All right, that's it.
I've had enough of people like you who speak English really, really well, but you have such a lack of confidence.
We're going to sit down together today and I want to help shift your perspective, even just a little bit.
Let's crack on.
Hello and welcome back to Confident Business English.
My name is Anna, and this podcast is for senior managers around the world, just like you, who want to feel more confident when you're speaking in English.
This episode is different, but it's also really important, because getting to a point where you feel more comfortable is as much about the technical side of things, but a big part of it is shifting your perspective about the way that you speak English.
I'm going to touch on a few topics, and these are all going to be real examples from people that I work with.
And I hope that by sharing this with you, you can relate to it, but also that perhaps it helps you see something in a different light.
Let's start off then.
And straight off the bat, I think it's really important to get this out of the way.
I think nearly every single person I've worked with thinks they speak worse than they actually do.
There's a lot of reasons for that, of course.
I think there's partly being humble, right?
And always wanting to improve and trying to move forward, which I think is a mindset that you absolutely share as well.
But at a certain point you have to sort of say well where's the line?
Where does that type of mindset help you and push you forward?
And where can it also hold you back?
One of the most common things I see and it makes sense, of course, because I'm going to work with people like you who are very interested in improving and getting better is just so crazy critical of everything that they do.
It's really funny because I'll work with people and at the beginning in the coaching process, you'll say okay, so what are your motivations?
What are your objectives, your goals and what are your challenges?
And they're like, oh, well, I can't do this.
I'm not fluent enough.
My pronunciation is bad.
I've got lots of problems with the structures.
I don't think I'm very clear.
I'm not very concise.
You know, it's just like a long list of things, of problems that they see, which is always really interesting for me, because then, as soon as I hear them speak, there's a total mismatch in what they're telling me their problems are compared to what they actually are.
Let me give you an example.
Yesterday I was listening to a presentation by a client about a project, a really interesting project.
And when I asked them at the end, how did you think you did in that exercise?
They were like, well...
I think it was a bit messy, right?
The structures and the tenses and they're worried about all of these different things.
And I was like, well, actually it wasn't messy at all.
I understood everything that you said.
You had a clear structure and you were moving between your different points.
So it wasn't messy.
Could you improve it?
Oh, absolutely.
There's definitely some different things that you could do.
Maybe you could add a little bit of vocabulary here.
Okay, there's a couple of verbs that didn't sound so natural.
But I mean, all the building blocks were there.
So it wasn't an accurate reflection of how they'd actually done it.
Then another example is a conversation I was having the other day where a tech professional who works 80 of the time in English so a lot, they're working with a lot of people around the world.
They had actually lost opportunities in the past because of their English and they said you know, I just have really bad English.
And it's like well, first of all, if you actually had bad English, you wouldn't actually be in your job, right?
Because you wouldn't be able to cope with that.
I'm not saying that you have perfect English, but you don't have bad English because...
Your job is proof that it isn't bad.
So let's just take that off the table straight away.
But also another thing and I say this to a lot of my clients is like You have the perspective of the way that you speak English and you have sort of a reference with your colleagues and you kind of benchmark yourself against everybody else and you're like yeah okay, I'm kind of in the middle or I'm towards the lower end, or I'm at the higher end, whatever.
But I've heard hundreds of people speaking in English.
And I was like, you are nowhere near the end of the scale that I would consider bad.
I don't even really like to use that term, but you know what I mean.
I've worked with people who are in really senior roles, directors, execs, in their 50s, for example.
And from one year to the next.
They've never spoken English before and never needed it for their career.
Company changes, new strategy.
Now they have to negotiate with suppliers in the US.
Now that's tough.
That is hard.
I just love you to move away from saying my English is bad because it's just not accurate.
It's not accurate.
What about I can communicate in English and I want to improve?
I can communicate in English and I want to improve.
Not, but I want to improve and I want to improve.
Okay, let's move on.
Another thing I see a lot of professionals like you beat themselves up about and criticize themselves about are essentially what I would call universal human experiences.
I was working with a sales director and they have to have lots of meetings with people from around the world like a lot.
But sometimes they have to have difficult conversations and it can be hard.
They were like you know.
I would absolutely love to just not feel nervous or intimidated when I walk into that room and speak to certain people.
And maybe you feel like this like there's just somebody in your team or like one exec or one director or one person that you just never feel comfortable speaking English with.
And essentially, it could be because maybe the stakes are really high.
It's a very important discussion.
Or maybe you have a dynamic with that person anyway.
Even taking language out of the equation, that makes it more difficult.
But I guess the thing I'm trying to get across here is okay, being intimidated when the stakes are high and also having difficult dynamics with certain people is a universal human experience.
There's no way that you can take that seriously. off the table.
And really, if you really had to ask yourself about it, is it the language that's the problem?
I'm not sure.
Maybe it could be.
But I think often, actually, there are other things at play.
And okay, you got nervous because it was a really important meeting.
I mean, welcome to the club of every other single senior manager out there. in the world.
It's normal.
You don't need to beat yourself up about it, right?
I mean, I would love to remove all difficult and intimidating people for you.
That would be great.
But unfortunately, that's a little bit beyond my control.
Another classic here in this universal human experience category is the conversation I was having with the tech professional the other day.
And they were like, well, you know.
If I prepare everything, you know, I feel much better.
But then you know, if I improvise it just gets kind of messy and you know it's not really as good.
And then I'm in front of the VP as well.
Again, regardless of the language, that's an uncomfortable situation.
