CAD/CAM Professional Weak in English: When the Real Barrier Isn't the Skill

    A CAD/CAM software professional is technically brilliant but weak in English — and knows it is quietly capping the career. Avinash Chate uses this true workplace story to unpack Innovation, Trait #8 on the Winning Kite.

    CAD/CAM Professional Weak in English: When the Real Barrier Isn't the Skill

    CAD/CAM Professional Weak in English: When the Real Barrier Isn't the Skill

    I have sat across the table from more than one brilliant CAD/CAM professional who could design a die, a mould or a machining sequence in their sleep — and then freeze the moment an interviewer switched from Marathi or Hindi to English. This is not a story about grammar. It is a story about what Innovation, Trait #8 on the EQ side of the Winning Kite, really means when you turn it inward on yourself.

    In short

    Where this sits on your Winning Kite

    Innovation is the eighth trait on the EQ — left — side of your Winning Kite (KITE Leadership Framework). EQ, RQ and PQ together lift you towards Success at the top of the kite; you rise on balance, not on strength in only one area. Most people think Innovation means inventing a new product or process at work. It also means innovating on yourself — recognising a gap that is holding your career back and choosing to close it instead of working around it forever.

    The professional who knew exactly where the ceiling was

    In Stars at India Inc., I describe a professional who works in CAD/CAM software development. Anyone who has spent time around manufacturing and design floors in India knows this world — tolerances checked to the micron, drafting standards followed to the letter, machining sequences that have to be exactly right the first time because tooling is expensive and time is expensive. This is not casual, forgiving work. It demands precision, patience and technical depth, and this particular professional had all three.

    But there was one thing this professional was not comfortable with: English.

    And crucially, this was not a case of denial. The professional knew, with total clarity, that good companies have excellent job opportunities for people who are strong in English. They knew that interviews in many of the best companies are conducted in English. They knew that confidence in the language is treated, rightly or wrongly, as a proxy for confidence in the person — that English-speaking individuals in India can walk into a room and navigate the world with an ease that others, equally capable, often cannot. And they knew that without that proficiency, doors that should have opened on merit alone would stay shut.

    This is the moment that separates a star from someone who quietly accepts a ceiling. Recognising the gap is only step one. What happens next is where Innovation, as an emotional quality, comes into play.

    Why this is an Innovation story, not just an English story

    It would be easy to file this under "communication skills" and move on. I want you to resist that. The reason I placed this example in the Innovation chapter of the book is that the real skill on display here is not language — it is the willingness to recognise the need for change and respond to uncertainty instead of freezing in front of it.

    Innovative professionals, whether they are redesigning a product or redesigning themselves, share the same underlying behaviours: they are flexible, they respond to uncertainty rather than hide from it, they are willing to take risks, and they actively bring new ideas and new approaches to the table instead of repeating what has always been done. A CAD/CAM professional who decides, after years of technical excellence, "I am going to become confident in English" is doing exactly what an innovative team does when it decides to challenge a process that no longer serves it. The scale is different. The emotional mechanism is identical.

    Contrast this with someone who is not open to change — the manager in a manufacturing company, comfortable with the status quo, who resists new technology or new processes even when the upside is obvious. That resistance is not really about the technology. It is about the discomfort of admitting a gap exists and doing something about it. The same resistance can live inside an individual career exactly as it lives inside an organisation.

    The idea killer that lives in your own head

    In the book, I describe idea killers as people who view things negatively, who believe something is impossible, who do not encourage new ideas and instead kill them off. We usually picture idea killers as other people — the senior colleague who shuts down a junior's suggestion, the manager who says "we've never done it that way." But the most dangerous idea killer a CAD/CAM professional weak in English will ever meet is internal: the voice that says "I am a technical person, not a language person," or "it is too late to fix this now," or "people like me don't get those jobs."

    That inner idea killer is just as capable of shutting down a career as an outer one is capable of shutting down a good product idea. The professionals who break through are the ones who treat their own English gap the way a good engineer treats a design flaw: not as a verdict on their worth, but as a specification to be solved. Seek out fresh approaches — a course, a mentor, daily practice, English-medium meetings volunteered for rather than avoided. Entertain solutions that feel uncomfortable at first. Take a calculated risk by speaking up before you feel fully ready, because readiness rarely arrives before the first attempt.

    This is also why, in the book, I make a point of saying that stars are the ones who welcome ideas no matter who suggests them — including ideas about themselves that arrive from an uncomfortable, honest place. A junior developer hesitating to speak up because of seniority and a CAD/CAM professional hesitating to speak up because of a language gap are facing the same emotional test: will you let a barrier that has nothing to do with your actual capability decide your ceiling for you?

    Small, repeated innovation beats one dramatic leap

    I often point to Ola in this chapter because their story shows that innovation rarely looks like a single miracle move. When Uber entered the Indian market in 2019 with a similar model, Ola did not panic into one grand gesture. It innovated steadily — launching Ola Electric and the Ola S1 scooter, which drew over a lakh pre-orders within 24 hours, and later Ola Bike, a faster, cheaper two-wheeler option for short trips. Each move was a manageable, well-aimed response to a changing landscape, not a single leap of faith.

