Welcome back to Confident Business English.
It's lovely to be back with you again.
And today, I actually want to touch on something that my clients tell me all the time.
As a senior manager like you, you already speak English, you can communicate, but you really lack a lot of confidence in your vocabulary and the things that you say.
You think you sound really repetitive and basic, and I think you feel a lot like you go around in circles and you don't make a lot of progress.
I don't think that necessarily anyone's told you that, but it just irritates you personally.
You're like, I think I can do better.
I don't think I'm speaking well enough.
And if you could use different words, it would really give you a confidence boost.
So that's exactly how we're going to kick off the start of this season of Confident Business English.
I'm going to give you an upgrade.
We're going to go from economy to business, and I'm going to show you some really core business phrases that are going to help you sound more advanced.
Let's crack on, shall we?
Welcome to Confident Business English.
My name is Anna. I am your host and neuro language coach.
On this podcast, I bring you to the point, practical communication tips to help you as a senior manager build your confidence.
If you love the podcast, I really recommend that you join the Confident Business English Club as a free member.
What you're going to get is the free newsletter every week.
You'll also get the transcripts for each episode, as well as access to bonus clips, worksheets, materials, the lot, and all of it's for free.
So absolutely worth it if you love the podcast episodes.
Let's dive straight in then.
We're not going to waste any time, no rest for the wicked.
If you want to sound more advanced, it means you've got to do something different.
You've got to learn new ways of saying the things that you always say.
The thing I always tell my clients is your brain is like a river.
It's always going to choose the easiest path, the words that it knows really well.
And you've got to force it to use new words and phrases.
I've cherry picked this list to share with you today, because I think they're so useful for you as a senior manager.
I think you're going to love them.
I think you're going to find them really useful and that you can start actually using them straight away.
Listening to this podcast is of course the first step to learning these phrases.
And what I'm going to do is I'm going to go through them using neural language techniques.
This is essentially doing things in a way which is going to help you learn more effectively.
And one of the ways that we do this is always starting with context.
And I like to say building a world around the word.
You've got to create this environment around this word or phrase to help you remember it, to help it stick, because that's what we're after, right?
We really want it to stick.
And ultimately you want to use it.
That's why you're here.
You want to use the word and that will help you feel more confident because remember building your confidence is what we're all about.
What we're going to start with is context.
Your brain needs context to help things stick.
Then I'm going to give you some examples, so you can see what it sounds like in context.
And then we're going to do an interactive exercise together where I'm going to give you a sentence and I want you to rephrase it out loud or in your head wherever you are using the vocabulary you've just learned.
Also, I know you won't feel confident to use this vocabulary unless you really understand it, right?
It's like, you're not going to go up there and use a new phrase in a really important business meeting.
If you're like 30 % confident, you need to feel near enough, 90, 95 % confident that this is a good phrase.
Otherwise, you're just not going to use it.
Let's start with the first phrase and let me give you some context for the situation.
You are super busy, right?
You have meetings all the time and you know it's like half past six on a Friday and your boss sends you a little message in Teams and they're like, can we just have a quick catch up?
And you're like, oh, listen, I'm just about to head off, so could we talk about it tomorrow?
By the way, head off just means leave.
The basic phrase then is could we talk about it tomorrow?
And the more advanced phrase would be, can we pick it up tomorrow or can we pick this up tomorrow?
It's very common to use it with it or this.
What does it mean? Well, it just means can we discuss this at a later date?
Imagine the conversation is like a ball, you drop the ball and then you pick it up and when you pick it up, you have the conversation again.
And the reason I wanted to include it on this list is I feel like this is just a phrase which we use all the time as native speakers, which I just don't hear enough senior managers use and it's such a common thing that happens at work.
Here are some examples.
Would you mind if we pick this up next week?
I'm actually really busy right now.
Could we pick this up later?
I'm just about to go into another meeting.
I need to head off now, so if you don't mind, can we pick this up on Monday morning?
Now you get the context and some examples.
What I want you to do is actually rephrase it.
So I'm going to give you a sentence without the phrase and I want you to put it in.
For example, do you mind if we talk about this tomorrow?
Do you mind if we pick this up tomorrow?
I'm heading off now.
Can we discuss this on Monday morning?
I'm heading off now.