Yes, English makes it a little bit more difficult, but it's uncomfortable because you're being put on the spot and you haven't prepped anything or thought about it.
Not necessarily because it's in English.
So again, universal human experience, of course, it's going to be better if you prepare it, right?
Normally, unless you over prepare and sit there for 100 hours.
Of course it's going to be better if you prepare.
It's like when I go to my public speaking meeting there's a bit in the session where there's improvised speeches.
And what that is, is they're like, okay, here's some topics.
The topic is bananas.
Anna, you have to stand up here and talk for one to two minutes about bananas.
Like literally, that's it.
And then you have to go up to the front and you have to talk about bananas for two minutes.
Of course, most of the time they're absolutely hideous and you don't know what to talk about and you're like, oh my goodness, this is awful.
I just want it to end.
Please hurry up.
I'm dying.
But the point of that exercise is to put yourself under pressure to try to think on the spot and And there's things that you can do to help.
There are things that you can do to help yourself in those situations.
But I mean, it's just a universal human experience.
Of course, it's going to be better if you prepare.
So stop beating yourself up if it wasn't fantastic or perfect and you're improvising.
Moving on to the last thing on my list, and when I ask people what are your challenges, as I said before, they're like oh, I don't do this, I'm not fluent at all, and fluency is just the number of words per minute.
So I'm like okay, so you want to increase your number of words per minute?
And they're like, oh, well, actually, no, because I don't want to speak any faster.
And then another person was like, well, I just don't have a very good flow.
And I'm like okay, so what's your definition of flow, which we figured out actually really was about structure.
They didn't think that they'd structured their points very well.
And the great thing about structure is that it's really easy to implement.
It's an easy fix.
It's a quick win.
So part of this process of coaching is also to challenge your views about some things like okay well, what actually is flow?
And you're saying you're not fluent enough.
Okay, but you're using about 150 words per minute, which is normally within the range that would be an adequate conversational range.
So what is it that you have the problem with?
Do you see what I'm saying?
And then I'm like, okay, so have you had any specific feedback from your colleagues about this?
And the majority of the time, you guessed it, all of them say, no, I haven't had any feedback.
It's just my perception.
Now, you could be right.
You might have the intuition that people are not following you, or maybe they give you a confused look, or maybe they don't ask you any questions and you're like I don't think people are always following me.
And you might be right.
But, and I see this often in some cases, it could be that...
There's not an issue, actually, and you're almost creating this issue.
In fact, I remember with one client they were like well, I just feel like I'm not getting through to my colleagues and I think they don't think I speak very well, after they just told me that they'd got good feedback about the presentation that they'd just done.
So it's also about reflecting that back to you and to say okay, you're getting good feedback about the presentations you're doing, but you're still saying that your English is a problem for your colleagues.
We'll talk about feedback in a second.
One way to think about it is if there really was a big problem, you would know about it.
It would be brought to your attention.
If there was a miscommunication where people were not understanding you and it was causing a problem, you're going to know about it.
You might get the odd time when people don't understand a word or whatever, or you mispronounce something or whatnot.
But if there really was a major issue, you would know.
You could ask for feedback from a trusted colleague.
I would recommend somebody who's a peer or somebody who's more senior than you.
Because if it's from your team and you might have a good relationship with your team where you can be very open and honest.
Just kind of the dynamics at play.
They might be uncomfortable giving you that feedback or to give a criticism, because you are their leader, their boss.
And let's be honest, some people just don't really like giving constructive criticism.
They just avoid it.
So everything's great, everything's good.
And that's why I'm saying before maybe you're like okay, but people give me good feedback, but I don't really trust them.
They're not really telling me the truth, right?
I'm sure that goes through your head sometimes.
I do have a couple of clients though, that have this situation, and their boss is like okay yeah, you know you're doing well, but it's not quite there yet.
Or yes, you're improving, but you're still not there at the moment.
And it's really frustrating because they're like, OK, what is it that I have to do to move forward?
And it's really surprising for me as well, because when I listen to them talk, I'm just thinking are we listening to the same person?
Because I don't see the major issues that this person is talking about.
Help them give you better feedback.
Ask them more specific questions rather than just how am I doing or how's my progress?
What specific things could I do better?
Could the structure be better?
Am I speaking too quickly?
Were there any words that weren't right?
Give them an inch and they can take that and run with it.
Rather than starting with a really open question, and they're like oh, I don't really know how to address this or bring this up because you're a senior member of staff.
Help them out a little bit to give you some constructive feedback.
Right, let me wrap up then.
The first thing that I want to just recap on is that most people overestimate their mistakes and corrections and underestimate their abilities.
Secondly, there are a lot of universal human experiences that you don't need to beat yourself up for.
And thirdly, getting feedback could be a really useful way to help you build your confidence.
And all of these things I'm talking about today are all about helping you build confidence over feedback.
The long term, right?
Because, as I said at the beginning, this process of building confidence is as much about the technical things as it is about developing a mindset which is going to help you deal with these types of difficult situations in communication better great well, that brings us to the end of the episode today, and I hope that you enjoyed that.
It was something different, but I really wanted to have that conversation with you And I'd love to hear about your experiences.
What resonated with you?
Do you have any other stories or any other experiences that I didn't mention, that you would like me to talk about?
You can write to me at info at confidentbusinessenglishcom, or you can come and find me on LinkedIn at Just search for me, Anna Connolly, you'll find my profile.
Thanks so much as always.
If you love the podcast, don't forget to sign up to the weekly newsletter.
The link is below and I will see you same time, same place next week.
Bye-bye.
