As a senior manager working in English but lacking confidence, half the work is on your mindset.
It's not just about the technical side of things.
Today I want to cover some key points to let you know it's not just you and hopefully help you build your confidence.
Let's crack on.
Hello and welcome back to Confident Business English.
My name is Anna.
I'm a Neural Language Coach and I work with senior managers just like you from all over the world who have to use English on a daily basis but lack confidence.
Perhaps it's asking questions in meetings with executives.
Perhaps you have that moment to speak, but you just feel like you know what.
I'll just write an email.
If that's you, you are absolutely in the right place, and my job is hopefully to help you feel more confident with practical tips looking at the technical side of English, but also the mindset side of things, which is what we're going to have a look at today.
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All right, let's get on with it.
Confidence is built through action.
You need to do things.
You need to put yourself out there.
You need to ask the question when you don't want to.
You need to speak up even when there's other people in the room that you don't feel very comfortable with.
But in my view, it also needs to be supported by a solid foundation, which is your mindset.
It can feel like quite, I think, a lonely and isolating experience.
And I find this when I talk to clients and that was the inspiration for the episode series title, because it feels like it's just you.
Everybody else is smooth sailing.
They're all doing fine.
Nobody's got any problems.
However, I think it's really important to get these experiences and struggles out in the open so you can realise that it's not just you.
And I hope, by doing this, that you can feel a bit more at peace with these types of experiences and less critical of yourself, because you can recognise them as something that humans go through.
You are not a robot, not just yet, anyway.
I'll also share with you some practical steps to take if it is a specific problem for you.
First thing on my list.
Have you ever been to a lunch or a dinner?
And it sounds a little bit like this.
And the person sitting next to you is trying to talk to you, but you're like honestly, I literally have no idea what you're saying because it is so loud.
Background noise the enemy of any senior manager that's trying to speak to somebody over dinner or lunch and can't hear a word that they're saying.
This is an extremely common experience.
Just in case you didn't know and just in case you feel like I'm the only one that's getting lost here.
It happens to everybody.
It happens to me even when I'm speaking English with somebody and I can't hear people because of the background noise properly.
How do you confront this type of situation?
I think the first thing to do is try to not criticize yourself and to accept these type of situations are difficult.
The environment is literally working against you.
You've got a couple of options about what is in your control.
You could decide to just ride the wave.
I'll do the best that I can and see how it goes.
You could make a joke out of it like, oh, my goodness, it's so loud in here.
I can't hear anything.
Could you repeat that again?
You could suggest to move to a quieter area if you want to.
There are ways to deal with it.
But ultimately, it's a situation that a lot of people go through.
And what I don't want you to do is to internalize that and think that it's you that is the problem.
It's just it's a really difficult situation.
Next, I had a phone call with somebody from Poland, Łukasz, last week.
Shout out.
Anyway, we were on the call and I started speaking and he was like oh whoa whoa whoa whoa, hold on a second.
Where's the podcast voice?
This is not quite the same vibe.
So it's not just you.
If you feel like you listen to the podcast and you can understand me, but then when you're out in the real world, you're like oh, it just feels like a different language.
It feels like I'm not able to understand things.
There's a couple of things behind that.
Number one, of course, I'm recording a podcast, so I have to speak clearly.
I have to enunciate very well.
Otherwise, you wouldn't listen to the podcast because it would be very difficult to follow.
Also, if you've been listening for me for a while, you're a bit used to the way that I speak and it can take some time.
I remember I had a client that had an Irish colleague and she was just like oh, at the beginning it was a disaster.
And then little by little, you get to understand the quirks and the way that they speak.
Then also there are some difficult things that we do when we speak as native speakers that make life for you quite difficult.
So I'd like to just go over some of those things.
But I'd first like to just give you the high level point, which is you have to remember that English is about efficiency.
It's not the same as a language like Spanish, which is syllable timed and everything is equal weight, which makes it easy for me.
Thank you.
So it's great for me.
However, in English, we want to focus on the most important things.
That means that some words... come into the foreground and other things go into the background.
It's a stress timed language.
We don't put equal stress, equal weight, equal time on all the parts of a sentence.
What that means in reality is that when you're listening to somebody in the workplace, they don't talk like I need to speak to John.
Although that would be great.
If people could speak like that, it would be much clearer and it would be better for everybody.
However, what it ends up sounding like is something like this.
I need to talk to John.
I need to talk to John.
And you're like, I need to talk to John?
Sorry, what was that?
It's got quite a different feel.
Also, for example, if I was going to say, I work in research and development.
Lovely, clear, thank you.
But what it ends up being in reality is, I work in research and development.
I work in research and development.
Undevelopment.
It's not a clear crisp and we reduce it to what's called the schwa sound.
So it just ends up sounding like an research and development.
It's also the same with ah, right?
I need a pen, for example, becomes I need a pen.
I need a pen.
Another example could be with the word can, which in its reduced form sounds like can.
I can send it tomorrow.
Rather than I can send it tomorrow, which would be very helpful for everybody.
But unfortunately that's not the way it is when we're speaking in a very natural conversational way.
I can send it tomorrow.
In each of those examples, I was reducing the sound to a schwa sound.
