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Language plays a complex role in coaching, facilitating communication, comprehension and meaning construction. Yet, the implications of coaching in a non-native language are uncertain and under-researched. This study explores the role of non-native language (NNL) in dyadic workplace coaching practice. Specifically, it explores how working in a NNL influences the coaching experience from the coach’s perspective.

A qualitative approach was chosen to explore the way coaches view coaching in a NNL. Twenty-three semi-structured interviews were conducted with coaches experienced in coaching in NNL. Reflexive thematic analysis (RTA) was applied for data analysis.

NNL coaching presents a paradoxical mix of negative and positive tensions for the coach and coachee in communication, relationship and insight. NNL coaching is nuanced and may be accommodated using coaching competencies to mitigate the potential for misunderstanding and relationship rupture. It offers alternative perspectives to existing worldviews, eliciting deeper insights. Coaches’ confidence in coaching in a NNL varies from a challenging struggle that perceptually hinders performance, through ambivalence, to a sense of greater resourcefulness.

The study contributes to the stream of literature on language in international business, sociolinguistic research and how meaning is constructed in a coaching process. First, the work develops a distinction between coaching in a native language (NL) and a NNL. Second, study results indicate that the context of NNL creates challenges as well as opportunities in a dyadic coaching process, particularly regarding aspects of the coach–coachee relationship and insight elicitation via alternative perspectives. Moreover, several practical implications of the study for the coaching practice are discussed.

Drawing on an organizational learning perspective, this paper examines the effect of levels of foreign market involvement (intensity and geographic spread) on internationalization outcomes recognizing that the moderating influence of entry-mode learning potential is not well documented in the literature on small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The sample includes 180 SMEs evenly selected from three industries: biotechnology, software and clothing (60 firms in each industry). The sampled firms employ less than 250 employees and are equally distributed between three developed economies and three emerging economies. All were engaged in foreign business.

The authors find that there is a direct relationship between levels of foreign market involvement and internationalization outcomes. Entry-mode learning potential moderates the relationship between intensity of foreign market involvement and internationalization outcomes but not the relationship between geographic spread and internationalization outcomes.

This study reveals several new insights that help explain the pathway through which foreign market involvement activities are translated into internationalization outcomes.

The authors conclude that the positive relationship between intensity of foreign market involvement and internationalization outcomes is strengthened when SMEs also use an entry mode with a higher learning potential than exporting only.