Let's talk about the M word, meetings.
As a senior manager, meetings are really important for you, whether you're Spanish and you have meetings with people across Europe, or maybe you're Spanish speaking but you're based in Canada or Brazilian in the UK or Argentinian in Holland, whatever it is, how do you make sure that your meetings are successful
from an English perspective?
It goes without saying that of course preparation is always really useful but there are also some phrases that are going to help you sound more natural.
We're going to have a look at an English meeting that was led by a native speaker and I'm essentially going to cherry pick some of those great phrases that you can use in your own meetings.
The best part is you can feel really confident with these phrases because you know they're natural, you know that these are things that native speakers would actually say.
Alright, let's crack on.
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So meetings. I have a few clients who get quite nervous before meetings and rightly so because they're like you know I really want it to go well, I want it to be a great meeting, I want to make sure everybody understands me.
This is really going to help you with some of those natural phrases and you're going to see that actually a lot of them are not that complex, it's just a case of knowing what they are and actually putting them into practice and that's what I'm going to encourage you to do today.
Let's set up the exercise then, what you're going to hear are different clips from a real meeting in a technology company I think it is.
I'm going to link the meeting, the YouTube video in the show notes of the episode.
Essentially I think it's a team meeting, maybe a monthly team meeting and the person that you're going to hear is giving an update at the start so they're welcoming everybody and giving a couple of updates before they start the meeting.
You'll hear a clip and then I'm going to give you some little tips and takeaways afterwards and then at the end I'll do a little summary with some of the most important points that you can then try and take away and implement in your own meetings.
A quick heads up post edit, I asked my American family member to help me out with the accent and they said essentially they don't really have a strong accent, it's very neutral but it could become from different places around America.
The guy who's introducing does have an American accent but I can't exactly place it.
Neutral, not too strong.
It's definitely not New York for example or too strong California but somewhere.
It doesn't really help does it?
But there you go. Let's get started.
I'm going to play the first clip here.
Hey Daniel. Hey Eric.
Hello. Welcome back Eric.
Thanks so much. Yeah, it's great to be here.
Hi Virginia. Hello.
All right, let's kick off.
I'm just thinking I bet you're like, I wish my boss spoke like that.
By goodness it's super clear.
I think it's quite clear.
Anyway you're going to have to tell me whether you agree with me or not.
Anyway it's an informal meeting as you can see by the tone here.
Hey, hi, completely appropriate in this context and a really nice sentence you can take away there is welcome back.
Easy, simple. Maybe there's somebody that's been on a long holiday, maybe they've been on long term sick leave or maybe they used to work on the team and they're rejoining the technical team again, whatever it is.
It's a great phrase to remember there for your intros.
Also, just like I start the podcast with a let's phrase, let's crack on, he chose let's kick off.
Perfect. You don't need to reinvent the wheel every time.
It works. It does the job.
Let's move on to the next clip.
I wanted to start out with some reminders.
First we have a book club coming up on Inspired in four weeks on August 7th.
I just reread it myself.
It's a good read. It's highly aligned with how I think about product management and does a good job of explaining.
Please do read that.
I think I'm going to update the new hire onboarding doc and ask all of new hires to read this as well so that we all, everybody in the team is on the same page with respect to this book.
I'm going to pick out a couple of little bits.
For example, the first sentence he said was I wanted to start out with some reminders.
It's literally just a variation of saying I'd like to start with.
Out doesn't really add anything at all, but again sounds quite natural so could be one to try out next time.
Another more advanced point I wanted to highlight to you is when he's talking about this book club and then he says when he gives his instructions to the team, he says please do read that.
Please do read that.
He's using the auxiliary in the sentence and you're going to see that this is a common pattern throughout the introduction.
So certainly something that you could start using when you're leading your meetings as well and when you want to instruct people what you would like them to do.
Let's continue. Next clip.
Let's see. Reminder B, remember, there's this interview spreadsheet.
CS and sales have populated that with a number of customer contacts for meetings.
Please do follow up on that.
I want to ensure goodwill with that team and follow up promptly with meetings with these customers so that that team can see that we're taking advantage of it.
Three things I want to highlight here.
Number one, that phrase, let's see, that's quite a nice little phrase that you can say if you're looking for something because he was looking for something on his screen.
He was looking for the agenda.
He was like, OK, what's my next point?
So that's like a nice little filler that you could use.
Secondly, notice again how when he's giving instruction to the team, he's saying, please do follow up on that again.
He's using the auxiliary in that command.
And then the third thing I wanted to touch on was he said this weird sentence that I would literally never say, which was I want to ensure goodwill with that team.
You can probably get it from the context, but essentially it means I want to make sure we're in their good books.
I want to make sure that we give them a good impression.
I want to make sure that they feel we're working well with them.
Just strange. You know, there is some things that some people say that I would just never say and doesn't really make it any better or easier.
But yeah, I thought that was a weird sentence.
Anyway, moving on. Next clip.
Third reminder, we've got a little engagement survey.
I'm going to run this once a month in Q3 just to take a pulse, given all the change going on, please do take a minute to fill it out.
It's five quick questions and then one free form where you can share whatever feedback you have.
A couple of things to highlight here.
First of all, vocabulary points.
