Welcome to the Effortless English Show with the world's number one English teacher, A .J.
Hogue, where A .J.'s more than 40 million students worldwide finally learn English once and for all without the boring textbooks, classrooms, and grammar drills.
Here's A .J. with a quick piece to help you learn to speak fluent English effortlessly.
English for managers and leaders.
As a manager, especially if you are a manager in some kind of department or business, that is international.
Very common, for example, to be a project manager in a company.
And as you manage different people on the team, you have to deal with people from all different countries.
There might be a, you know, a software developer in India, and there might be, you know, another writer or developer in, you know, Germany.
And you're constantly having to talk to people and manage people either on your own team, in your own company, or sometimes if you're working, your company is working with another company, which is also super common, right?
So, managing people, managing projects.
Managing projects is the same thing as managing people, right?
Because you're ultimately, finally, it's all about managing people.
So, you know, again, not surprising, a lot of managers, a lot of people in management, different kinds of management and leadership in business are, you know, effortless English members.
It's another one of the groups that we have a lot of people.
We've got a lot of doctors and nurses.
We've got a lot of engineers, a lot of professors and teachers, and we have a lot of people in management.
And this is why I'm not surprised by this one.
This is, it's very common.
Today, I'm going to talk about a little section of this book.
It's called The One Minute Manager Builds High Performing Teams.
And the writer's Ken Blanchard, and he has some other people who helped him with the, some other people helped him with the book too, but Ken Blanchard.
Now, these are really good books, by the way, for anybody who's a manager, but especially if you get, like, if you get promoted at your job, right?
Let's say you're just, you were just a normal worker in your company, and you do a good job, which is great, and you get a promotion, right?
You get more money, you get a better position, you become a manager, that's great, congratulations, that's fantastic.
But what's the problem?
Maybe you know nothing about management, right?
Like, you're really good at your job, the skill, but maybe you don't really know how, how can I be a leader?
How can I be a manager of other people on a team, right?
Like, this is a very common problem.
I had this problem in my career.
Before I was an English teacher, I was a social worker.
And, you know, I was good at social work.
So in my job, you know, as a counselor, I would, you know, do group counseling with, with, usually with kids, teenagers, and sometimes with adults, different jobs.
So I was pretty good at that, right?
And I was good enough, I got made into a manager.
So I got a position where I needed to manage a lot of, we had interns, right, kind of student workers we had in our, in our little company.
And so suddenly, like, I had to manage them, I had to tell them what to do, I had to, you know, help them if they were doing a not doing a good job, I'd say, you know, Oh, me, look, you know, you're doing this wrong.
And I had to figure out how to try to motivate them, how to correct them without discouraging them.
It was actually like a completely new skill for me.
And so I was, I was, I felt confident doing the normal job.
But I was not confident leading other people to do that job, right?
This is a very common problem.
And you'll see this, you'll see someone who's a really good software engineer, they're really good, they're really good at coding and software engineering, but then they get promoted to be a manager.
Now they have to manage a lot of other developers, a lot of other coders.
And oh, man, now it's completely different, you have to fit all these different personalities.
And some people are very motivated.
And some people are not.
And some people are confident.
Some people are not some people are new, some people have a lot of experience.
And some people don't like other people on the team.
And oh my god, you know, managing all that.
It's a completely different thing than just doing the engineering yourself.
In many ways, doing it yourself is much easier than managing other people.
Leading other people is tough.
Okay. It can be very tough.
So you know, the good news is you get you move up, which usually brings you more money.
Often, you know, more opportunities for your future career, these management and leadership positions.
The challenge, however, is that now you've got to learn a completely new skill of dealing with groups of people.
How do you lead them?
So I recommend this series of books.
In fact, I'm thinking of doing another one of these books as a book club.
The first book in this series is just called The One Minute Manager.
It's a it's a classic management book in the United States.
It's what I like about it is very, very, very simple.
Simple, but effective.
In fact, that book, not this one here, that I just showed you, but the original book, The One Minute Manager, it helped me a lot in that first job as a manager, as I had no idea what to do.
And so that book really taught me some the basics, the really basic skills of how to manage people.
