Hello, everybody.
I'm Maria.
And my name is Rory.
And we are the hosts of the IELTS Speaking for Success podcast, the podcast that aims to help you improve your speaking skills, as well as your listening skills along the way.
We started this podcast to give you a look at how a native, super-duper English speaker would answer some of the most common IELTS speaking questions.
We also go over the vocabulary and grammar for high school.
Rory?
A joke, a joke, Rory, come on.
Oh, I hope you're ready to work together on this.
Yay!
We're gonna be talking about teamwork today.
Dear listeners, the topic of teamwork.
You can have this in speaking part one and also in speaking part three.
So we'll start off with speaking part one questions.
Rory, do you like teamwork?
I suppose it depends on the nature of the team.
If you've got clear goals and good leadership, as well as the resources to accomplish your task then yes, I do like teamwork.
But if there is a lack of one of these things, then it can be very problematic.
When was the last time you worked with a team?
Actually, it was last weekend.
I was in a conference in Voronezh and one of the things we had to do was a question and answer session.
And it wasn't just individuals answering questions.
We had to work with the people next to us to come up with good answers to the questions the audience asked us.
Do you like to work or study with others or just by yourself?
I like to study by myself more.
When it comes to work, I don't have much choice.
I have to work with other people.
We work in a big team here.
When it comes to studying, I prefer myself because I just think it's hard to have a shared sense of dedication and vision to what you're doing that way.
What's the most important thing for teamwork?
I think I mentioned it already when I talked about goals and leadership and resources, but if I have to choose one of these things, I would definitely choose leadership.
I think it's the most important thing ever to have either one person or a group of people who are in charge and who can take control of the situation and make things work.
Rory, do you like being a leader?
Most of the time, yes.
But I think it's important to be careful of the toxic effects of leadership.
When you're constantly in control and making top level decisions, that can have a detrimental impact on your personality and it can maybe make you a little bit less tolerable to be around.
So yes, but I have to be careful about that.
Rory, could you tell the world, are you bossing people around?
I always think that's in the eye of the beholder, isn't it?
I think I'd try and be as fair as possible, but other people might have a different opinion.
I hope that if they felt like they were being bossed around, then they could tell me.
Do you think teamwork is important?
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
It's essential for society as a whole.
And then in teams.
It's also quite essential that people learn to live and work together towards common goals.
So, yeah, it's beyond important, actually.
Thank you very much for your answers.
Now we're going to move to speaking part three questions.
So usually in the exam, you have the speaking part two with the cards and the topic.
So we skip that.
Let's move to speaking part three questions about teamwork.
Rory, what are the advantages of working as a team?
I think if you could encapsulate it in one thing, it would be sharing.
So you share your resources and that means that you can accomplish things more effectively because you have more.
You share your time so people contribute what time they have and that builds up the amount of time that's available.
There's also some abstract things like shared expertise as well.
So you have different experts working on a problem, then you should be able to come up with a solution more effectively.
And that really helps counteract the disadvantages, I think.
Do you think companies should encourage a culturally diverse work environment?
I think that depends on the company.
I think there are some firms that benefit from having a homogenous culture, like security, for example.
So if you have people that need to communicate easily and effectively and communications breakdowns are not something that can be overcome quickly, then you need to be able to do this.
And cultural diversity is not such an important thing.
On the flip side, places could benefit from heterogeneous work culture.
So, for example, a school like ours, we have people from all over the world.
And if we're teaching English, that's actually quite important because...
It's not just people in Australia and England that speak English.
It's people from lots of different countries.
So it's kind of important for people to hear these different accents and different kinds of English.
So that can be quite beneficial.
So all in all, I feel like it depends on what the purpose of the company is.
Does teamwork always lead to higher productivity and project success?
If it's done well, then yes.
There's a term in business called the Pareto principle, which is like...
80% of the work is done by 20% of the people.
So if you have five people on a team, then one person is going to be doing most of the work for that team.
So in that sense, I think it might lead to higher productivity for that one individual.
But for the group as a whole I'm not so sure, because there are always some people who don't do so much work.
It's not complicated necessarily because they're lazy, it's just because maybe one person takes more control than other people.
But once you identify these 20 of people, then it's important to either leave them alone to work and produce this wealth of material, or support them as it's appropriate.
But that's just individuals.
That's not whole teams.
So you have to be careful about how it's set up, basically.
Thank you, Rory.
Dear listeners, you might have noticed that Rory's answers to speaking part one questions were much shorter than his answers to speaking part three, which is actually fine.
So in the exam your answers to the final speaking section could be much detailed and extended than your answers to speaking part one.
Rory, you've used gorgeous vocabulary and grammar for Band 9 school, as always.
So, when you talked about tasks and things, you said accomplish.
To accomplish your tasks or to accomplish things, what does it mean accomplish?
Well, if you accomplish something, you just succeed at this.
Although I think you can succeed at many different things, but usually accomplish and goals collocate together.
So this is more topic specific vocabulary.
Yeah, so I usually accomplish my goals or tasks.
Or objectives.
Objectives, right.
You said when you should come up with a solution.
