Do great leaders speak multiple languages? For instance, do people
like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Sergey Brin & Larry Page, Steve Jobs,
etc. - do any of these people (including these people, but not limited
to) speak more languages than simply English?

What I want to know, primarily, is if speaking more than one language
has any real benefits for use in the (international) business world,
just like what these leaders work in everyday. I mean, it's not like
I've ever seen any of these guys speak Spanish, or French, etc. to
other people before. But maybe it helped them to get started in the
very beginning?

Oh and by the way, I believe Sergey Brin speaks Russian?

Its a misunderstood concept its always good to learn language but
mostly its more of a turn off to do business with you if you speak the
same language that the client speak. Like for instance they might want
to speak a secret but now its not possible. Its like this as long as
you put your point across clearly its very good for you. Becuase we
need to understand if a french wants to do business with an american
they have a mind set that you dont know french it might come in as a
bad surprise it is same for all languages. But its always good to know
different languages and other things knowledge never hurts but keeping
quite is a good option about the knowledge as long as it is not
required.

Hope this helped

Thanks for your advice :) I really appreciate it :)

One of the reasons that I am asking this question, is because I am
currently still in high school. I have been taking French lessons in
school for many, many years (from erm, age 4 to age 17) and I'm
wondering if it's been a waste of time... maybe taking courses such as
computer, business, science courses might have helped me more in life
instead.

I 'learned' French & Spanish at school and received certificates as to
my supposed competence.

Later, I discovered that I had atrocious accents, so it was (almost) a
complete waste.

Learning any language from non-native speakers is certainly not very
productive but then most of the stuff taught in schools is very badly
taught.

(Oh yes, I did go to a 'good' school.)

Of course, they've got to teach something to justify the exercise.

It's a good job Edison was never given a good education and that
Wozniak, Jobs & Gates dropped out ... Or we'd still be working in the
dark.

If you get the chance, learn something that really EXCITES you & Good Luck!

I also speak French and German very badly

- wie ein Gastarbeiter
- comme un Maroc

It is both extremely embarrassing, and profoundly useful.

@garyking - I suggest that you learn another language fluently, the
big boys might be monolingual - but they have to rely on translators.

Read 'translator' as 'entrepreneur' 
- I have examples but you would not know their names

According to one recent academic study, 40% of respondents to a
questionnaire by US CEOs and other top executives speak a foreign
language:


"Since top managers other than the CEO or HR director answered several
of the surveys, this research treats the respondents as top managers
and not exclusively as CEOs or HR directors. Some of the other top
managers that answered the survey were Executive VPs, Senior VPs,
Directors and Senior Managers working in a variety of functional areas
like International
Business Development, International Sales, Operations, Marketing and Finance. 

"Of the respondents, 32% were CEOs and 9% were HR Directors.
Seventy-two percent of the respondents indicated that they have
responsibility for their company?s international business, and 52% of
these have responsibility for the total organization. Fifty-nine
percent are involved in making international hiring and overseas
assignment decisions. Twenty-five percent had held
an international assignment during their career and almost 40% spoke a
foreign language."

Duke U.: U.S. Business Needs for Employees with International Expertise (page 6)
http://www.jhfc.duke.edu/ducis/globalchallenges/pdf/kedia_daniel.pdf

"Of the respondents, 32% were CEOs and 9% were HR Directors.
Seventy-two percent of the respondents"

And how many lied ?

40% is.. about average I suppose.

For me, my FIRST language that I spoke when I was young was not
English, but by now, I'm in my teens and English is my primary
language, but I can still speak my native language. I speak at least 3
fluent languages now, and after learning French, it opens doors to
other languages because French is somewhat similar to other languages
such as Spanish, Italian, etc. (you can tell what words mean in those
languages by relating them to French.)

Anyways, I guess one of the reasons that many powerful CEOs don't
speak more than English is because they are mostly caucasian... hey,
it's true!

I have been a consultant for over 20 years and have worked
internationally for the pat 8 years.  I only speak English.  My
experience with the several multinational companies I worked with is
that being multi or at least bi-lingual is  more a function of where
you were raised and went to school (ie- anywhere in Europe vs the
USA).  Almost ALL of the european, african and Asian top managers and
CEO's I worked with were at least bi-lingual- with the exception of
managers and executives from the UK.  The UK and US executive
population I worked with were almost exclusively english speaking.  In
all of the companies I worked with- the written policy was that
English is the standard language of business (right or wrong) and that
your career would not progress internally in the company unless you
were proficient in conversational and written english.  However-
remember that these were multinational companies- I am sure that if
you worked in a primarily French company they would mostly only use
french (especially the french- since they are fiercely proud of their
culture and language.)  As for wasting your time- no- but you may want
to consider moving to france for a while to immerse yourself to 1)
become fluent 2) discover what having the ability to speaking french
will offer you in life- other than the joy of speaking a beautiful
language.  By doing as much work as i did around the world and often
being the only person in the room who only spoke 1 language- I gained
a lot of humility.  I am surprised with the statistic listed that 40%
of US top mgmt speak more than one language (were they fluent? or had
they  only studied another language)- I doubt that these were
executives/CEO's and I doubt that they conducted important business in
any language other than English- but maybe I'm wrong.