And then, you know, later, I learned other things.
And, you know, if it's not just managers and companies, in many ways, being a teacher is also you're being a manager or leader, right?
You've got a classroom of 10, 20, 30, 40, sometimes more students.
Well, you've got it.
That's a leadership position.
That's it. Once again, you got to manage all these people and lead them, motivate them, inspire them.
All right, so let's just read one quote, because I really like this quote from the book.
The words leader and educator are synonymous.
The lead the words leader and educator are synonymous.
It means they mean the same.
They mean the same thing.
So he says, as a leader, you are a teacher.
Your primary job is to develop your people.
You can't depend on seminars or training sessions to do that.
Your job is to help all team members develop the skills and knowledge so they can become self directed.
And your job is also to provide an environment where they feel willing to risk to grow to take responsibility and to use their creativity.
All right, let's just that's enough.
So the two jobs of a manager, the primary jobs is number one is training your team, teaching them what they need to know.
Right? This might be very specific, teach especially newer team members who maybe they don't have much experience, you might actually have to train them in certain parts of the job.
Right? And he's saying you can't you can't just rely on classes, you can't just send them off the classes, they might go to classes, they might go to trainings.
But when they're on your team, and your company and your job, you know, your job is to train them and teach them anything they need to learn that they don't know, they're not good at, you've got to teach them.
Right? And motivate them.
And then the second thing is, the second job of a leader, a manager, is to create a strong positive environment, where everyone on the team, all the people under you, working for you, feel comfortable and confident to take risks, and to be creative, and to be responsible.
So creating a great environment for the whole team, and then teaching.
So he's saying these are the two main tasks of a manager.
So obviously, if you are a manager in any kind of international project, or company, or situation, you need to use English for this.
So this can be challenging, because you might kind of have a good idea how to communicate well, in your own language.
But how do you do it in English, right?
How do you inspire someone in English?
How do you motivate them in English?
How do you instruct them, teach them in English?
Now, the good news is, I'd say 80 % of it is nonverbal, is body language, and your voice tone, your confidence.
And as a leader, you know, you have to be confident, right?
You need the team members, you need your team members to trust you, to know that you are strong and decisive, right?
So you've got to be confident.
But you also need some warmth, I think, to be a good leader, right?
Because you also want them, again, to feel comfortable with you.
So if they have a problem, they are comfortable to come talk to you about it, right?
Because, you know, you've probably had bad managers and bosses, I had many in the past, right?
And you know, some of them are so mean, and they're so they're not warm, right?
So you like, Oh, man, you hate if you have a if you made a mistake, like you're afraid to tell them because they're gonna yell and go crazy, right?
Or if you don't know something, you're afraid to ask them because they're gonna act like you're stupid and be, again, the same problem.
And those are bad leaders, they're bad managers, right?
Because what happens in those situations is then everybody's afraid to make a mistake, everybody's afraid to ask for help.
Everybody just tries to avoid the boss.
And so the the performance of the whole team actually goes down, those teams really do not perform well, right?
So you've got to learn how to be encouraging.
So, you know, the good news for you is, you know, a lot of it is just is smiling, it's being warm, it's your attitude.
If someone makes a mistake, you can correct the mistake.
But don't scream and yell at them, or even just don't make them feel stupid.
Don't make them feel bad.
Say, okay, look, this was a mistake.
Say what the mistake was, explain why it was a mistake or why it was a problem.
And then show them the correct way to do it.
But no, there's no need to judge.
There's no need to judge, meaning like harshly, there's no need to criticize them.
Right? You say, okay, look, you did this.
But that was a mistake.
It causes this problem.
This is why you don't do it.
Do it this way instead.
So you got to do with like, no emotion, just really calm.
And then they'll feel relaxed.
So if they make a mistake, they're not going to be afraid.
And then you can also say, look, if you're not sure sometime, you can just come ask me and I'll help you out.
So then hopefully next time they'll ask you before they make the mistake, right?
And this is how they learn.
So you just say having that kind of calm confidence, calm, warm confidence.
And of course, you want to encourage and support.
So this is very important.
