You're in a meeting, you weren't expecting to speak and then your colleague says, what do you think?
In English we call this being put on the spot.
Today I'm going to help you feel more confident in this situation.
Let's crack on then.
Hello and welcome back to Confident Business English.
My name is Anna.
I'm a Neural Language Coach, and this podcast is for senior managers around the world that want to feel more confident communicating in English.
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So being put on the spot.
This is something that any senior manager dreads, but also one that you learn to expect.
Perhaps an executive throws a question at you, or somebody that you weren't anticipating suddenly decides that it's the moment to ask you what your opinion is in front of a huge room full of people.
This is absolutely something that you're going to come across.
And it's a problem that people say to me all the time.
I want to feel more confident speaking on the spot, improvising.
How can I do that?
First things first, our goal here, as I've said before, is to make your life as easy as possible.
This is not the moment where we're trying to make our lives more complicated, because you're already going to be feeling nervous.
When you hear your name being called and suddenly everybody's looking at you, the attention's on you, the last thing you want is something difficult.
What I'm going to share with you today is going to help make your life easy-er.
Maybe not easy, but at least easy-er.
Before we jump into that, I want to encourage you to frame this type of interaction in a different way.
A lot of my clients always feel like oh, I never really speak very well when I'm improvised and I'm on the spot and it never seems to plan out the way that I want it to.
Being put on the spot is a universally uncomfortable experience, even in your own language.
Have some compassion for yourself.
Just because you don't respond perfectly in an improvised situation doesn't mean you can't communicate in English.
Let me repeat that.
Just because you don't respond perfectly in an improvised situation does not mean you can't communicate in English.
In fact, on that note, I was just in a session yesterday with my client.
This is somebody who finds it very difficult to speak up in a large meeting where there's about 60 people.
And they say, you know, I always leave that meeting wishing that I'd said something.
Then they came into the session yesterday and they said, well, I said one thing. yesterday.
It wasn't a big thing.
It wasn't a huge phrase, but I said one thing.
One sentence is better than no sentence.
And it's better than that feeling afterwards when you leave and you're like oh, I should have said something.
Taking that mindset into the learning that we're going to do today.
What practical things can you actually do to help you in this situation?
Even if it's improvised.
I'm sure that you would like to come across as executive calm in control, clear.
And there are some practical things that you can do, and I'm going to share them with you now.
The first thing is you need to buy yourself some time before you speak.
One of the problems I see a lot is people rushing into the answer or they feel like they need to fill the space immediately.
Rather than doing that, which is going to increase the likelihood probably, that your answer could be a little bit more messy, you could firstly just hold the silence and Second classic just thank the person and make a comment.
Something like, thanks, John.
That's a really good question.
And, you know, just lengthen out those words a little bit.
That buys you about four seconds.
Your brain is working there in the background to come up with your answer.
You could also just paraphrase what they said.
Sorry, John, could you repeat that for me?
They repeat the question for you.
You already know what the question is though, but you just want to buy yourself a little bit of extra time.
Oh, OK.
Thank you, John.
That's a great question.
Well, in terms of the strategy next year and throughout that whole interaction, you bought yourself about 20 seconds.
These little things are going to help you to structure your answer more clearly.
I know it seems simple and straightforward.
It's like, oh, it's so obvious.
But remember, because you're speaking in English, you just need to give yourself a little bit more leeway.
Leeway is just another way to say flexibility.
Bit of a weird word, that one, actually.
But that's what it means.
So buy yourself some time.
Secondly, structure.
Structure is everything when you're improvising.
Forget about the vocabulary.
Forget about the phrases.
You're just going to have to see what comes up when you're speaking.
Structure is going to help give you a clear answer and help you stick to the point, which I know is another thing that you're really concerned about.
In fact, same client I spoke about earlier had a session with them and they were selling a project to their superiors.
I was listening to her case and I thought wow, she's got a really strong case, but it's a little bit messy and I'm finding it hard to follow.
If you asked me after the presentation what were the key points that she said, I would have had to think about it a little bit because she didn't signal to me exactly what they were.
Structure indeed is your best friend.
Here are some frameworks that you can use time and time again if you're ever put on the spot in a meeting.
The situation is as we said before.
You're discussing a topic and maybe your colleague gestures to you subtly, or maybe they directly call on you to make a comment.
Here are three two-step frameworks that you can learn, internalize and just use them again and again.
If you've been listening to this for a while, you know I like a three-step framework, but I've actually even shortened these to two-step because I think it's just easier to think about in the moment when you're stressed about oh my goodness, what on earth do I say?
The first framework is acknowledge, add.
Acknowledge, add.
To make your life even easier.
