As a senior manager, do you ever feel it takes you too long to explain yourself in English?
You lose your main point and your confidence starts to disappear.
Today, I'm going to share with you four simple language structures to help you get to the point faster and feel more confident.
Let's crack on.
Hello and welcome back to Confident Business English.
If you are a senior manager, you already need English because you work in an international environment, but you lack confidence communicating in some way.
You are absolutely in the right place.
My name is Anna and I'm a qualified Neural Language Coach, and I work with senior managers, just like you, from all around the world, every single day.
I work with Spanish speakers, French speakers, German speakers Italians, also people who are expats.
So, for example, Brazilian people who are living in the UK, or perhaps you might be a Guatemalan person who's living in New York, for example.
I work with loads of different people, and this is what inspires many of the episodes and also the things that you tell me as well.
So what is the pain point that we're trying to address today?
That is, I find it really hard to get to the point in English.
As a senior manager, you'll know this.
Your job is not just to explain what's happening and give the facts, but you also need to help people understand what's going on as quickly as possible.
Your bosses, executives, shareholders, team members...
They are bombarded with information all day long.
The easier you make your message to follow, the quicker they're going to be able to understand what the situation is.
By the way, just before your inner critic jumps in and says, oh, it's me.
I'm terrible.
I can't communicate in English.
I'm never concise.
It's all me, me, me.
This is an extremely common situation, and it's a fact that it's very hard to be concise in your non-native language.
Your brain is working overdrive.
It's just trying to get the basic things done.
Being concise falls to the back of the queue.
So please welcome to the club of millions of other people, including myself, that also fit into this category.
What that means though, is using structures like we're going to have a look at today really help to make your life easier when it's already difficult to do.
And look, if this is something that is really difficult for you, you're probably not going to do it very well all of the time.
And that's absolutely fine.
If you can sprinkle in some little bits of conciseness here and there, that's great.
That's progress.
It's a little bit better than it was before.
The issue can often be, however you take longer to get to the point, and that can mean that people start to lose attention.
You know what I'm saying.
When you're in the room and you just feel like people are switching off.
Maybe they're getting a little bit impatient.
And you sense that, which makes you lack confidence, makes you less likely to want to speak up next time.
Repeat that over a series of events and then you find that you're participating less and less and less.
That's the cycle that we want to break.
All right, then let's move on and start having a look at these structures.
The first thing on my list, use the phrase, the key point to tell people your message first.
I know if you've been listening to the podcast for a while, you know that I go on and on about this, but it's honestly a phrase that people still don't use.
These three simple words, the key point, very easy words to say in English.
I don't think that's beyond you whatsoever.
It also forces you to direct people to what's important.
The key point here is.
The key point I want to get across is.
The key point I need to tell you is.
The key point we need to discuss is.
Nothing revolutionary but absolutely works a charm.
I know what you're going to say, though.
You're going to say, OK, but I can say the key point.
That's fine.
But then what is the actual key point?
Right.
That for me is a separate exercise.
I have a recommendation for you.
There is a book which is called Get to the Point.
I'll link it in the description box.
This helps you think about how you come up with the key point.
I can't do that for you because that depends on what you're doing and your context and what the situation is.
But it's a really good guide to help you test and see Is what I'm saying actually the key point?
Really recommend that one.
Very practical, easy to read and easy to get through.
Here's an example of a longer version versus a shorter version using the key point.
Let's imagine a situation where we're talking about customer feedback.
The long version could be.
Over the last few weeks, we've been reviewing customer feedback from a number of different markets.
We've looked at pricing, delivery times, product quality and customer service.
And after analyzing all of the comments, there seems to be one issue that appears much more frequently than the others.
And after you're listening to that you're like okay, so what's the one thing that appears more frequently?
The short version with that vocabulary could be.
The key point is that delivery times are damaging customer satisfaction.
So over to you now as well to give you an action.
Think about maybe a meeting or a conversation that you have coming up this week.
What's one sentence that you want them to remember?
And could you lead with that sentence by saying the key point is...
Next, moving on, I want to talk about coming to conclusions and using a grammar structure called double comparatives.
These are fantastic because you're able to explain the relationship between things in one short and sweet sentence.
Here are some examples.
I'm sure you will have heard some of these before.
We do have some set expressions with this.
For example, the sooner the better.
We can also use it with verbs.
For example, the more we invest, the more we get back.
We can also use adjectives.
In my opinion, the more flexible the process is, the easier it's going to be to scale.
You can also use nouns.
For example, the more people we have involved, the more ideas we're going to have.
