This is the Business English Podcast, episode 322, how to iterate out loud in business English.
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Hey, Lindsay, how are you?
Good, Michelle. How's it going with you?
I'm good. I'm good.
Thanks. How often do you reflect on how you want to improve in business?
That's a good question.
I'm not sure that I have much of a formal channel to do that, but certainly when I go to conferences or I see what other people are doing, then I have a bit of a more informal thinking session with myself.
Also, just in general, all Ears English team, we come together a few times a year to self -reflect or talk about ways to improve.
That's the more formal ways we do it, but I think it's always something people are thinking about.
Right? Well, for sure.
We need to schedule one of them pretty soon, but yeah, it's good to have, if your company has a way for you to reflect on how you can get better because we can always get better at our craft, whatever it is that we're doing.
It's useful for presentations, reports, events, meetings, things like that.
How can we get better at all of these things?
Right? Yes, absolutely.
Today, we're going to give you the tools to talk about improvement.
This is useful for self -evaluation.
Could even be good for feedback, but it's about reflecting and thinking of ways to improve.
As Lindsey mentioned, it could be presentations, reports, whatever it is, but we're specifically going to be thinking about the context between the time of the first run of something and subsequent runs.
First time we did something, and now we're going to do it again.
Maybe it's this year we did the presentation, and then in three months, we have to do the next one.
Really, how can we improve on something concrete?
Yeah, and I think the thing people struggle with the most is time, because you do the presentation for the first time, and then you move on to, and then all of a sudden, here's presentation too.
Yeah. But if you take that delay, it's like intentionality.
How can we be more intentional in our professional lives?
Yeah, absolutely. Guys, remember to hit follow wherever you are listening to the Business English podcast.
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All right, so let's go into it, Michelle.
Let's go through, give our listeners some strategies, some sentence structures for how to talk about comparing what we did this time, what we might try next time.
Yeah? Okay, so the first thing you could do is you could say, this time we did X, next time we should Y, or next time we should do Y.
So for example, let's say we're talking about a presentation.
We could say, this time we started with a joke, next time we should open with the question.
Yes, and again, this does require having the space and the time to meet with your team and have this discussion, right?
Or what do you think about trying X next time?
So what do you think about trying a pie chart instead of the bar graph next time?
Right? And how do you think, what do you think?
I'm just asking you about that structure even though I'm about to use it.
No, but how do you feel about that structure?
What do you think about trying something like this time?
Yeah. Yeah, I think it's very open, but I like the what do you think structure because it's respecting the person's opinion.
It's showing that they have a voice and you want to hear what they think.
I think the key here is just writing things down and referring.
Like every time we build a course, we always do a period in which we say, how could we improve this course?
Next time we build a course, we're going to do X, Y, Z, but then sometimes we lose that document and then we never get, you know, it's a matter of having things in order and just really having a system once you go around the next time.
Right? Right. Exactly.
Okay. So there's other things though, still Michelle, that we could say, for example, we could build on X for next time.
Now build on, that's interesting.
Tell me about that one.
So building on, I mean, when you think about to build, right, to build on something would be basically to add to it.
Okay. This was good.
Let's make it stronger.
Let's do more of that.
Let's use that to flesh out other things, right?
That's another big phrase.
That's a bonus for today, right?
A bonus flush out to develop, to go into details, really add, add.
Well, like I said in the last episode, add meat on the bones, right?
That's kind of a visual way of saying you want to add details to something.
All right. Right. Right.
So exactly. So you could say, maybe we could try a different angle next time and focus more.
Oh, we don't know. Oops.
I just was reading the wrong one.
Wrong one. Yep. I'll do it.
I'll read this example.
So we could build on our visuals for next time and add some pictures from the last event.
Right? Yes. There we go.
Okay. So basically we're saying this was good and this is how we're going to add to it.
So it's not necessarily saying we shouldn't do this.
This is a more, we're adding to it.
We're taking what we already have and making it stronger.
Yes. Or the fourth option for listeners today, maybe we could try a different angle or direction next time.
Right? Yes. So you could say, maybe we could try a different angle next time and focus more on building trust with the consumer.
Yes. Yeah. And I think this comes back to really the idea that of like just fighting against our inclination to be perfect because there's just no way your first time doing something is going to be what you envision as perfect.
Everything is iterative.
Right? Right. Everything is just an iteration on the time before.
Right. Right. We always just have to be thinking of building on things and just to also, it's important to have that mindset to know that you should always be improving because otherwise you're just going to say, okay, that was great.
Let's just do it again and nothing's ever going to move.
I mean, even, even just within podcasting, I've had a lot of conversations with people kind of in a mentoring sort of capacity where they wanted to start a podcast and I could just see they were caught in like deer and headlights and perfectionism and years and years would go by where they were going
to launch their podcast.
They were going to launch it.
It wasn't ready yet.
It's so heartbreaking to me because we took the opposite approach.
We knew our show wasn't ready yet in 2014, but we just plugged in a microphone and we've iterated.
We've gotten better over time.
But if you don't put out that first piece of content, it doesn't have anything you have nothing to iterate on.
It's never going to be ready.
Right? So we'll just get started.