We're just going to use the same vocabulary, some set phrases within this.
For the acknowledge part, it's that's a or an plus adjective point about something.
For example, that's a good point about the timeline.
That's a fair point about the schedule.
That's a valid point about the budget.
Secondly then, the add section, and simply here we're going to use the same phrase to introduce this, which is from my side.
Let's put that together.
Then imagine that your team is discussing something about the project and they say John, what do you think?
You could say, well, that's a good point about the timeline.
From my side, I think that the main challenge will be resources.
Two sentences, done, acknowledge, add.
I'm going to read some more sentences with this structure and I'd like you to repeat them after me.
Let's start with the project management one.
That's a valid point about the timeline.
From my side, I think we need clearer milestones.
Let's do one for finance.
That's a relevant point about expenses.
From my side, forecasting accuracy is also critical.
Moving on to our second framework, then very easy to put this one into practice, but very important in a business context.
What's your point and what's the reasoning behind that?
For the first part, we're just going to say, I believe.
Let's make your life easier.
And for the second part, the connector to give the reason, I'd like you to use as.
You could also use because here, but as is just a little bit more of an elevated version.
Let's put that in context then.
Imagine that your team is talking about customer feedback and suddenly somebody says oh Maria, what's your thoughts on it?
You could say Well, I believe we should prioritize customer feedback, as it will really help us improve retention more than just new sales alone.
I'd like you to put these into practice now.
I'm going to give you a sentence and try as best you can to follow it.
It doesn't need to be exactly the same, but the key point is we're getting in, I believe.
Let's do one here for customer service.
I believe we should expand our customer support as it will enhance client satisfaction.
Let's do one for a strategy and growth.
I believe we need to focus on digital channels as they will drive growth more effectively.
Last one, let's go back to our project management world.
I believe we need to clarify responsibilities as this will speed up decision-making.
Point, reason, I believe, followed by as.
The last essential framework I'm going to share with you for these improvised situations is great for you as a senior manager, because often you have to zoom out and give people the big picture.
And this one is especially good for these type of questions that you might get from executives, for example, or your bosses or whoever.
These types of questions where it's like, OK, but where are we?
What direction are we going in?
What's our progress so far?
They're looking for an answer about the overall progress.
And these are definitely some unexpected questions that could be thrown your way.
What's the framework?
Two steps.
Big picture.
Detail.
Big picture.
Detail.
For the first part, we're just going to use overall.
A wonderful, beautiful way to start a sentence which actually, I think a lot of people don't use, but I absolutely love it.
Followed by a really simple but.
Overall but.
But.
It's true that, but normally implies a negative sentence.
But the way that I'm looking at it here is big picture and then you're highlighting something in detail that perhaps is not working well or perhaps it still needs to be addressed.
Let's imagine then that somebody in the group in the meeting says, so where are we then, Sarah?
Sarah.
And you could say well overall, our strategy is working really well, but the reporting process is still slowing us down a little bit.
I'd like you to practice again now.
As best you can, follow the sentence and repeat it out loud or in your head.
Or you could even write it down, actually, if you prefer doing that.
Not if you're driving, of course.
Let's do a project management one.
Overall, the project is on track, but the approval process is still creating some delays.
Then focusing on HR.
Overall, employee morale is really strong, but new hires need more onboarding support.
Finally, if we're going to talk about strategy overall, our expansion strategy is delivering really good results, but brand awareness in new markets is still a bit limited.
Now it's over to you to try to put this into action, and i think it's two things right.
I think it's about working on your mindset, and how you approach those situations is going to help you feel more confident, and then also using some structures like this will help you feel more calm.
That, okay.
If that happens, i've got a little bit of a plan that i can come back to.
A good tip is literally Face-to-face doesn't matter.
Online, you can do this the same.
I'm picking up my little post-it notes here, which I use a lot.
Just write the words on a post-it note acknowledge, add point reason, big picture detail and just put them somewhere that you can easily see them so that in the case that you are asked a question you're like okay, just look at the words and follow from there.
It doesn't even matter so much about the vocab.
As I said, structure is the key thing here that's going to help you come across really well.
But if you want to follow those vocabulary options that I gave you there, fantastic.
Again, nothing revolutionary in this episode, nothing that you can't do.
But it's about actually doing it in the moment, right?
That's the hard part.
Wonderful.
Well, that's you for today then.
Thank you so much for squeezing in this session with me.
And I really hope this helped build your confidence in this awful moment of being put on the spot.
If you take away a lot from the episode, I would really appreciate it if you could share it with a colleague, friend or family member who you think could also really benefit from the podcast.
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Have a great week, whatever you're doing, and i'll see you next time bye-bye.
