This is the Business English Podcast, episode 555.
Don't pull back in business conversations.
Welcome to the business english podcast.
From all ears english, get the english skills you need to achieve your dreams in global business for a presentation, a meeting or your office party.
This is real business english, with your favorite american hosts, Lindsay Ann Aubrey, coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA.
You can be technically correct in English and still not sound natural.
Maybe your sentences are grammatically right, but something feels stiff, a little robotic.
Not quite how a native speaker would say it.
That's nuance.
Fluency lives in collocations, phrasal verbs, and word choice, not just grammar rules.
If you keep using the same safe phrases, it may be time to stretch.
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Hey there, Aubrey.
How are you doing today?
I'm great.
I love that this is episode 555.
It's a fun number.
Feels like I should dial the number or something, right?
555.
That's my timing for boiling eggs in an instant pot.
It's 555.
Good Good to know.
Good to know.
Yeah, good stuff.
So it is 555 today.
Aubrey, do you ever find yourself pulling back in a conversation?
I mean, what does that mean, first of all?
That's a great phrase.
And yes, especially if something is controversial or heated.
Sometimes I'll pull back and just say, agree to disagree.
But this can happen at work, too, if there's a difference of opinion.
Not everybody agrees on, you know, the way forward.
Somebody might pull back and say, you know, let you take the reins.
Yeah, for sure.
We have to know when it's the right thing to do and when we shouldn't do it.
Right.
I mean, this phrase comes from an episode that Michelle and I recorded together.
What was that episode?
And you were teaching the phrase keeping tabs and a few others.
And Michelle said in that episode that this phrase feels like pulling back a little, which inspired us to teach this episode and some related phrases that we use a lot at work.
All right, so good.
I'm excited.
But first, we want to report back on our poll results from a previous episode.
We have a poll to report from Business English 527.
Are you right on time or running behind?
This is really good.
So Aubrey, what was our question?
Yeah, the question was in your culture do people typically arrive for a business meeting on time, early or late?
Okay, so this is interesting.
So 71% of you said on time, 14% said early and 14% said late.
So the whole world breaks down in different ways.
Right?
It's a really interesting I wish I could know where everyone who responded is from.
But yeah, I think globally that tracks sounds about right.
Yeah, for sure.
For sure.
All right.
So let's go into the meaning of this phrase and then we'll talk more.
I'll break.
So where do we start here?
Yeah.
So first we have this phrase pullback.
This is very idiomatic.
We're not physically talking about pulling something back.
It means to reduce involvement or effort or investment.
Yeah.
So the company decided to pull back on manufacturing after seeing declining sales.
You're sort of reducing either your effort or the emotion you're investing.
And it can be a very subtle thing too, right?
And not everyone may notice it, but you could know it's happening.
It's like your orientation to the thing changes slightly.
Exactly.
We talk about this in relationships too, that one person will pull back if maybe things are getting too serious and they're not ready, right?
We use this a lot, but we also use it a lot at work.
I know we've all been in that situation where, for whatever reason, we feel like we need to pull back a little bit, whether that's on how much time is invested or how much we're leading in a situation or on a team.
I love it.
And then step back, similar but different, right?
This is to temporarily reduce direct involvement.
So this is a little more literal, like literally it happens, right?
The CEO decided to step back from daily operations to focus on long-term planning.
Well, it's interesting though, because literal step back would be like taking an actual step backward right.
If it were literal, it's still pretty idiomatic, meaning to like reduce your involvement.
We'll say step back.
Step back.
Right.
We're not literally saying taking a physical step.
Right.
It's funny because I think of like, oh, this is literally stepping back, but actually it's not.
Bad use of literally.
Right.
Or sometimes I need to step back to see the bigger picture before making decisions.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And so this also doesn't mean physically stepping back.
Right.
No, right?
It's like the metaphorical stepping back to give yourself a chance to see the big picture, right?
Because sometimes we are kind of looking at the details and we're focused too much on the small picture, I guess you could say and missing what's really important.
And then ease off is also, you know, I've heard like ease off the gas in a car.
You could say that.
Right.
But we also use it to say to reduce like intensity or effort often gradually.
Right.
So, for example, after months of aggressive marketing, the company decided to ease off and focus on customer retention.
Or management eased off the strict deadlines to give employees more time to improve quality.
Yeah.
So often that's more of a gradual easing off, pulling back, but very similar meaning.
Yes.
And then dial back.
So these are all just slightly moving back away from something.
What does that one mean?
Yeah.
