What learning Swedish showed me about digital confidence

When I moved to Sweden in 2023, one of the many things I needed to do was to learn Swedish from scratch.

At first, this felt completely overwhelming. I didn't speak any other languages to any appreciable level of competency (a bit of 'holiday French' was about as good as it got for me) so I had no real mental model or plan for how to go about learning Swedish.

There was new grammar, new letters (hello å, ä, and ö), new sounds (sjuksköterska is still mildly upsetting to pronounce properly) and the sense that everyone else knew what they were doing, whilst I very much did not.

What surprised me is how quickly that feeling faded once I stopped trying to "learn the language properly" and instead started trying to just use it.

And this experience has in turn changed how I think about digital confidence.

You don't need to 'know everything' to start

In language learning, there is an idea (called Zipf's Law) that a small number of words do most of the work.

You don't need to have learned the whole dictionary to be able to have a conversation, rather you need a core set of the most commonly used words and the confidence to use them.

Digital work is similar.

Many organisations act as if people need deep technical knowledge before they can contribute. New ideas and systems are often introduced with voluminous documentation, complex terminology, and an implied expectation of fluency.

The result is understandably hesitation and anxiety, people wait until they feel ready, until they 'know enough to contribute', and as a result, often, they never do.

In practice, most genuine digital progress depends on good, curious conversations (and, ultimately, clear and shared answers) around a small set of repeatable questions, things like:

• What problem are we trying to solve?
• Who is this for?
• What changes if this works?
• How will we know if it's working?
• What happens next?

If people can comfortably ask, engage with, and answer these (and most people can already do at least some of that), they can already participate meaningfully in many digital conversations.

Plain language helps to build confidence

When I don't know the Swedish word for something, I (try to) describe it another way.

Instead of the exact word, I might use familiar ones I already know or I point (or gesture wildly).

In a digital context this ability to describe complex ideas using simpler, more familiar terms (sometimes called 'circumlocation'), is an essential skill.

Many digital initiatives fail socially before they fail technically (e.g. the people you need to engage have already hesitated, switched off or lost confidence), because things are expressed using language that excludes large parts of an organisation.

Words and acronyms like CRM, API, migration and roadmap are perhaps efficient for specialists, but they create distance or ambiguity for everyone else. When people don't understand the language being used then they stop asking questions and sometimes stop engaging entirely. They will nod along even when they're actually pretty confused, or have stopped paying attention.

Explaining digital ideas in plain language isn't dumbing things down (I've talked more generally about this idea elsewhere) - it's making them meaningful and usable for the widest audience.

And most digital concepts can be described in plain terms:

• CRM - a shared record of our relationship with audiences
• CMS - the place where content lives and is organised
• API - a way for systems to pass information to each other
• Automation - deciding in advance what will happen next

If a system, process, or way of working really matters, then people should be able to describe what it does, why it exists, and how it affects their work without reaching for or worrying about jargon.

When teams are encouraged to speak this way then I've seen two useful things happen, non-specialists gain confidence (which is a good thing for everyone) and specialists are forced to clarify their thinking (again, this is useful for everyone).

Asking questions

One of the hardest things about learning a new language is interrupting or asking for clarification, or repetition.

You worry about slowing things down and you worry (or at least I worry, a lot) about looking foolish, so you let things pass (even when you are completely lost).

The same thing happens with digital work all the time.

People don't ask what something means or who owns it or what happens if it fails because they don't want to be the one who interrupts the flow or they feel like they should already know the answer.

But interruption is how understanding is established and shared.

In normal conversations, people repeat themselves all the time - they rephrase things, they make efforts to clarify what they mean. Nobody sees this as a failure or a waste of time, it's simply how humans communicate.

Digital work needs more of this, I think that the most effective and productive conversations about digital work actually depend on frequent interruption. The conversations around, and answers to questions like the ones below are only going to improve a piece of work and everyone's understanding:

• "Can you say that another way?"
• "What would this really look like in practice?"
• "What happens if we do nothing?"
• "Who owns this once it launches?"

These interruptions aren't unhelpful or unnecessary friction, they're how practical shared understanding is built.

Leaders can play an important role here because when leaders ask seemingly 'basic' questions out loud, they give others permission to do the same.

Everyone brings their own context

Pretty much everything about Swedish felt new to me, but for my wife - who already speaks German to a good level, and speaks several other languages too - lots of elements felt familiar.

The things that I worried about and found confusing were often things that she didn't even think about or notice (and the same was, sometimes, also true vice-versa).

Digital work is similar, your colleagues will be bringing their previous experiences, expectations, understanding and worries with them.

They may assume that language or concepts that meant something particular on previous project will be the same this time around too. They may be worried that the things that were confusing or difficult will resurface.

For example, someone who’s been through a painful CRM migration before will hear "we’re changing systems" very differently to someone who hasn’t. Or someone who once felt excluded from a technical conversation may already be bracing themselves for it to happen again.

Almost none of this will be stuff you can know about in advance, but it will undoubtedly have an impact on how they will engage with what you're talking to them about this time.

Using plain language and encouraging questions is a way of thoughfully surfacing and understanding that hidden context. It can create the space for people to examine and reframe their assumptions and engage with what is actually being proposed, rather than what they fear might be happening.

The bigger lesson

Learning Swedish taught me that practical progress actually comes from regular use, not intellectual mastery.

You become fluent by speaking badly at first, you build your confidence by being understood, even imperfectly. You can learn much faster (and more enjoyably) when the environment supports asking questions and accepting correction.

If we want organisations to become more confident with digital work, we should stop treating it as a technical hurdle to clear and start treating it as a shared language to practice.

Fluency, or at least more practical levels of comfort, should follow.