Hello, how are you doing?
Do you hesitate a lot when you speak?
If so, this episode is for you.
I've come up with a list of the most common.
What's the difference between questions from my clients, to help you know the right option once and for all.
Let's crack on.
Welcome back to Confident Business English.
My name is Anna.
I'm a Neural Language Coach and this podcast is for you if you're a senior manager and you want to build your confidence speaking in English.
I really wanted to touch on avoiding hesitations today.
This was inspired by work I was doing with a client and they would just hesitate all the time, continuously throughout the conversation.
I remember we were doing an exercise and they were like, oh, is it this?
Oh, I don't know.
It might be a bit controversial, but actually during these moments I don't normally step in and help my clients with the answer.
Partly because It's real life.
No one in the middle of a meeting is coming to save you.
You're just going to have to deal with it.
You need to get used to that feeling of hesitating or getting into a dead end and figuring it out.
The best way to do that is just moving on and keeping going.
And that reminds me of my little trick that I tell my clients a lot, which is sumo.
This is a good thing to remember in that really awful moment when you realize you're like I don't really know where I'm going.
I don't know what to say.
I can't remember.
SUMO stands for shut up, move on.
Shut up, stop speaking and just move on to your next point.
If you haven't heard that before, you might find that a useful reminder too, if you ever find yourself in that situation.
So it is normal to hesitate, and you should certainly accept that it's going to happen at some points.
But we want to try and deal with it better by using things like the SUMO or, But also figuring out these little doubts and clarifying these things in your head where you're like is it this or is it this?
I'm sure you've got a few of those right in your head that you're like.
I just never know which one is the right one.
Let's start with the first one on the list.
I remember I was talking to a client and they work in the finance sector.
And they said, do you know, Anna, is it?
Is it duplicate our profits or double our profits?
What's the difference between the two?
This is a great question actually, because it's not necessarily obvious, because they're both about times two in some way.
The best way to think about this is duplicate is to make an exact copy.
And mostly in a business context.
You're going to hear this in a negative way, which is to repeat something we're doing identically.
This is a duplication of work.
Then if we take to double something, it means to increase it by twice the amount, right?
I guess you know that.
So the focus is on quantity.
Our profits doubled.
Our revenue doubled.
Oh, fantastic.
But also our costs have doubled.
Or we need to double the budget, which of course could be a good thing or a bad thing.
Does it sound funny if you mix them up?
A little bit.
If you said we're going to duplicate our profits, I would understand you perfectly, but it just does sound a little bit odd, because we just wouldn't use it in that context at all.
In summary, then double quantities money, usually in a business context, and duplicate pretty much to do with tasks and often negative connotation.
Moving on.
Anna, what's the difference between each and every?
I had a client who said should I say every, each year there's an audit, or every year there's an audit?
It's a really good one and the quick answer is they're both right.
You're just emphasising different things and sometimes one of them works and the other one doesn't.
Each, we're focusing on the individual things or people.
Individual is the key thing I want you to look back to there.
Every, we're emphasising frequency and or a regular pattern or the group as a whole.
If we take this example, I could say each year there is an audit, and what I'm emphasising is there's an audit in 2020 21 22, 23.
So I'm looking at each audit individually.
If I said every year we have an audit, well, that's fine.
I'm just putting the focus on the fact that it's a regular repeated pattern.
Another example, if we look at agenda items, I could say, let's go through each item on the agenda.
I'm putting the focus on the individual items.
Or if I wanted to talk about all the agenda items as a whole, I could say every item on the agenda is going to be 10 minutes, because I'm putting the focus on the items as a group, a whole, not individually.
Does it matter if you mix them up?
Not really.
I think everybody would be able to understand you, but that is the technical difference between the two.
Next, this one is one of the most common what's the difference between questions.
In the end and at the end.
What's the difference between the two?
I want to give a very high level distinction here.
In the end is focused on the outcome.
At the end is focused on location.
That could be physical or figurative.
In the end, outcome.
At the end, location.
In the end, we decided to go ahead with the project.
The outcome was we decided to go ahead with the project.
At the end of the year, there's an audit.
Location, end of the year.
It's not a literal time period.
It's figurative.
In the end, my boss decided I didn't need to go to the event.
That was the outcome. the end of the meeting, we do a recount.
That is a location in the time of the meeting.
Does it sound weird if you mix them up?
Oh, absolutely not.
It's completely understandable if you use one or the other, but that is the difference between the two.
Moving on, this one is a little bit trickier.
I had a client ask me, Anna, what's the difference between happy and glad?
Because I'm going to an event and and I'm meeting somebody there.
Should I say I'm glad with you being here?
Should I say, I'm happy with you being here?
Or maybe I'm pleased with you being here, which if you listen to the podcast you'll know.
That's kind of our professional happy emotion.
Well, unfortunately, I have to tell you, it's none of those options, but we'll go through it.
I'm going to tell you which option you could use in this situation.
First of all, let's make a distinction between glad and happy.