So, come up with a solution is a nice phrasal verb.
It is, yeah.
It's similar to create, but you can create physical things and you can create abstract things like ideas.
So you usually come up with ideas, come up with solutions.
Yeah, come up with answers.
Yes.
So you'll notice that all of these things are things that don't exist in the real world.
They're all in your head, things that you say.
Yeah, come up with answers.
Yeah, when you create, when you imagine things, you can say make up, make it up, like imagine.
Exactly.
When we talked about working in a team.
So you can work in a team Or you can study by yourself, right?
Like, you say, I prefer studying by myself.
Or what else can you say?
Can you say, I prefer studying on my own?
Yes, I was going to say, studying on my own is also another one.
I think they're both quite good ones actually, because you still have to use prepositions in the correct place, and so that should be quite good.
You've mentioned a nice word, dedication.
What does it mean, dedication?
Dedication is like real focus on your task.
It's usually dedication to something.
So, for example, few people will be as dedicated or have as much dedication to your studies as you will.
Can you say that we are dedicated to this podcast?
Absolutely, yes.
We take important time out of our day to tell people about the importance of IELTS speaking.
Yes, we are dedicated to this podcast.
When you talked about being a leader, you said leadership right, like friendship, and leadership like in general right yes, so the what?
The situation of being a leader?
Well, the situation of being a leader, or just the concept of being a leader as well, this all comes under the umbrella of leadership.
Would you say leadership skills, for example?
Yeah, so there it would be part of a compound noun, I suppose.
And then you talked about some toxic effects of being a leader.
Toxic meaning like really negative.
Yeah, it's something that people say a lot now actually in different podcasts and videos on YouTube.
When they talk about toxic, it's like things that affect you negatively, that you need to distance yourself from.
Yeah, like poison.
You can say that negative effects of leadership or a detrimental like it could have a detrimental impact on people.
Absolutely.
Detrimental is a nice word.
It is.
It's very long.
Yeah, basically you can say, for example, smoking has a negative effect on your health or could have, or a detrimental effect on your health.
Is it okay to use this word in an essay, detrimental?
I think using the words detrimental would be much better than using the word toxic, for sure.
Toxic tends to be more informal, whereas detrimental is much more formal.
Yeah, and when you want to write something like a bad effect...
Like, write a detrimental effect.
Yeah, we want to see, like, more complex vocabulary.
Longer words, yeah.
Roy, you've used a nice one.
It's in the eye of the beholder.
So it's in the eye, like eye, part of your face, eye of the beholder, holder and beholder.
It's in the eye of the beholder.
Could you explain what's going on here?
So the basic meaning is it's connected to someone's personal opinion about the subject.
So if we look at art, it's in the eye of the beholder whether a picture is beautiful or not beautiful.
It's just what you think, what your opinion is about this kind of thing.
I've asked you a question about bossing people around.
So do you usually boss people around?
I don't think so.
But like I say, that's up to them to let me know if that's happening.
Yeah, but boss people around.
Is it positive or negative when you boss somebody around?
I think it's quite a negative thing because it's like you are controlling people, and it's not very nice to control people.
And you tell them what to do, you know, do this, do that.
Yeah.
Like, stop bossing me around.
It's also a phrasal verb, actually, to boss someone around.
So we have like come up with, boss people around.
When the examiner asks you what's important, you should come up with synonyms.
So you said essential.
Yes.
It's essential to, or what else can you say?
Well, it's beyond important was another one.
So even though you used the word important in your question, you could always just add something to it as well.
So you show that you're able to do different things with the language.
That's quite important.
Yeah, you're using the language flexibly.
Mm-hmm.
We talked about speaking part three questions and there was a question about advantages and you said on the flip side.
Flip side meaning what, advantages?
It's like saying on the other hand.
I think on the other hand is more formal than on the flip side, but it certainly in speaking it has the similar meaning.
Yeah, so on the flip side, basically like turning to disadvantages.
Yes, or turning to advantages if you were talking about disadvantages before.
You've said a nice word, shared expertise.
Expertise, like experience?
Yeah, you have experts, but the knowledge experts have in their head is called expertise.
Yeah, it's not expertise.
Expertise.
Yeah.
Homogeneous?
Homogenous?
What?
What did you say?
Yeah.
Homogenous?
You can say homogenous or homogeneous.
It doesn't matter because the meaning is the same.
Homogenous what?
Yeah.
If something is homogenous, then it's all the same.
So, for example, you could talk about if a company only has Russian people working for it, for example, then that's homogenous because everybody is from the same cultural background.
But if a company has people from different parts of the world, then it's heterogeneous.
It's got people from different parts of the world.
Oh, heterogeneous, what?
Heterogeneous.
Heterogeneous.
Heterogeneous.
All right.
Are you following this?
Or if you're American.
Homogeneous, heterogeneous.
Yes, band nine.
If you're American you could say heterogeneous, which is maybe a little bit easier to pronounce if you're Russian.
You mentioned the communication breakdowns, right?
So communication breakdowns, basically misunderstanding.
Yes.