Now getting back to English specifically, how do you develop the English ability to do this?
You read a lot of books like this, and you listen to the audio books.
I recommend that you want to read, you know, for real world managers using English, your project managers, you want to, you know, avoid like academic language, okay?
You don't need to get an MBA, a master's in business from a school.
And you don't want to use that kind of language with people in the real business world when you're actually leading people, okay?
That doesn't inspire anyone.
It might confuse them.
You know, maybe their English is not as good as yours.
So even if your English is perfect, what if maybe someone on your team, their English is not so great, you know?
So you don't want to use a lot of big complicated words and speaking super fast, super quickly.
You know, you don't want to do all of that.
You want to use simple language, speak not super slowly, but speak, you know, calmly and very clearly.
As the leader, as the manager, it's your job to be understood.
And you need to be sure everyone's understanding you.
Some people on your team might have very high levels of English, great, some people might not.
But it doesn't matter.
For all levels, use simple language, use normal conversational language as much as possible.
Yes, on some jobs and some projects, you will need to use technical words sometimes, right?
If you're an engineer, you'll need to use some engineering words.
If you're a doctor or nurse, you'll need to use medical terms, of course, but use those only when you need to.
Everything else you say should be using the most simple, common English possible.
Use shorter sentences when you can.
Use direct simple sentences when you can.
And again, for managers and leaders, read books like this that are for normal people.
This is not for like, you know, this is not for someone who's getting a master's in business in university.
This is for like a someone who's in a job as a manager, giving them advice.
And it uses, you can see it uses very common language.
So there's a lot of there's several of these books in the series, the one minute manager series, they all use, you know, good common business language.
I would recommend read the books and get the audio books too, you can listen to them.
And this way, you'll build a useful business English vocabulary, right?
You'll build useful business English skills that you you can use on real projects with real people.
Okay, so you can talk to them.
Not like a professor, but like a real manager.
That's what you want to do.
Okay, very important, very important.
So, like I said, maybe we'll do a book club, I've decided.
I don't like the book, ultra learning.
I decided to stop it.
I already, you know, I skipped chapter one, because I thought there wasn't much in it.
We did chapter two.
Today, I was going to do chapter three, I read it again, and I just that there's not much in it, like, this book is kind of empty, there's really not that much in the book.
That's that's new or interesting information for me.
I mean, we are chapter two pretty much gave away all the information, which is, you know, high intensity, right?
Work, work, work, work, work really hard in a short period of time, which is obvious.
Seems to me it's pretty obvious.
There's nothing else in the book I find very interesting or like that much of a good idea.
So I've decided to cut that book.
Sorry, guys, but I'm really kind of a lot of nonfiction books, you know, and nowadays are really empty.
There's like a couple good ideas, and then that's it.
Like, so they they just fill up a whole book with a lot of stories and like, you know, distractions, but the actual real information is not much.
Right? Really, the information you could just put in one article, like, you know, a couple pages, and then everything else is just kind of nothing useful.
And that's kind of what I feel like that book is like, actually.
So I think we'll do the one minute manager instead.
It will switch because the one minute manager is so useful.
What I like about it, it's useful if you're a manager, or a leader, or if you want to be one someday.
So it's useful in business, but it's useful in really any jobs where you are working with other people, and especially if you have to manage them in some way, if you're like the leader of a team or something.
It's also useful outside of jobs, any leadership position, including parenting, especially older kids.
If you have kids, you know, as your kids get older, let's I am by older, I just mean like, maybe seven, eight, nine years old and up.
A lot of those ideas in the one minute manager book are useful for parents with kids like that.
Useful for teachers.
I mean, like, as I said, teachers and professors, you're a leader, you've got, you've got, you know, a bunch of students in your class, each of your classes.
So you're the leader of those students.
And again, like the one minute manager has some, just it's very simple, but really good.
So changing our book club, that's what we're going to do next.
All right, let's get to our questions and comments quickly.
And then I got to go.
Alex Salichev says, AJ, I'm glad you're back and your family are doing fine.
Have a nice day. Doing well, thank you very much.
I've been more active on Instagram lately.
Whoops, a little hot on the mic.