And this is something, one of the things it's not the only thing that we do when we speak in a fast way.
Because again, English is about efficiency.
I don't care about the boring things like of, from.
I care about the important words, the interesting words.
Well, interesting, the content words.
Now you might be thinking okay great, but how is that going to help me, exactly when I'm in the middle of a meeting and I don't understand anything?
You're right.
It's not like you say.
Okay, we use the schwa sound here when we speak quickly, and now you know everything.
Of course not.
It's not a quick win.
It's more of a medium long win, which doesn't quite sound as sexy.
But if this is something that you have to do on a regular basis, if you have to communicate with native speakers often and in high stakes conversation, It can be a really good idea to understand some of the things that we do when we speak quickly.
I would start with something like the schwa sound, for example.
That's a really good starting point to open up then the conversation about, for example, connected speech.
It can really help you to understand what people are saying.
And it's kind of like the penny drops and you're like, okay.
Because I've always wondered why it didn't sound like can and it sounded like cun.
This is where these things start to make a little bit more sense.
And ultimately, of course, hopefully help you feel a little bit more confident.
We move on.
Finally, to wrap up, I wanted to share an experience from a client that thought was really relevant and you might like to hear it.
So you feel like and you realize it's not just you going through this.
First of all, they find it very difficult to ask questions in high stakes conversations and it's so funny because they're, like you know, in my own language it's it's not a problem at all.
It's like I'm the one that asks the most questions, yet when I switch into my own language, Something just comes over me and I feel so uncomfortable, even though when I've worked with them, the questions technically, are absolutely fine.
And it's such a shame and you might feel like this too that they're not getting their voice heard and out there and that they're visible in those types of conversations.
Because I'm sure you'll agree as a senior manager if you want to move up.
It's all about visibility and people hearing what you have to say and knowing who you are.
And they said something.
Really They were like I just feel like every time I'm going to ask a question I'm going to lose credibility.
And I thought that was so honest and I think important to share with you because you might feel like that too.
And I think it's important to say it like it is.
It's like we say, OK, you have a lack of confidence.
But at the end of the day, the reason why you're scared is because you feel like you're going to lose credibility with people, that your job actually could be at risk or your future career within the company could be at risk.
Even though it seems like such a small interaction, it's just a question.
It's not just a question, right?
Because all of that fear is baked into like.
Literally, the thing going through your head is if I ask this question, am I going to lose my job?
Potentially, right?
That's kind of the ultimate fear, isn't it?
So if you are in that stage, I think it's important to recognize, first of all, that people go through that and you may be going through that too.
Start small.
You'll remember Jolie.
If you remember her back from a couple of episodes ago, she had that beautiful phrase micro challenges.
Start to push yourself at that limit when you don't want to to ask a question or say something in that moment and work up from there.
Start really, really, really small and build up.
It will take time.
You need to be patient with yourself.
It's not going to be an instant switch overnight.
You're not suddenly going to be blasting questions to everybody.
But start now, don't wait.
Start now, get your voice heard, be out there, be visible.
The last thing they said as well this is more kind of a fun one.
They're like oh, you know, i'm just using chat gpt all the time.
They're like i'm just i'm putting it in these emails, i'm just saying translate, and they were like you know, i just feel like i'm losing connection with the language.
And she said what do you think?
And I was like, well, look, these things are a tool.
They can help you.
Let's face it, you're very busy.
There's sometimes when perhaps you don't have the time to craft a message or start from scratch.
But I think it is true that if you just do that copy paste send, it's very efficient, but you do lose a certain connection with the language.
So I think maybe a good thing and this is what we said was OK.
When I can, when I do have some time, I'll sit down and I'll do a rough draft.
OK, rough is like basic.
It's like just write it down.
Stop thinking so much.
Just write it out in English.
Do your first draft.
And then you could ask any chat GPT or whatever AI system to correct it.
Or you could just send it as is.
Have your best go and whatever.
And then sometimes when I'm just too busy, I'll just do the other thing.
Also, I would really recommend you to use frameworks from your emails.
This can save you a lot of time and it can make your emails a lot better.
The book that I recommend is Effective Emails by Chris Fenning.
It has a very practical framework.
I'll put the link in the description box.
It's not even my book, but I promote it because it's so good.
It will help save you time and stress when you have to write emails and hopefully perhaps reduce the reliance on things like chat, GPT and all the other ones.
I'm just picking on that, but all the other ones that you can use there as well.
So it's not just you.
If you feel like you're losing a bit of connection with the language, maybe think about how you could bring in a bit more writing back if you identify with that case all right that brings us to the end of this episode i hope you found it useful and interesting and it helps you to develop a healthier mindset around communicating in english and ultimately the reason for that as the name of the podcast suggests is to help you feel more confident or at least get on the way to building your confidence.
This is the downside of using your hands to talk.
I just always hit my hand on the table.
If you want to get even more of my tips that I don't share on the podcast and a summary of the key points each week, you can sign up to my newsletter.
Go to the link in the description box I send it every Friday.
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Lastly, thanks as always for tuning in to Confident Business English and getting your training here with me each week.
I will see you same time, same place next week.
Bye-bye.