When your communication breaks down and we can overcome communication breakdowns, meaning...
Well, you can solve them, although usually you overcome problems, and that's a much more specific thing.
You can solve different things.
You can solve mathematics equations, but you usually overcome problems.
Or difficulties.
Or difficulties, yeah.
The question, one of the questions was about cultural diversity.
So like and the diversity is a noun and the adjective is diverse.
Yeah.
So diverse work environment, right?
Or like cultural diversity, meaning what?
Like you have people from different cultures?
Yeah, well, different cultures or different parts of the world.
Talking about answering the last question, you said something like a principle with like 20%.
What's the name of the principle?
It's called the Pareto principle.
Pareto.
Yeah, most people call it the 80-20 rule.
But you don't have to be an expert in business to use this term.
And you don't have to feel like you have to use such explicitly specialist vocabulary.
I think you could just say sometimes people produce more work than others and people have an understanding.
No, but it's nice to use this fancy name, you know.
Pareto.
Pareto, yes.
Pareto principle.
So, you know, to just show it off.
Yeah.
Now you can listen to Rory's answers again and this time notice all the good words and grammar he's just used.
Rory, do you like teamwork?
I suppose it depends on the nature of the team.
If you've got clear goals and good leadership, as well as the resources to accomplish your task then yes, I do like teamwork.
But if there is a lack of one of these things, then it can be very problematic.
When was the last time you worked with a team?
Actually, it was last weekend.
I was in a conference in Voronezh and one of the things we had to do was a question and answer session.
And it wasn't just individuals answering questions.
We had to work with the people next to us to come up with good answers to the questions the audience asked us.
Do you like to work or study with others or just by yourself?
I like to study by myself more.
When it comes to work, I don't have much choice.
I have to work with other people.
We work in a big team here.
When it comes to studying, I prefer myself because I just think it's hard to have a shared sense of dedication and vision to what you're doing that way.
What's the most important thing for teamwork?
I think I mentioned it already when I talked about goals and leadership and resources.
But if I have to choose one of these things, I would definitely choose leadership.
I think it's the most important thing ever to have either one person or a group of people who are in charge and who can take control of the situation and make things work.
Rory, do you like being a leader?
Most of the time, yes.
But I think it's important to be careful of the toxic effects of leadership.
When you're constantly in control and making top level decisions, that can have a detrimental impact on your personality and it can maybe make you a little bit less tolerable to be around.
So yes, but I have to be careful about that.
Rory, could you tell the world, are you bossing people around?
I always think that's in the eye of the beholder, isn't it?
I think I'd try and be as fair as possible, but other people might have a different opinion.
I hope that if they felt like they were being bossed around, then they could tell me.
Do you think teamwork is important?
Oh yeah, absolutely.
It's essential for society as a whole.
And then in teams.
It's also quite essential that people learn to live and work together towards common goals.
So yeah, it's beyond important, actually.
Thank you very much for your answers.
Now we're going to move to speaking part three questions.
So usually in the exam you have the speaking part two with the cards and the topic.
So we skip that.
Let's move to speaking part three questions about teamwork.
Rory, what are the advantages of working as a team?
I think if you could encapsulate it in one thing, it would be sharing.
So you share your resources and that means that you can accomplish things more effectively because you have more.
You share your time so people contribute what time they have and that builds up the amount of time that's available.
There's also some abstract things like shared expertise as well.
So you have different experts working on a problem, then you should be able to come up with a solution more effectively.
And that really helps counteract the disadvantages, I think.
Do you think companies should encourage a culturally diverse work environment?
I think that depends on the company.
I think there are some firms that benefit from having a homogenous culture, like security, for example.
So if you have people that need to communicate easily and effectively and communications breakdowns are not something that can be overcome quickly, then you need to be able to do this.
And cultural diversity is not such an important thing.
On the flip side, places could benefit from heterogeneous work culture.
So, for example, a school like ours, we have people from all over the world.
And if we're teaching English, that's actually quite important, because It's not just people in Australia and England that speak English.
It's people from lots of different countries.
So it's kind of important for people to hear these different accents and different kinds of English.
So that can be quite beneficial.
So all in all, I feel like it depends on what the purpose of the company is.
Does teamwork always lead to higher productivity and project success?
If it's done well, then yes.
There's a term in business called the Pareto principle, which is like...
80% of the work is done by 20% of the people.
So if you have five people on a team, then one person is going to be doing most of the work for that team.
So in that sense, I think it might lead to higher productivity for that one individual.
But for the group as a whole I'm not so sure, because there are always some people who don't do so much work.
It's not difficult necessarily because they're lazy, it's just because maybe one person takes more control than other people.
But once you identify these 20 of people, then it's important to either leave them alone to work and produce this wealth of material, or support them as it's appropriate.
But that's just individuals.
That's not whole teams.
So you have to be careful about how it's set up, basically.
Thank you very much for listening.
We'll see you again next time.
But before then, don't forget to like, comment, subscribe, and of course, leave us a nice review.
We always like hearing your feedback and reading it.
Enjoy your life with or without IELTS.
Bye-bye.
But take IELTS.
