Public Speaking in the Netherlands for Expats: How to Command the Room in English

For expats, public speaking in the Netherlands is a specific kind of challenge – and one that almost nobody talks about honestly.

You have prepared the deck, you know the content and you have even rehearsed a few times in the bathroom mirror. And then the moment comes – you are standing in front of a Dutch meeting room, presenting in English, and something shifts. The room is quiet. Unreadably quiet. Someone across the table asks a direct, borderline blunt question you did not anticipate. Your English, which felt perfectly adequate an hour ago, suddenly feels like a costume that does not quite fit.

This is not just a language problem. It is a confidence problem.

And the advice most expat professionals receive – slow down, practise more, join Toastmasters – largely misses the point.

This article is about what is actually happening when expat professionals struggle to command the room in English, and what to do about it. And if you would like to join the Toastmasters – I strongly recommend, I am a Distinguished Toastmaster myself and an active member of the Amsterdam Toastmasters Club.

The Advice That Keeps You Stuck: “Perfect Your English First”

The most common thing I hear from expat professionals before we start working together is some version of this: “I just need to improve my English a bit more, and then I’ll feel ready to present with confidence.”

It sounds reasonable. It is not.

Waiting until your English is perfect before you present with confidence is not a strategy. It is a delay mechanism – and one that will keep you waiting indefinitely, because “good enough” is a moving target that retreats the moment you approach it.

Here is what the research actually shows. A 2023 study from MIT found that non-native English-speaking professionals spend almost twice as long preparing for presentations as their native-speaking counterparts – 93% more time on average. And yet the anxiety does not go away. More preparation does not produce more confidence when the thing you are actually anxious about is not your preparation – it is your language.

The professionals I work with who speak in their third or fourth language are often more compelling presenters than native English speakers who have never had to think carefully about what they are saying. That is not an accident. Being forced to communicate across a language gap builds a different kind of discipline.

The problem was never your English. The problem is that you have been solving the wrong thing.

What Actually Makes the Dutch Business Room Hard for Expat Presenters

Here is what nobody warns you about when you move to the Netherlands for work: Dutch professional culture is genuinely difficult to read if you grew up in a different communication environment.

Dutch business culture prizes directness above almost everything else. Questions in meetings are not cushioned. Disagreement is expressed openly, and often immediately. There is no equivalent of the British nod-and-smile-while-privately-disagreeing. If a Dutch colleague thinks your argument has a gap in it, they will say so. In front of everyone, without a warm-up.

For expat presenters, this creates a specific kind of anxiety. You can prepare your content perfectly, know every slide, anticipate every objection – and still be ambushed by a question that cuts straight to the thing you were least sure about. And the fact that it happens in English, your second or third language, where you cannot find the exact word you need at exactly the moment you need it, makes it feel worse than it is.

The flat hierarchy compounds this. In Dutch organisations, seniority does not protect you from challenge. The intern in the room is just as likely as the director to push back on your point. You cannot rely on positional authority to hold the room. You have to earn it, in real time, with how you think.

Understanding this is not meant to intimidate you, it should actually reassure you. If you know the Dutch room operates this way, you stop misreading it. That silence is not disapproval. That direct question is not an attack. Once you stop bracing for signals that were never coming, you can start actually presenting.

The Real Reason Some Non-Native Speakers Are Exceptional Presenters

I want to offer you a reframe that changes everything:

Great speakers do not speak better. They think better.

This is not a motivational slogan. It is a description of what actually separates compelling presenters from forgettable ones, regardless of language. The most captivating communicators are not the ones with the most polished delivery. They are the ones who have done the clearest thinking about what they are trying to say and why it matters. Clarity of thought produces clarity of communication. Grammar is largely irrelevant.

Harvard Business Review’s guidance on presenting in English as a non-native speaker makes a related point: the goal is not to sound native, it is to be understood and trusted. Trust is built through structure, specificity, and the sense that you know what you are talking about – none of which require a native accent.