Sorry, guys. I have been more active on Instagram lately as I'm posting pictures of what I'm doing every day, which nothing too exciting.
But you can follow me on Instagram.
It's effortless English club, I think is my Instagram.
Say hi to me on Instagram if you want.
Khaled Khaled says, What time is it now?
I'm going to my work.
So it's seven in the morning.
I wish to hear what you say.
Maybe it's not a good time.
Well, you can watch the recording Khaled.
Here it is. It's kind of lunchtime.
Akon Albea, it's good to see you.
It says it's been several months since the last time I watched your live show.
My English ability has now grown up because of you.
Awesome. All right, reading my screen here.
Mariano Paredes says, Hi from Bolivia.
Nice to see you. Good to see you.
Shaber says, I listened to your book club Brave New World for a second time.
Yeah, that was a very good.
See, you know, the Brave New World is such a deep book.
There's so many deep ideas in that.
So that's a book where you can really talk.
You know, I can I can talk a lot about there's a lot of ideas to discuss in that book.
Same with animal farm.
But these are kind of classics, modern classics.
So they are quite deep, you know, ultra learning.
It's a nice idea. It's a good title, but ultimately, there wasn't much in it.
So I'm sorry about that.
Now, the One Minute Manager is a business classic in the United States at least.
It is a business classic.
It's I think it was written back in the 80s.
So again, a modern business classic.
Very simple, but very nice.
I mean, I'm good to see you as always as AJ, you're going to quit ultra learning.
So what will be the next book club?
It's called the One Minute Manager.
So it's just about managing and leading people.
Anybody who wants any kind of leadership, even parenting.
I think it's a good book.
The One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard.
Bruno Castro says it is 1215 after midnight in Brazil.
Yep. Got lots of time zones here.
All right, a couple more and then time to go.
Hi from the Mexican Caribbean.
Playa del Carmen says Paul Mujica.
That sounds great. That sounds nice.
Just I'm just imagining white beaches and blue water.
Hmm. Sounds great. Mehmeyong says, what is your opinion?
Do managers need some boundaries with their team?
Yeah, you know, it's a work setting.
So boundaries meaning like, you know, you don't want to, I mean, I don't know exactly what you mean, because that could have a lot of different meanings.
I'm not sure what you're talking about exactly.
But you know, the idea is, your role is as a manager or a leader.
So you just want to stay focused.
You're only a manager and leader at work, right?
In that situation, right?
For the job, right?
Not in life in general.
So in terms of boundaries for yourself, boundary means a limit.
Then yeah, you don't, you're not going to interfere with their life outside of work.
I think that's fair.
Nobody likes that. I'm sure.
I can't try to think if I had any bosses that tried to interfere with my life outside of work.
I don't think so. But I never really talked about my personal life at my job.
But anyway, yeah, you know, your job is to help them do the job for the team.
And that's it. I mean, it says funny shit asks, how is your jujitsu going?
Are your children practicing jujitsu?
Oh, man, you know, jujitsu is up and down, up and down.
I got my butt kicked, kicked by this young guy who was just a white belt.
Turbuddies of competitor, right?
This competition white belt visited our school.
And oh my god, he's so fast.
And he just, you know, kick my butt made me feel terrible.
Made me feel like I'm really bad at jujitsu, which I am pretty bad at jujitsu.
If to be totally honest, I'm not very good.
But whatever, I like it.
But then, you know, then I'll go back and I'll have a good day at in the class and you know, feel better.
So that's how it goes.
You know, the truth is, Clint Eastwood, there's a good quote from a movie from Clint Eastwood, he says, a man's got to know his limitations.
I think it's a dirty, hairy movie.
Right? Your limitations, your limits, we all have limits.
And this is part of being humble, right?
Learning real humility.
It means you recognize that you have some limits in your life for different reasons.
And you have to learn to accept them.
And sometimes it's hard to accept them.
It is because our egos are like, I don't like getting beaten.
I don't like it. I don't like going to jujitsu and having some guy beat me up, especially somebody who's, you know, supposedly, you know, is less experienced than me.
But still, you know, I have to recognize, look, I'm 55, I'm 55 years old.