So again, reducing effort or maybe spending or intensity.
So yeah, for example, the startup dialed back its expansion plans after noticing slower revenue growth.
So this is an interesting phrasal verb that just kind of means backing off, pulling back.
Or they dialed back the advertising budget to save costs during the off-season.
Yeah.
So every quarter, companies make decisions on what they're going to go hard on and what they're going to pull back on.
And this just gives you a way to talk about it.
Yeah.
It's just interesting the collocations if you look at these examples, because we'll say we dial back a budget but we wouldn't say we ease off a budget or pull back a budget.
So it's really interesting the different things these are collocated with and how we use them.
Yeah, we have to learn that too.
So we learn in context, right?
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Okay, Aubrey, let's do a role play.
So here I'm a project manager and you are a marketing director.
So we're discussing our company's strategy because we've noticed a lower than expected engagement in a new campaign.
So the red flag is up and we're going to try to figure out what's going on here, right?
Awesome.
You want to start us out?
Yeah.
I think we need to pull back on our international ad spending.
The ROI in Europe isn't looking promising.
Agreed.
Maybe it's also time to step back and review our overall marketing strategy before committing more resources.
Yeah, and we can ease off the daily social media posts for the next month to give the team some breathing room.
They've been under a lot of pressure to hit engagement targets.
Good point.
I also think we should dial back our influencer partnerships until we have clearer data on what's actually driving conversions.
This sounds like a good plan to reduce risk without completely stopping the progress.
Yeah.
So these conversations are maybe conversations our listeners are involved in every day, right?
Absolutely.
Right.
Wherever you work, whatever the field, this happens a lot.
That often the solution is to pull back on something.
Yes, for sure.
So we started with deciding to pull back on international ad spending because maybe we didn't see the same ROI as we did domestically right,
Exactly, right?
So we'll often say pull back on spending, meaning to reduce spending.
It's just a phrasal verb that means the same thing, but it's a little more conversational.
Yeah.
What else, Aubrey?
And then I said, it's also time to step back and review our overall marketing strategy.
So this is sort of to open up our viewpoint to see the overall picture.
Yes, and then we said ease off.
I said yes, and we can ease off the daily social media posts for the next month.
I guess I'm essentially saying stop doing them, right?
Or at least reduce them.
Yeah, maybe reduce the number.
It's a little unclear.
If you said stop, Right.
Ease off, I don't think would mean stop to me.
If someone told me like let's ease off on the social media, I would assume reduce like oh, maybe we go from five to one or five to two.
Yeah, that's probably it.
That's probably it.
Love it.
And then what about dial back?
And I said, I also think we should dial back our influencer partnerships.
So it is true that it is a little unclear.
This could mean let's stop them entirely until we figure something out.
It could also mean let's reduce them or minimize the time we're spending on that.
All big business decisions here, right?
That we have to make decisions sometimes in the dark.
We're not sure if it's going to be the right choice, but we got to make that decision, right?
But I'm kind of glad you pointed that out, because a lot of these are vague enough that you might want to ask clarification questions.
If someone tells you to dial back or ease off, you might want to ask for specifics.
You know how much exactly should I be doing this?
Or, you know, it's probably not going to be that clear.
So bringing to them the current number of posts that you're doing per week and then saying how much should I reduce it by?
Right.
Really specific.
So they don't have to go and think and figure out how many posts are going live.
Right.
Give them the information, make it super easy and they can give you the answer.
Right.
Exactly.
Really interesting.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So we have a poll for today's episode too, Aubrey, don't we?
Yes, it is.
Do you find yourself pulling back in conversations at work?
Yes or no.
So this is a question I answered.
If things are controversial, I will pull back.
Right.
Just kind of be less passionate, a little bit less involved, especially at work, because I'm concerned about keeping business relationships strong.
Right, right.
Sometimes we have to do that.
We're negotiating between the relationships and the idea.
And that's very human, right?
If you're always only thinking about work or always only thinking about the relationships.
It's kind of weird, right?
Yeah, exactly.
For sure.
So yeah, definitely fill out this poll on Spotify.
We love seeing the results and we will report the results in a few weeks.
Nice.
And what is a, let's see, do we have any other episodes?
Let's see.
I lost track of where I was.
And that's the one where Michelle said that this phrase keeping tabs on something sounded like pulling back.
So if you're not following Aller's English, you're missing amazing vocabulary over there.
So be sure to follow both shows.
All right.
Great episode today, Aubrey.
And I'll see you back here very soon.
You take care.
All right.
See you next time.
Bye.
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