In fact, being multilingual gives you something native speakers often lack: you have had to think carefully about language. You know what it is to search for the right word. You are more deliberate. That deliberateness, when channelled correctly, reads as authority.

The expat professionals who thrive as presenters in the Netherlands are not the ones who have solved the language problem. They are the ones who have stopped treating it as a problem and started treating it as a given – and put their energy into the thing that actually matters: thinking clearly about what they want the room to take away.

The Part Most Expats Get Wrong: The Q&A

Here is the pattern I see most consistently with expat professionals preparing for a presentation: they master the content and fall apart in the conversation.

The prepared part they can handle. They script it, they rehearse it, they know where every slide is going. It is speaking on their feet – in the Q&A, in the debate that follows, in the unscripted moments – where the anxiety spikes. Because there, you cannot prepare the exact words. You have to think and speak simultaneously, in your second language, in front of people who are watching you closely.

This is worth naming clearly because most presentation preparation ignores it entirely. People spend 90% of their preparation time on the part they are least anxious about – the scripted delivery – and almost no time on the part that actually tests them: the live exchange.

Preparing for open discussion or a Q&A is a different skill from preparing a presentation. It is not about having answers ready for every possible question. It is about having a relationship with your own thinking that is stable enough to survive interruption. Knowing what you know. Knowing what you do not know and being comfortable saying so. Knowing your point of view well enough to defend it under pressure – without resorting to language you cannot produce fluently under stress.

The professionals who handle conversations and Q&A well in Dutch business rooms are not the ones with the best English. They are the ones who know what they think.

What Actually Works: Presenting with Impact as an Expat in the Netherlands

There is no script for this. But there are a few principles that consistently make the difference.

Anchor your presentation in a single clear idea
Before you build a slide or write a script, finish this sentence: “After this presentation, I want the room to believe that…” Everything else is evidence for that idea. This discipline forces the kind of clear thinking that carries into Q&A.

Prepare for the conversation, not just the content
Spend at least as much preparation time on the questions you might face as on the slides themselves. Write down the three questions you most hope nobody asks. Those are exactly the ones you need to be able to answer.

Stop apologising for your English
Opening a presentation by flagging your language – “sorry, my English isn’t perfect” – is one of the most counterproductive things a presenter can do, however well-intentioned. It puts the room in the position of having to reassure you, it lowers expectations before you have said anything substantive, and it signals uncertainty before you have given anyone a reason to feel uncertain. Lead with your thinking. Your language will follow.

Learn to sit with the Dutch silence
The absence of nodding, laughing, and warm facial feedback is not a Dutch audience being hostile. It is a Dutch audience paying attention. Once you stop reading the silence as failure, you stop rushing to fill it – and that pause, that steadiness, is what reads as confidence.

Build your Q&A stamina, not your vocabulary
The most useful preparation for unscripted moments is practice in unscripted moments. Present to a colleague and ask them to push back aggressively. Record yourself answering questions you have not prepared. Get comfortable with the feeling of not quite knowing the right word and finding your way to it anyway. That recovery skill is worth more than any amount of vocabulary drilling.

You Already Have What It Takes

Amsterdam is one of Europe’s most international professional cities – a place where multilingual professionals from dozens of countries sit in the same meeting rooms, pitch to the same clients, and present in the same language: English. That means you are not the only person in that room who does not speak English as their first language. You are almost certainly not even in the minority.

The edge in that room does not go to the person with the best English. It goes to the person who knows what they think, can communicate it clearly, and does not fall apart when challenged.

That is a trainable skill. And it starts with stopping the search for a language problem you do not actually have.

If you want to work on your presentation confidence specifically in the context of English-language presenting in the Netherlands, I work with expat professionals on exactly this – from structuring compelling arguments to preparing for the Q&A moments that matter most.

You can read more about what that looks like here, or book a discovery call to talk through where you are starting from.

For a deeper look at how to choose presentation skills training in Amsterdam that actually delivers results – including what to avoid – read this guide next.