Can we pick this up on Monday morning?
I don't have time right now, but let's discuss it early next week.
I don't have time right now, but let's pick it up early next week.
Great. Moving on, let's have a look at the next one.
Another situation I can imagine you might find yourself in is, your boss maybe needs information from you and your team because they're going to a board or committee meeting.
So they ask you to prepare something and you go away and you speak to your team and you say, guys, we need to prepare a report by the end of the week.
That's the basic phrase.
We need to prepare a report.
Okay. Yeah. You can do that already.
That's not a problem.
How could we make that more advanced?
We need to pull together a report by the end of the week.
To pull something together is a beautiful phrase in business English.
I absolutely love it.
You can also use it in a literal sense.
To pull something together would be like to pull two objects together, like the curtains, for example, you pull the curtains together.
And in a business context, imagine it's like you've got lots of information, different people have it, and you pull all that information together and put it in a report or a proposal or a document.
Those are some really common co -locations we use with that phrasal verb.
It is separable, so you can have the noun inside or you can have it outside of the phrasal verb.
Let me give you some examples.
Imagine you've got lots of statistics and figures everywhere.
You might say, why don't we pull together a document with all of the statistics just to make it easier and so everything's in one place.
Or maybe you are a salesperson and you are preparing a proposal and you might update your boss and say, I'm actually just in the process of pulling together a proposal that we can present to the client, but I'm going to need a few more days.
Let's move on and do the rephrasing then.
I'm going to give you a sentence with prepare.
You rephrase it with pull together.
Could you prepare a report with the team?
Could you pull together a report with the team?
Shall we prepare a document with all the statistics?
Shall we pull together a document with all of the statistics?
Would you mind preparing a proposal to share in the meeting tomorrow?
Would you mind pulling together a proposal to share in the meeting tomorrow?
Let's finish up with the third and final one today, which is another really common situation that I imagine you find yourself in.
You work with a lot of different people internally, maybe there are different teams and also maybe externally as well.
Imagine somebody asks you a question or they need your help for something and you're like, do you know what?
I'm not really sure if I'm the right person to help you.
It's not really within my responsibility or perhaps simply you just really don't have the time to help them because you're really busy trying to meet an important deadline or you've been asked to do something else by your boss.
Whatever it is, essentially then you want to direct them to another person.
And how would you do that now?
Well, you'd probably just say something like, I'm really busy, but could you talk to Colin about it?
Oh, Colin, that's new.
Where did John go? Oh my goodness.
Okay, change for season six.
John has been replaced with Colin.
So you can do that already.
So what's a more advanced way of saying it?
This is actually not within my remit, but would you mind taking it up with Colin?
By the way, remit is just another way to say responsibility.
Could you take it up with Colin?
To take it up with somebody else is a fancy way of saying, look, could you just go and ask somebody else about it?
You could even use a team rather than a specific person.
Imagine I come to you and ask you a question.
You might say, well, actually Anna, I think it would be best if you took this up with IT, because I'm not sure it actually fits within the responsibilities for our team.
Here we go then. I'm going to give you the sentence with talk about, and I want you to rephrase it with take it up with someone.
Would you mind talking to John about it?
Would you mind taking it up with John?
Can you speak to HR about it?
Can you take it up with HR?
I think you should probably speak to Sarah about it.
I think you should probably take it up with Sarah.
There we go then. Three basic to advanced business phrases that you can start practicing straight away.
And the reason I'm focusing on three here is I don't want to overwhelm you and give you 15 phrases to implement, because quite frankly, you're just not going to be able to do that.
So if we focus on just three and we start there, that's much more realistic and much more achievable.
What can you do now then?
You've listened to the episode.
The next step is to get the newsletter.
I'll give you some extra examples and tips in there.
Another thing I would recommend is using an application like Anki where you can create your own flashcards to practice some of the vocabulary from here, review it consistently over a couple of weeks and see how you're getting on.
And maybe you think, do you know what, I'm just going to try one.
I'm just going to practice one first of all.
Great, fine. I don't know, whatever it is that helps that information stick.
That's the thing that you have to focus on.
All right, that is a wrap on the first episode back for season six.
And I will see you next week again for another episode.
Thank you so much. Great to speak to you again.
Really, really happy to be back.
See you again soon.
Bye -bye.
