It's so important for you as a senior manager to be part of the conversation.
And I know that it makes you feel like an idiot if you don't follow everything.
So give me 10 minutes of your time.
I'm going to train you on some different phrases to help you build your confidence when you're at work.
Let's crack on.
Welcome back to Confident Business English.
My name is Anna.
I'm a neuro language coach.
I work with senior managers just like you from all over the world every single day.
And this is the podcast if you're a senior manager and your main objective is to feel more confident communicating in English,
It's really uncomfortable as a senior manager to not understand what people are saying.
You know that people are looking to you to lead the conversation, whether that's the people within your team, or maybe that's part of the executive board.
And if you miss something you might say something wrong and then you're worried that that's going to look bad or people are going to realize that you didn't understand.
It's not a nice feeling.
The objective of this episode then, is to train you on some real life business phrases that people use all the time, so that the next time that you hear them, you're like ah, I've got it.
You don't have that feeling of I'm out of it.
And if you have to ask a question or answer a question, you're going to know the answer, because you're going to know what they said and what they mean.
I have to give you a little bit of context as well, because the content on this episode really is hot off the press, because these are the exact phrases that I heard a senior manager having recently.
Well, I should say heard.
I'm going to say overheard, as this was a conversation that I heard in a coffee shop with a manager that was on their laptop having a meeting.
This was on a Monday morning a couple of weeks ago.
And Monday morning for me is a very special time because I leave a little gap in the morning to do some exercise.
And this is something I've been doing since November.
I've been going to a PT session, personal training session.
And then as a little treat, I go to my favorite coffee shop afterwards and I have a lovely coffee.
We have a phrase in English which is life is too short for bad coffee, which I absolutely agree with.
I have to say I'm a little bit of a coffee snob.
And this place has an amazing cup of coffee.
Anyway, I digress.
On this specific Monday, there was somebody sitting on a table not far from me on a work call.
They had their headphones in, so they didn't realize how loud they were speaking.
But I say no joke here.
They were projecting their entire work conversation to the whole coffee shop.
Now, you might think that I would be a little annoyed at this rather loud interruption.
But actually, I was like, this is perfect.
This is absolutely golden content for the podcast.
So I'm going to share with you some of the phrases that she used.
Break them down so that you know what they mean next time you hear them.
It starts off, she's talking to them and it sounds like she's having a bit of a whinge, a bit of a moan.
This is another way to say complain.
And I imagine so, right?
It's Monday morning.
I guess they're having a bit of a catch up.
They're getting everything settled before the start of the week.
And they're obviously talking about another employee, another person.
And she says this.
She does a good job, but she's not very hands on.
She does a good job, but she's not very hands on.
What does it mean by saying she's not very hands on?
Well, this one is pretty straightforward and it's probably what you imagine, if you haven't heard this phrase before.
It means somebody that's not very actively involved in the practical tasks.
If they're a manager, maybe that means they prefer delegating or they prefer staying at a strategic level and they're not really involved in the sort of physical manual work.
Now, of course, in most jobs, this means things like writing reports or doing admin or whatever.
But here's where it gets a little bit tricky, because people can complain that you're not hands-on, that you don't really do enough of the day-to-day stuff.
But then you can also be criticized for being too hands-on, meaning you're getting too involved in the day-to-day admin and you need to take a step back and be more strategic.
You need to be more hands-off, which is the opposite of hands-on, which is pretty helpful, right?
And then it can also be a compliment.
If somebody says you're very hands-on as a manager, that can also mean that you're really involved in what the team is doing, and it can also be a positive reflection on who you are as a leader.
So it really depends on the context.
So what would you say?
Are you quite hands-on in the way that you like to manage your team, or are you more hands-off?
Let people get on with it.
The conversation continues and she turns her attention directly to the other person on the call.
And now she's going into delegation mode.
And I can see here that she sounded a little bit annoyed.
And what she ended up saying was, look, I just need you to get on with it.
I just need you to get on with it.
This is where I was like oh, I think she's a manager, and what does it mean?
I just need you to get on with it.
Well, for me personally, when I heard that, I thought wow, that sounds quite direct, but then again I don't know anything about the context.
Maybe she's just really frustrated and this is somebody that's just been putting things off and she's like look, I just need you to get on with it.
We've got a deadline by Friday.
I need you to do it.
So what does it mean?
It just means continue the task without delay.
Stop putting it off.
Just get on with it.
This is a very British phrase.
And we say a lot of the time to our family and loved ones as well.
We're like, oh, just get on with it.
It's like, just do it.
It's quite a straightforward thing to say.
So you're probably going to hear it with people that you work with or know well at work.
Or maybe you'll hear somebody sort of complaining about it and saying you know, I don't understand why he doesn't just get on with it.
Not to be confused with to get on with someone, which is about having a good relationship or not.
