed. From their countries of origin the interaction with a boss would be much more formal and distant.
The other issue I think we faced, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, was real second-guessing on the part of our participants around whether it was right that they had come to Canada, and how they needed to rebuild their self-confidence and find opportunities for them to showcase and to use their talents.
Those are really two issues that we faced.