And, you know, I'm slow.
And, you know, in fighting, I'm slow, I feel fine in normal life, he probably wouldn't notice.
But in terms of like a fighting situation, more like, you know, wrestling grappling.
Yeah, I'm really slow.
You know, I've got compared to the young guys, and I don't do well against guys who are fast.
And the truth is, I'm probably not going to get a lot better.
Like I'm hitting my limits.
I'm not going to be faster and better at age 60 than I am now.
Right? This is just the truth.
If I was 10 years old, if I was 15 years old, then maybe I could become this great jujitsu master.
I don't know, you know, I could train every day and my body could handle that.
And my schedule could handle it.
But I'm not. I'm 55 years old.
I have two young kids.
I have a business to run.
And it's just not going to happen.
I'm never going to be a master jujitsu.
But it's okay. Right.
So, but that's the ego part, you have to accept these things in life.
And there's, we all have these.
It's not just jujitsu, it's not just sports.
It's all different areas of life.
We try our best, but we all have limits.
Right. And it's, you know, it helps you in life to accept them.
It's real humility is when you just realize, okay, you know, yeah, I'll do I did my best.
And that's my best.
And I can't do better, at least right now.
It's a good life lesson.
There's another good book.
Yacon Albaye says I'm an executive president in my organization.
We're currently reading the seven habits of highly effective people.
Good book. I think that we did a book club about that didn't we?
I feel a bit unconfident leading my team.
What should I do? Great question.
Okay, so you're doing a kind of a book club with your team, doing a book that is very good for business, school leadership.
That's a great book.
So you're, but you're not feeling confident.
First of all, you know, you can be honest with them.
If there's something specific, you can say, you know, look, guys, I'm not, you know, honestly, you know, I'm not a, you know, great, I don't feel like I'm a great leader.
I don't have a lot of experience.
I'm not feeling really confident.
So if there's something I'm, you know, if you think I can do better, if you have some suggestions, please come and talk to me and I'd be happy to.
Second thing I recommend is with leading a team is to meet with each person individually, just them, and just talk about talk to them about what are their goals?
What problems are they having?
And do they have any requests or suggestions from you?
And then you can talk to them also about these things if you want to.
You know, this is, I don't know, this is a very relaxed kind of situation, just doing a book club.
But you could just, just meet with them and say, you know, hey, I just want to get to know you, just what are your goals?
You know, what, how are you enjoying the book so far?
Any, having any, are you having any problems with it?
Any suggestions you have about, you know, how I can help you more?
Just schedule. It could be 10 minutes, five minutes, but just try to go, go, go have a coffee with them or something.
And, but individually, because people sometimes will feel more comfortable when there is just a private meeting you and them than sharing in a big group.
And you could, again, like there might be some people in the group who are shy, they never talk during the, during your meetings.
So you, you know, one to one, you can talk and say, I noticed you're kind of quiet.
Do you feel comfortable talking with the group?
And they might say, Oh, no, not really.
I'm shy. So you could chat with them about that.
How can I help you with that?
Right? So again, you instead of like, I'm the leader, you, you communicate with them that I'm just here to help you.
I'm not the big boss.
I'm not the super expert.
I'm not better than you.
It's just my job is just try to help you be better, help you learn better, help you enjoy this process, make it better for everybody.
That's your job, right?
So that might help your confidence that you don't need to be above them.
You're there to serve them.
Okay, not to boss them around.
You're there to serve them.
You don't need to be better than them.
It's not necessary.
Okay, so try that. Shaper says yes, I agree.
Managers have to manage only at work and other times they must be just an average person.
Yes. Some managers feel themselves higher than others always.
Yeah, you know, people, this is truth, the truth, you know, that some people you give them a little power, right?
And management is a little bit of power, right?
You're kind of above other people, you're you're the leader.
And some people do very well in that situation.
Most people I think get kind of nervous and for the first time in that situation, which is totally normal.
But there are a few people who they like that little bit of power and they abuse it, right?
Makes them feel but obviously inside somewhere, they're not secure.
They they have this need to, you know, try to feel better by putting everyone else down.