Notice again how he says, please do take a minute to do the survey again using the auxiliary in the sentence.
The next vocabulary point was he said just to take a pulse and imagine when you go to the doctor, they check your pulse, right?
They just check to see if you're OK.
And we use the same phrase when we're talking about business to take a pulse check or take a temperature check.
Those are other ways of saying it.
It's just like a way to check in.
That's another way that we say it.
Check in, see how everything's doing.
Just make sure that everything's going well.
Let's continue. Bobby didn't receive it.
I'm pretty sure I went through my emails.
I think maybe it's on my end, but I'm happy to fill it out.
You didn't get it. Need to get it to you.
All right. I will I'll ask Jessica to resend that to you.
Anybody else in the same condition where you did not receive it?
A few things I want to pick up on here.
Number one, great from Fabian here, loving the phrasal verbs.
I went through my emails.
That's a nice, more advanced way of saying I checked my emails.
The next thing I want to highlight is he uses this beautiful phrase, which is.
Maybe it's on my end, but I didn't get it.
I mean, in your head, you're like, it's not my fault.
I know I didn't get the email, but you know, I'm going to give somebody the benefit of the doubt.
The next thing is notice how when he finds out that Fabian didn't receive the email, he's saying, okay, great.
I'll ask Jessica future, simple future actions.
I'll ask Jessica, I'll get in touch with Jessica.
I'll speak to Jessica.
That's what you need to use.
If those things come up when you're leading a meeting and you're going to tell them what you're going to do about it.
The last point is this beautiful question, which is anybody else.
We use this a lot in big meetings.
Anybody else got a problem?
Anybody else got a question?
Anybody else want to chip in?
Chip in just means participate to say something.
And notice how we remove the auxiliary.
We're not saying does anybody else, which you could say perfectly.
We just take it off.
We're lazy. Anybody else?
Love that question.
Just love it. Let's do another clip.
All right. Next reminder.
We, uh, we need, we have a goal of at least three customer interviews per PM.
There's an okay, our issue out there.
If you haven't updated it lately, please do so.
And, uh, remember we have three weeks until Q2 to hit our goals.
So please, uh, please do invest the time to get those set up and get at least three done.
If you haven't already.
Again, we come back to this, please do, please do invest the time.
Let me touch briefly on to hit our goals, which he mentions there, which is a great verb that you can use with goals.
You can also use reach as well.
Then finally, you might've heard already and been like, Anna, that sounds like a weird sentence for me, which is if you haven't already, you're like, well, isn't already supposed to be with the affirmative sentence.
That doesn't really make any sense.
Yeah. You're right.
Generally we use already with affirmatives, but this is a very common sentence.
If you haven't already, please do update the system.
If you haven't already get in touch with the team and let them know what your preferences are, which is essentially an alternative way of saying, if you haven't spoken to the team yet, get in touch with them, or if you haven't already get in touch with the team.
So that's a really nice, natural phrase there that you can use if you want to tell people to do things that maybe they haven't done yet.
We're going to finish your two more clips and see if in this next one, you can understand what the question is.
Somebody added direction maturity page.
You want to talk about that?
I mean, that's what it sounded like to me the first time I heard it.
Let me just, let me just play that again.
So you can just hear how kind of tricky that is to pick up at first glance.
So it's not really a glance, but at first, listen, here we go.
You want to talk about that?
I'm sorry, what? You want to talk about that?
If you haven't worked out already, he is saying, do you want to talk about that?
But essentially when it comes out of his mouth, it sounds like, do you want to talk about that?
I mean, really he was doing so well.
He was so clear and that he let us down in that little question there.
But if you found that difficult, go back and listen to it multiple times until you feel like you can hear the different sounds.
Let's look at the last clip.
See if you find this guy any easier.
That was just me just since you were offensive.
So I was adding the link there.
That's all folks have seen the updates there for the charts.
Just check it out. I mean, I didn't even understand the first part of that, to be honest.
I bet that sounds quite familiar.
And the thing is, it's not really your fault, because if you combine the fast speaking like he was saying there with the bad audio, because he's essentially using the mic on his laptop, it makes it really hard to understand and make out the words there.
And what's the takeaway from that?
Well, unfortunately, we can't control how your colleagues speak.
That would be great if we could have a slow down button or an off button, perhaps sometimes.
But you can at least give yourself the best shot to understand what's being said, and also be understood.
So I always recommend Good Mic, Good Headphones.
We're in the same boat here.
What can we take away from that?
Well, the thing is, you can't control how other people speak, but you can control how you speak.
Good Mic, Good Headphones, give yourself the best chance.
To wrap up then, some practical sentences that you can go away and try and implement.
Number one, I'm going to highlight is the imperative with the auxiliary.
Please do follow up with the team.
Number two, I'm going to pick, if you haven't already, please get in touch with the team.
I think the last one that you could take away is Fabian's sentence.
Maybe it's on my end, but I didn't get the email.
In the newsletter this week, I'm going to be putting in some more examples of the vocabulary that I talked about and some practical exercises that you can do to implement the vocabulary.
If you want to get the newsletter, go to the show notes and click the link to become a free member of the podcast.
All right, I will be back with you next week.
Thank you for squeezing me into your busy day and I will see you very soon.
Bye bye.
