Do you need to speak to executives, handle sensitive negotiations or maybe even influence senior stakeholders?
If so, in this episode, I'll give you three small shifts that immediately make you sound more executive.
Let's crack on!
Hello and welcome back to Confident Business English.
My name is Anna.
I'm a neuro language coach and I work with senior managers just like you from all over the world.
If you already work well in English but you want to remove hesitations, change some subtle language habits that perhaps weaken your authority when you speak, you are in exactly the right place place.
Each of my episodes focuses on a single topic that really overall, are designed to help you build your confidence so that you can speak more, stop hiding and really feel like you're speaking at a level that reflects all of that lovely expertise that you have.
So, put simply, you want people to listen.
You don't want to feel ignored.
You don't want your point to get lost in loads of detail.
And you certainly don't want to sound really tentative when you actually want to sound strategic.
The really good news here is and this is what I tell my clients a lot is that sounding executive absolutely does not mean that you need to sound more complex.
And in fact, it's actually normally quite the opposite.
A lot of it is just about framing your message differently.
And you'll see that really a lot of this is not about the technical English side this time.
The stuff in this episode is nothing revolutionary from an English standpoint, but it will make a difference to how you come across.
Let's have a look at the first shift.
Lead with the key message.
This week I was actually working with a client who's in a huge transformation program which they're overseeing.
Really amazing piece of work, but tough.
There's a lot of challenges there.
They were practicing with me a presentation that they have to do to executives about the timelines.
They walk me through everything, the tasks, the dependencies, the risks.
All of that was great and I understood everything.
And I was like, okay, this is cool.
So what?
That is the question you can ask yourself to get the key message.
The key point in this case was actually that if one of the dependencies fails, if we don't get this right, it's going to delay the entire program.
That's why I recommend extending the timeline.
That was their message underneath it.
And I could hear it.
It was there, but I needed to extract it.
And it got lost in a lot of the detail.
And it's not that the detail is not important because it is.
But if he'd led with that at the beginning, that would have framed the conversation completely differently.
Lead with the key message.
And all that has to be is such a simple sentence in English, like the key message is.
That's it.
Of course, you need to think about what the key message is and the good question.
I like to ask myself a lot with that, and that's come from the First Minute book, which you know that I'm a fan of and if you don't, it's a book that I absolutely recommend reading if you have a lot of conversations in English on a daily basis.
I'll put the link in the description box.
The question is, so what?
Why does this matter?
Why should we care?
The key message is...
Moving on.
Second shift.
Become a recommender, not a thinker.
I have another client who works for a huge global organization and they have to have quite complex negotiation discussions with different companies that want to join their franchise.
We were role playing one of these situations last week and throughout the conversation it was clear and I was understanding what they were saying.
They said, I think you need to do this.
I think we should do that.
I think you have to review this.
The thing is, there's nothing wrong with that grammatically.
It's absolutely fine.
But strategically, and if we're talking about speaking in an executive way, it can weaken your position slightly.
Executive communication is focused on recommendation, not opinion.
Therefore, if you want to sound more executive, become a recommender.
Rather than saying something like I think you need to meet these quality standards, it could be.
My strong recommendation is that you try to align with these quality standards.
Again, nothing revolutionary.
My goodness, I'm sure that you could do that with your eyes closed.
My strong recommendation is I would highly recommend, I wouldn't recommend or I definitely wouldn't recommend whatever it is.
You're positioning yourself as an advisor, not just a participant giving their perspective.
A sentence that you could use with that then is just simply, my recommendation is.
Just before we move on.
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Thanks so much.
Back to the episode.
The last and final little shift.
I'm so sorry, but we're going to have to say goodbye to maybe.
I was working with a client this morning, actually.
And this is someone who really has done such a good job.
And it's really credit to their hard work and just consistent effort over a period of time.
They were in the past actually nervous about picking up the phone and having a conversation in English with a client.
And now they are navigating quite complex negotiations with a company from the United States.
So congratulations to you.
You know who you are.
I'm sure you might be listening to this.
Anyway, we're doing this exercise and there's one point of contention in there.
Well, actually, there were several, but we'll focus on this.
It was about the structure of the staffing.
Do the staff work fully from home or do they come to the office?
And in the exercise they said well, you know, maybe we could have a more flexible structure or maybe we could have people working from home.
That was fine.
And technically, there's nothing wrong with that.
But then, in the reflection, the first thing they said to me when I asked them how did you find the exercise?
They were like you know.
I just feel that I'm not being clear enough to say no, or I'm being too lenient.
I'm kind of saying yes, but actually I don't really mean yes.
I think this can often happen and I'm picking on maybe here, but maybe is just one of those words.
It feels safe.
It's like a little blanket.
Let's put it on.
It's like one of those nice little cushions.
It's a comfy pair of shoes.
Maybe we could, maybe we can, maybe it would be possible.
It softens our position and sometimes that's really, really useful.
But in negotiations or executive conversations, if you keep saying to me maybe maybe maybe maybe, I'm thinking, maybe you're a little bit uncertain.
Maybe I can push you a little bit more here, even when you are certain.
Therefore, one little switch shift, whatever you want to call it is to switch from using maybe to using want.
What I want to do here is nothing complicated, just a really clear intention.
I want to adopt a hybrid model.
I don't want to adopt a fully 100% remote working model.
Thanks very much.
Sign the contract and off we go.
Let's just do everything that I want.
Now, of course, what I'm not saying is that's guaranteeing that you're going to get the position that you want, but at least you're expressing it in a way which is clear.
Your intention is there.
And it almost, when you say it, it changes the way that you say it.
It's kind of hard to say it in a weaker tone like well, what I want to do is kind of forces you to lay it out there.
What I want to do is kind of almost even changes your whole body language when you say it.
So what next?
I want you to take away those three really simple sentences and see if you can practice them today tomorrow, this week.
Here's all three of them.
Write them down or take a note if you can.
If not, mentally bank them for later.
The key message is.
My recommendation is.
What I want to do is.
I really hope you found that useful today.
I know it's simple stuff, but in my experience, it works.
All of these episodes are about helping you build your confidence.
And I think that these sentences do work, these phrases and thinking about it like this because when you're in those high stakes or high pressure situations, or intimidating situations, you don't want to speak up.
If you can frame it like this, you know that you've got something valuable to say.
For example, everybody wants to know what the key message is.
You're doing the execs and everyone a favor.
They're like, oh, great.
That's refreshing for me to hear that, because all I hear all day is just people coming to me with problems, with long descriptions about everything.
If you can cut through that with a knife, Secondly, people want to hear your recommendations.
You're the expert.
You're the one providing guidance.
People want that guidance from you.
And finally, as a senior manager, perhaps with a team and group of people.
If you tell people your intentions clearly and directly, what I want to do is they're going to be grateful for that.
They want direction.
They want leadership from you.
So I hope that perhaps those phrases help you build the confidence to speak up a little bit and, you know, stand your ground there.
At the end of the day, you know what the key message is.
You know what your recommendations are.
You know what you want to do.
So tell them.
Speak up.
Say it.
All right, that's it.
We'll leave it there for today then.
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Thanks, as always, for choosing Confident Business English for your training and I will see you next time.
Take care.
Goodbye.