You can also kind of mix and match and do some different combinations.
For example, we could have a noun, but then also with an adjective.
At the end of the day, the fewer people involved in the decision-making process, the faster we can move this forward.
I'm not going to go into detail about the grammar structure now.
If you would like that, sign up to my newsletter.
The link is in the description box and I will give you a written summary of the structures.
Now let's compare two different ways of communicating the same message one with a longer version and one using this double comparative structure.
I want you to imagine that you've introduced a new health and safety training program across the business and you're giving your conclusion to your team and executives there.
The longer version could be...
After introducing the new training program, we've seen accident numbers decrease throughout the year, which is fantastic.
Employees are following procedures more consistently and they're making fewer mistakes on site.
Overall, there definitely seems to be a relationship between increased training and improved safety.
Wonderful sentences, all fine, nothing wrong with that.
But if our goal here is to get to the point quickly, it's quite a long conclusion.
How could we rephrase that?
In short, the more we train people, the fewer accidents we have.
In short, the more we train people, the fewer accidents we have.
Same idea, fewer words, more impact, and gets to the point quickly.
Let me give you another example.
This time, we're going to be talking about clarifying roles and responsibilities.
You're giving your conclusion about this piece of work.
The longer version could be.
We've noticed that when projects begin without clearly defining responsibilities, teams spend much more time clarifying ownership later, which slows down the delivery.
If we rephrase that and we want to get to the point quickly, we could say in the end, the less clarity we have at the start, the longer projects take.
This structure is so simple but it sounds really executive, because what it forces you to do is summarize that relationship and give the underlying principle, without going into all the little details underneath.
Last but not least, the final structure that is going to help you get to the point quickly and feel confident that you're being concise is creating urgency with the first conditional.
As a senior manager, one of the things that you will have to do constantly and maybe it feels like your whole life is spent doing this is trying to influence people to take action.
Persuading your team, convincing the senior leaders around the table, helping people understand why things matter.
It may seem so obvious to you, but if you're not able to express that clearly and concisely, it might be hard to get people on board.
One of the simplest and most powerful structures that I encourage my clients to use all the time is the first conditional.
The structure is super straightforward.
And again, I'm not going to go into it now.
I'll put something about that in the newsletter.
It could be a sentence, for example, look, if we invest now, we'll be ready for next year.
However, if we delay this decision, we're going to miss a huge opportunity here.
It's a structure that naturally gets people thinking about the consequences and you can very quickly get to the point and show people what is the potential downside and what also can be the upside.
You are creating urgency with such a simple structure.
If we look at this in practice, for example, let's look at two versions a longer version and then one with our first conditional.
Let's imagine a situation where you have to invest in a new software.
A longer version could be.
I think we should probably invest in the new software because it could improve efficiency and it might help us save time over the coming months.
However, if we were to rephrase that using our powerful first conditional sentence, we could say look, in the end, if we invest in the new software now, we're going to save costs all round.
Equally, if we don't invest in the software now, we'll fall further and further behind our competitors.
One thing I imagine you'll notice and you probably have somebody at work right who you think wow, they're such a good communicator.
They really get to the point very quickly.
It's very easy to understand them.
They often won't just be describing situations, but in this context they're going to be describing consequences.
And they very quickly make it obvious what is at stake.
You can do that too by using a very simple, straightforward first conditional structure.
And that can help you feel confident that you're getting across what's at stake really clearly.
So have a think.
Maybe you've got a meeting coming up or a conversation over the next week.
If you're trying to persuade somebody to do something or to move things forward, how could you make your message more persuasive and get to the point quickly using a first conditional?
If we do this, what will happen?
If we don't do this, what will happen?
Try building up a couple of sentences and see if you could use those in the meeting if you can.
All right, let's wrap things up there.
We've looked at three language structures that you can use to get to the point quickly in English.
If you liked that episode, do let me know, because I have a plan to do a few more episodes on this topic.
If you found it useful,
I'd really appreciate as well if you like this episode to follow, subscribe or leave a review wherever you listen to your podcasts.
It really helps it reach a lot more professionals that need a confidence boost and want to move forward with their English as well.
Also, if you want to get a written summary of the tips I've talked about in the episode, as well as the structures that I didn't mention, plus even more of my tips I don't share on the podcast.
Sign up to my Friday newsletter.
The link to do so is in the description box.
Thank you, as always, for choosing Confident Business English as part of your professional development and routine.
It's been a pleasure spending time with you.
Until next week, keep practicing, keep trying to move forward and push yourself.
And I will see you same time, same place next week.
Bye-bye.