Yeah. That's a, that's definitely a good outlook.
I mean, Lindsay, what is out of, out of these?
So again, we did this time.
We did this next time.
We should do that. What do you think about trying some X next time?
We could build on X for next time, or maybe we could try a different angle or direction.
Is there one of those that you feel is your favorite?
I like what do you think about trying X next time?
It's, it feels like a good way to facilitate an open conversation, you know, just throwing out an idea.
It's not adding your opinion first.
It's really kind of a blank slate.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I agree.
I like that one. I also do like that idea of building on something.
So because I like the feeling of momentum, we're building from, like you said, this iteration to the next.
And just, I think that momentum is what makes people feel energized at work.
You know, you have to have that momentum behind what you're doing.
Okay. This is leading to something and like, I'm just, we're, we're going for it.
Right? Rather than Yes.
Yeah. Michelle, do you have a way at home for you or just in general to reflect or a forum for this on your own about what you want to do better, maybe at work or in life or anything?
Yeah. I think a lot of just my personal conversations, you know, especially with Dan, you know, I might reflect on things to him.
I don't necessarily have a completely formal way to do it other than when we have our, all our English meetings and things like that.
But I think I do it mentally a lot.
And then I think I might talk it through with Dan.
And even sometimes naturally things come up.
I mean, when you and I record, we might say, okay, well, we're going to change this for next time.
Okay. That episode, we're going to add this next time.
Yes. So like things are things sometimes happen in real time.
And so I think it's also important to realize that that's okay too.
It doesn't always need to be a special big meeting.
For sure. No, it's more like a mindset that I think the most important thing is the mindset to want to improve all the time.
Right. To always want to make it better.
How can we improve this, do that better?
A little tweaks that you can make in whatever you're creating in your professional life.
So right. I mean, I'm thinking, you know, for us, you know, we'll talk about maybe the topics or the explanations, how we plan, or even things like the technology.
I mean, we've made a few changes or, you know, again, it doesn't need to be a big thing.
I mean, we've, we made a couple changes with technology, how we record what systems we use.
And I actually think that some of the changes that we've made have just made recording much more efficient.
And so thinking about those, just how to make things more efficient, a little bit like work.
What do we say sometimes work?
Work smarter, not harder.
Exactly. Right. And so I think that those changes, like we, you can't underestimate the importance of those changes as well.
Yes, completely work smarter, not harder.
It's such a great way to live such a great motto for life.
There's the truth is often, if you look at people who are really successful, whatever that means, however you want to define says they're not always the ones working the hardest, right?
They're usually the ones working the smarter, smartest and often working a little less, but they're just doing the right things.
They're not overexerting and using everything they have.
They're just doing little things that make a big difference or the big things that make a big difference.
So let's go into the roleplay today.
Do it. All right. So here we did a team presentation at work.
Okay. So, so it went really well.
Of course, we can always improve.
Definitely. This time we took questions throughout.
Next time, I think we should ask them to hold questions until the end.
Oh, I agree. Fewer interruptions.
Also, what do you think about trying a different conference room next time?
Great idea. This felt a little squished.
Yeah. And maybe we could try a different angle next time regarding the data presentation.
You mean changing the perspective to the consumers?
Exactly. So we could build on our plan and how we will help them and even show some examples.
I like it. Great. Okay.
So this is a nice conversation we had, so we had just done given, I guess, a kind of a presentation, right?
Yeah. So I said, what did I say?
I said, this time we took questions throughout.
So I'm stating what we did this time.
And then I'm saying next time, I think we should ask them to hold questions until the end.
Okay. Yeah. And then I said, I agree.
And then I said, what do you think about trying a different conference room next time?
It's interesting how sometimes that can make all the difference, just a different atmosphere.
Can really make a difference.
You might not realize.
For sure. And then you said, yeah.
And maybe we could try a different angle next time regarding the data presentation.
Okay. So you're saying the way we're presenting the data to the audience, right?
Yep. And then I said, we could build on our plan and how we will help them and even show some examples.
So we're building on what we have.
Nice. I like it. I like it.
These, these are high level phrases, Michelle.
And also our little bonus for today, squished squished.
I'm squished. Yep. That one works for professionals and kids and teenagers.
We all say this word.
It's kind of fun. And it's one of those words that sounds like what it is like squished.
Right. I love it. Write that one down guys, Michelle, where else should our listeners go to get another episode, hot other episode of all of business English?
All right. So on episode three, 12, we did, let's start with some housekeeping, how to address logistics in English.
So, um, here, you know, you might have to have a big meeting where you're talking about housekeeping, but also you're talking about how to improve something.
So definitely a good one to listen to.
Um, Lindsay, what's the takeaway for today?
Well, I think definitely the idea of you'll never have perfection in the first time.
So you might as well just do the thing, do the presentation, launch the podcast, write the book.
Um, there's just no way to do this other than iterating.
Iterating is the key lesson for today.
And today we've given you the tools to talk about iterations.
That's all it is. Definitely.
All right. Well, I think we'll leave it at that, but, um, thanks for talking about this with me today and thanks guys for listening.
All right. Talk soon, Michelle.
Take care. Bye. Bye.
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