You can get on with your boss or you cannot get on with your boss, which is about relationships, not about doing work.
After that, I remember I don't hear what the other person is saying.
Okay, that would have been golden, but I couldn't hear their reaction.
But I can only imagine.
Anyway, she continues by saying, I've just got so much on right now.
I've just got so much on right now.
What does it mean?
What's the nuance?
What is she trying to tell you?
It's just a way of saying I have a lot of tasks, commitments, responsibilities, all rolled into one.
To have a lot on is really focused on work.
That's the difference between to have a lot on and to have a lot on your plate.
You might have heard me talk about this before, but if you say I've got a lot on my plate right now, the nuance is that I've got a lot of things at work.
I've got a lot of things in my personal life.
There's just a lot in my life right now.
So just be careful with that one, because you want to make sure that you're getting across your state accurately.
Then she starts talking about some other problems that they seem to be having with another team.
And she says this, well, if it continues anymore, I will have to put my foot down.
If it continues anymore, I'll have to put my foot down.
I'll have to put my foot down.
What does it mean?
What's It means I need to be firm.
I need to put a boundary down.
And the origin of this phrase, if you think about it, when you're driving and you put your foot on the brake to stop it, and this is what this means, but just in the context of behaviour, I have to put my foot down.
I have to stop a type of behaviour that's going on.
Imagine if you're dealing with a difficult team or a group.
You might say, or you might hear your colleagues say I really think we need to put our foot down here.
We need to be firm.
We need to be assertive.
We need to set a boundary because this is not acceptable.
Then, as the conversation continues, she just said this really funny line.
Goodness, I hope she's not listening to this.
I'm sure she would remember anyway.
But she's English.
She would be listening to this.
And obviously her team members talking to her and she says something like yeah well, the thing is, you know, I do care, but I don't care.
It was just like, okay, all right then.
After that, the meeting was coming to a close.
Remember this meeting that the whole coffee shop was listening to, which great for me, fantastic.
I'm not sure about everybody else.
Somebody in the team had obviously requested to come to a meeting that she was going to.
And she says, sure, yeah, why not?
You can tag along.
Sure, why not?
You can tag along, T-A-G, and along.
It's a phrasal verb.
When I heard this, I thought I have to include this in the episode, because it's definitely something that you could hear that you're like what on earth is that?
When we say tag along in the context of meetings, it's like, sure, you can come along.
It just means to come, essentially.
You can join the activity or the meeting, even if you weren't originally part of it.
Because, I don't know, maybe it's going to be useful for you or...
Maybe you want to, or whatever.
The origin of that phrase actually comes from the word tag, which means to attach, which was originally used to talk about children following others, and later we extended it to other social and work contexts.
So sure, tag along, no worries, means sure, you can come, no worries.
Last but not least, she's wrapping up.
They're doing their recap.
And as one of her final sentences, she says, okay, well, that's great.
Let me know if you need me to jump on anything.
Let me know if you need me to jump on anything.
This one makes a little bit more sense, right?
What are you imagining she's saying here?
She's telling her colleague look, tell me.
If you need me to take action quickly or help you with something, I'll jump on it.
The origin of the phrase is pretty straightforward.
It's the idea of jumping on something, right?
You act immediately energetically, and jump is actually a verb that pops up in loads of different contexts, right?
I've just got to jump into another meeting, which means go quickly into another meeting.
Can I jump in here?
Which means, can I interrupt quickly?
Or imagine if you're a little bit short-staffed one day and one of your colleagues says no problem, I'll jump in and help and we can get this done together.
It means, I'll start helping immediately.
You can see this pattern here of quickly or immediately.
That's it then.
Let's do a quick run through.
To not be very hands-on means to not be very involved.
Just get on with it means just do it.
If your colleague says that they have a lot on at the moment, it just means they're overloaded with work specifically, not talking necessarily about their personal lives.
If somebody says look, we need to put our foot down, what they're saying is we need to draw a boundary, we need to set a limit here, because this behavior is not acceptable.
If you ask somebody if you can come to a meeting and they say sure you can tag along, it means yes, please come.
And if your boss says, look, Anna, just let me know if you need me to jump on anything.
What they're saying is just let me know if you need me to help you or take any action quickly with a task.
All right.
We're going to leave it there for today.
I really hope that you were able to take something away from that episode.
The goal is always to build your confidence.
So if you really want to internalize these phrases, you could go back, you could write them down, you could write example sentences, you could write your own dialogue or you could simply try and listen out for them.
See if you can hear them, maybe when you're in your work conversations this week and you can write a note of it when you do.
If you really enjoy the episodes as well.
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Thanks, as always, for squeezing in your business English training with me on Confident Business English.
And I will see you next time for the final full-length episode before Christmas.
All right.
See you same time, same place next week.
Bye-bye.