And they will do it.
I've had those bosses in the past several times.
Several times I've had jobs like that in the past with those terrible bosses.
Probably a lot of you had and yeah, they are they are bad.
Don't be one of them.
But we can learn from the bad bosses so that if we ever become a boss ourselves or a leader, we don't become like them.
So that's kind of I look at it just it was a good experience to learn what not to do and how terrible it is.
Because you could keep you know, a lot of people we spend a lot of time at work.
This is the same with teachers.
I've had some terrible teachers like that, right?
And then oh, you're in there every day.
You don't want to go to the class.
I don't want to go.
Right. It's the same thing.
Fernando Diaz says, What do you think about this idea?
Managers are not always good leaders, but leaders must be good managers.
So this is playing with these two words.
And what is the difference?
Right. And it's not always clear what is the difference between these two words manager leader, manager leader, like it's kind of vague in English.
It's not it's not super clear.
And in different companies, different organizations, different situations, manager leader, I get they're kind of used as really as the same thing.
And in other situations, they're quite they're seen as very different.
Okay, so that's why it's confusing.
And like this statement can be confusing because it depends what you're talking about.
Okay. In general, you could think of like a manager is focused on the every day tasks like make to get things done.
And the leaders are focused more on the the big strategy.
In general, if you want to use a military example, it would be the managers are like the sergeants.
Right. Day to day, the sergeants are the ones dealing with you know, most of the soldiers, telling them what to do, you know, punishing them when they do bad stuff, right, directing them constantly, all these everything that they're the managers, and then the leaders would be the officers, right, of different levels,
who are more figuring out the plan, okay, we're going to move over here and attack this position and do this, right?
That that would be leaders, it's kind of the higher level strategy.
So in terms of this quote, managers, not always good leaders, but leaders must be good managers.
No, I would say it's completely the opposite.
I would say I disagree with that completely.
I would say the exact opposite.
Managers must be good leaders, but leaders are not always good managers.
Meaning like a lot of leaders are not very good at dealing with all the little small every day tasks, right, all the little details, they're not good at focusing on the details and making sure everything little thing got done.
A lot of leaders are not good at that.
Some are, some are like, you know, focused on little details and some are not.
But uh, but all managers have to be good at leadership because they're dealing with people every single day.
So I'd say it's the opposite, in my opinion.
Afita says I bought the power English course, give a quick explanation of how to start, download the video lessons, that's the power vocab, watch them every day, and also download the first unit, the audio unit, and listen to that every day too.
And then you're going to list so that's that'll give you about an hour to an hour and a half of listening every day, probably about an hour and a half.
And you want to listen, do that on day one, on day two, listen to the same lessons.
On day three, repeat the same lessons again, you want to repeat all of those at least seven days, that's the minimum.
Ten days or more is better.
When you finish your on day ten, you listen to all these, you've repeated the all those lessons again and again and again, and then the first unit, download, unit number two, do the same thing.
That's it, so simple.
You can use the text, if you don't understand something, you're listening, you're not, you're not catching words, you're not sure, you can read along as you do it, you can even use a dictionary to look up words, new words that you don't know.
I have, there's a vocabulary lesson so I try to explain them, but but still you can use the text anytime you don't understand something.
So that's how you use the power English course, that's how you use any of my courses, same idea.
Okay, last one, second mirror life.
Hey, good to see you, says I am from India, I've been listening to you for the last three years, I've seen many teachers, but I have not seen one like you.
The way you teach is awesome.
Thank you very much.
All right, well that's it, you know English for Managers was our topic today and connected to this topic, I'm just going to announce our next book club is The One Minute Manager.
We're going to read that book, it should be quick, it's pretty short and simple, it's good, I think you'll like it.
All right then, well as always go to effortlessenglishclub .com, effortlessenglishclub .com, put it on the screen, where is it?
Let's add it. There it is, effortlessenglishclub .com and if you go to effortlessenglishclub .com and you enter your email, you can get my book, my whole book is now free.
The entire book is free, you can get the whole book for free, just enter your email on my web page, on the website, effortlessenglishclub .com.
Lots of love to you and I'll see you next time.