    The same logic applies to a professional closing an English gap. Nobody becomes fluently confident overnight, and nobody needs to. What works is the Ola approach in miniature: one small, deliberate change after another — reading technical documentation in English instead of translated notes, volunteering for one client call a month, practising a two-minute self-introduction until it is automatic, asking a trusted colleague for direct feedback instead of guessing. None of these steps is dramatic. Together, over a year or two, they close a gap that felt permanent.

    I also think often of Sumant Moolgaokar, the Tata Motors Managing Director whose lunches with truck drivers at a roadside dhaba — not with his fellow executives — became a small, ordinary habit that fed real product improvements and even inspired the name of the Tata Sumo. Innovation, his story reminds us, is not always the big invention. Often it is the small, unglamorous habit repeated with intent. A CAD/CAM professional practising English in daily five-minute doses is doing the same thing Sumant did at that dhaba — finding growth in an unglamorous, consistent place nobody else thought to look.

    How to test whether you are being innovative about your own growth

    In the book I offer a simple test for innovativeness in general, and it applies just as well when the "product" you are innovating is your own career. Ask yourself: Do I seek out fresh ideas and sources of help rather than staying isolated with the problem? Am I willing to entertain solutions that feel unfamiliar or effortful? Do I take calculated risks, like speaking in a language I am not yet fully confident in, rather than waiting for perfect readiness? Or do I default to the idea-killer position — looking for reasons this cannot work, telling myself it is too late, staying inside the comfort of what I already do well?

    A professional who is honest about that self-test, the way the CAD/CAM professional in this story was honest about the English gap, has already done the hardest part of Innovation: naming the truth instead of avoiding it. Everything after that — the course, the practice, the risk of speaking up in an English-medium interview — is simply execution.

    What this means for you and your team

    If you lead a technical team in India, this story is not really about English at all — it is a reminder that some of your most capable people are quietly sitting behind a barrier that has nothing to do with their skill, and everything to do with confidence and opportunity to practise. The innovative move as a leader is the same one I ask of the individual: notice the gap, do not treat it as a character flaw, and create small, low-risk ways for people to close it — English-speaking practice circles, presentation opportunities in a safe room before a client-facing one, mentors who correct gently rather than publicly. That, too, is Innovation applied where it matters: to the people in front of you, not just the products you ship.

    I train teams across India — in manufacturing floors, design studios, IT companies and public-sector organisations — to build exactly this kind of culture, one where the CAD/CAM engineer with the language gap and the junior developer with the untested feature idea both get heard on merit. If this resonates with what you are seeing on your own shop floor or in your own team, explore our Signature Corporate Training Programs or browse all our Corporate Training Topics to see how we bring the Winning Kite framework to life for teams like yours. You can also read the deeper dive on Innovation, Trait #8 on the Winning Kite, or see how a junior developer's hesitant idea became a lesson in the same trait in Junior Developer's Feature Idea.

    As Daniel Goleman's research on emotional intelligence has long shown, self-awareness — knowing your own gaps clearly — is the foundation every other EQ competency is built on. The CAD/CAM professional in this story had that self-awareness in full measure. What turned it into a career-changing strength was choosing Innovation over avoidance.

    If you are reading this and recognise your own reflection in that CAD/CAM professional — skilled, aware of the gap, unsure how to begin — the first innovative act is simple: stop treating the gap as a secret and start treating it as a project. Reach out through our contact page if you would like Avinash to work with your team on exactly this shift.

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    Avinash Chate

    TEDx Speaker · Founder, The Future Corporate · Author of Stars at India Inc.

    Avinash has trained the Indian Army, BRO, RBI, BARC, JSW Steel and 1000+ corporate leaders across India. His work focuses on leadership, emotional intelligence and behavioural training rooted in Indian values and modern business needs.

    Frequently Asked Questions

    What is the CAD/CAM professional weak in English story about?

    It's a real workplace pattern from Avinash Chate's book Stars at India Inc: a professional who is genuinely skilled at CAD/CAM software development knows that English-medium interviews and English-speaking work cultures are the gateway to the best jobs in the field, but is not comfortable with the language. Instead of hiding from the gap, the professional treats it as a problem to innovate around — a change to make, not a shame to carry.

    Why does English proficiency matter so much for technical professionals in India?

    Because many of the strongest employers in engineering, design and software conduct interviews and daily work in English, and confidence in the language becomes a proxy for confidence in the person. A CAD/CAM professional can be outstanding at the tool itself and still lose an opportunity in the first five minutes of an English-medium interview — not because the skill was missing, but because the professional never treated the language gap as something to innovate on.

    How does this story connect to Innovation, Trait #8 on the Winning Kite?

    Innovation is Trait #8 on the EQ (Emotional Intelligence) side of the Winning Kite, the left side of the four-sided kite metaphor Avinash Chate uses. EQ, RQ (Relationship Intelligence) and PQ (Productivity) together lift you towards Success at the top — you rise on balance across all three, not by strength in only one. Recognising the need for change and then acting on it, the way this professional does with English, is Innovation applied to your own career, not just to products or processes.

    How can a technical professional close an English confidence gap without becoming an idea killer about their own growth?

    Name the specific gap honestly instead of avoiding interviews altogether, treat it as a solvable problem the way you would a design flaw in a CAD model, take small consistent risks like speaking up in one English-medium meeting a week, seek feedback rather than assuming judgement, and remember that idea killers — including the voice inside your own head that says 'this is impossible for me' — are the biggest block to innovation of any kind.

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