Both positive, yes, but slightly different.
I'm happy, I'm pleased is just a general positive emotion.
But if you're glad, you're relieved about the circumstances around a situation.
Now that relief doesn't have to be like a big deal, doesn't have to be a heavy relief.
It's just a slight nuance.
For example, I could say I'm really happy with the results of the company, which is just a general positive emotion.
I'm happy with the results.
I'm really pleased with the results.
But if I were to say I'm really glad we were able to reach the target this year, what I'm saying essentially is some relief that we're in the situation we're in.
I'm really glad we were able to do that.
If you were speaking to somebody at the event saying And prior to that they had said that they'd been very busy and they weren't sure if they were going to be able to make it or not.
And then finally you go to the event and they're there, you could say, I'm really glad you made it.
So it's a positive emotion.
But it's got that relief that oh, I'm really glad you're here, even though I know you're very busy.
A really important point to take note of here structurally is we don't use glad with a noun, for example, I'm glad with the results.
I'm glad with the performance.
That doesn't work.
We would say, I'm happy with the results.
I'm happy with the performance.
Coming back to then the original question, which is what should I say if I see somebody at an event?
Well, you could say different things.
You could say I'm really glad you made it, if you knew that it was a bit of a struggle for them to get there.
Or if there's none of that backstory and you just simply want to have a positive emotion and You could say it's great to see you.
To sum up them to be happy with something or to be pleased with something is just a general positive emotion.
And to be glad that something is a certain way, you're expressing some relief about the circumstances.
Next on my list, I work with somebody who is very much involved in a lot of tech projects.
And I noticed that they were saying this word a lot ad hoc.
And then they were like, well, what's the difference between ad hoc and one-off?
Is it the same thing?
If you work on projects, or if you work with clients and projects, or whatever.
This is definitely one to be aware of.
Both of these are adjectives, but ad hoc for me is something internal.
Like we need to do an ad hoc project.
It's like improvised.
There's an urgent need to do something quickly and inside the organization.
So we had to do a bit of an ad hoc project or an ad hoc report.
Quickly, internal.
It's certainly not something I would sell externally, like we're going to do an ad hoc project for the client.
Doesn't sound great because it sounds like improvised, which is why it's more used on an internal basis.
One-off, on the other hand, could be used internally or externally.
And it's a single instance of a task event or a project.
So you could do a one-off project for a client.
You could do a one-off analysis for them.
You could have a one-off meeting or a one-off training session.
So ad hoc, it's internal, it's improvised, and one-off is a single instance.
Could be used both internally and externally.
Does it matter if you mix them up?
Well know, not really nobody's going to die.
But just be aware that if you said we're going to do an ad hoc training session to your client, it doesn't sound great because it carries that nuance of being improvised.
So one-off would definitely be a better choice there if you're talking about something that's only going to happen once.
Does that make sense?
Let me wrap up then with one more.
We've I had a question last week.
What's the difference between argue and discuss?
Excellent question because this could definitely cause some confusion.
Tricky point as well because in some languages, the verb is actually the same.
High level.
Discuss is neutral.
We discuss something.
We have a conversation.
We talk about it.
It's just neutral.
Nothing happening.
If I'm arguing with you, well...
Hopefully that would never happen in a workplace, but sometimes it can be really tense.
A good way to remember it is argue anger, discuss day to day.
There's nothing special about it to discuss something.
It's just to talk about it in the workplace.
And be clear as well, also to discuss is at work.
Like I'm not going to discuss with my mum what we're going to do at the weekend.
Like we're going to talk about it.
So it's definitely something we have in the workplace.
However, if you do want to describe the situation where you're in a meeting, maybe with a client or some difficult colleagues that you have, I'm sure you can think of somebody and things get a little tense.
How would you describe that?
One of the best ways is to say, to have a heated discussion, or this one's a little bit tricky though.
You need to be careful.
Things got heated.
Now be careful when that you don't replace heat with hot in either of those two phrases, because that could lead to some raised eyebrows, like we had a hot discussion or things got a bit hot with the client.
Yes, maybe not.
So just be a bit careful there.
But heated is a way to describe that situation where we're not arguing, but it's tense.
All right, then that's it for today.
I hope that you enjoyed that.
I hope it clarified things for you to help you feel more confident to use the right option.
I'd really love you to come along, if you enjoyed that type of episode, to my live stream, which I'm going to be doing next Wednesday, on the 12th of November, half past seven Madrid time.
It's totally free to come along and it's a live stream.
So there's video and you can interact with me as well, which is something a little bit different than the podcast.
If you want to register for that, go to the link in the description box and get your place.
They are limited.
So be quick.
Don't worry about where you are, what you're doing.
It's cameras off, mics off.
So you just have to come along, tune in, no stress and get some extra learning.
So I hope to see you there.
And if you have any opportunities to speak up this week, just go for it.
Do it.
It won't be as bad as you think and start contributing more to the conversation.
All right.
See you again.
Same time, same place next week.
Bye-bye.
