Are you ever working on a project with Teams from around the world and you have to follow up on tasks?
Silly question really because of course you are, but maybe you don't feel very confident about how to do this well in English.
I'm going to share with you all the phrases you need.
Let's crack on then shall we?
Hello and welcome back to Confident Business English.
You're here with me, Anna, your neuro -language coach.
Just before we dive into the content as well today, I just want to bring your attention to something that you might find really, really useful.
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Right then let's get straight to it.
What is the pain point that we're actually addressing here in English?
Well in a nutshell it's just asking people to do things.
Which has to be one of the most frequent things that you might have to do on a day to day basis as a senior manager.
This comes up time and time again with a lot of my clients as one of these little pain points which is why I wanted to share it with you.
In particular recently there was one client that had to do this a lot that found it challenging.
It was a client who was working on a tech project and they were the middle person in between the client and the software team based in the UK.
They have to be on top of all these tasks and they're constantly having to make sure that the work is done, liaise with the IT team there and their thoughts were like well Anna I don't know if I'm doing this correctly, am I using the right phrases, am I being rude, am I coming across badly.
These are some of the common concerns that I imagine might be going around in your head as well and it is important to get these things right.
You know what's going to die if you use the wrong phrase, people are going to understand you.
But the point is that as a senior manager, you want to build relationships, build connections, making sure that you don't annoy people unnecessarily and you choose the right vocab for the right situation.
Even though it seems like a small thing, it can make a difference to how your communication comes across overall.
I guess that leads us then to the next question, which is, how do you get people to do things?
that's a million dollar question in itself.
But if we're talking about the vocabulary specifically, you can either do it in two ways.
You can ask somebody a question, are confident business english classics?
Can you? Could you?
Would you mind? Would it be possible to?
Would you be able to?
If we want to add a little touch of politeness, we could say, Could I ask you to?
May I ask you to would be the most polite, but you can also throw in a statement.
It would be great if you could.
I would really appreciate it if you could.
I would be very grateful if you could.
You know us Brits, we like to lay it on a little bit thick.
I really need you to do something if we're trying to lay on a little bit of urgency.
So just keep that in mind as we go into this exercise two structures either a question or statement.
Oh and just a little side note a lot of people ask me about may you as a way to ask somebody to do something?
Not this time I'm afraid I would understand you but we don't actually use it so you can forget about it.
May I ask you to do something?
Yes. May you do something?
No. Let's move on and look at the four phrases that we're gonna use for different situations, and we're gonna go from least urgent to most urgent.
Here's the context then, and we're gonna bring this story throughout all of our different scenarios today.
You're working in your office, wherever you are, and you're working with your team in the UK.
Brenda, is your project contact in the UK?
And you need to speak to Brenda because you need to find out if there has been an update from the finance team.
You had been speaking with Simon about it last week, but you just want to find out if there's been any news.
It's not particularly urgent.
You just want to give them a little bit of a nudge.
A nudge is a great word and it just means like a small push, a gentle reminder.
Literally it's like tapping somebody with your elbow.
So Brenda and the team just need a little of a nudge and the phrase that we're going to use for this is to check in with someone.
Remember this is not super urgent this is like a soft follow -up.
Let me give you some examples with some different structures and I'm going to leave a little gap afterwards so that you can practice.
Brenda could you check in with Simon and find out if there's an update?
Brenda, could I ask you to check in with Simon and see if there's an update?
It would be great, Brenda, if you could check in with Simon about the update.
Also, a beautiful relaxed and polite deadline to give somebody in this situation would be when you get a chance or when you have a chance.
Brenda, when you have a chance, could you check in with Simon and see if there's an update?
All right, we move up to the next level, our classic, our essential follow -up.
Let's imagine this time, same project, you're going to be speaking with Brenda again, lucky you, however, this time, you're waiting for a response from Tim, in the IT team.
team. You need to know whether a certain feature can be changed or not, and you had a conversation with him last week but you haven't heard anything back from him, Tim's just one of those colleagues — I'm sure you can imagine someone in your head right now — where you're like, if I don't follow this up, I'm never going to get a response.
So, you're going to have to go through Brenda, that's the fact of the matter.
It's not super urgent, but it is important because the deadline for this phase is coming up and we need to know so that we can plan accordingly.
Here you've got a couple of really common structures, to follow up with somebody, to follow up on something without naming the person or the hybrid which is very popular and very common to follow up with someone on or about or regarding something.
Here are some examples, I'm going to leave a gap.
Repeat after me if you can...
Brenda, could you follow up on the feature change?
When you get a chance, would you mind following up with Tim?
Brenda, could I ask you to follow up with Tim about the feature changes?
It's just the deadline is coming up pretty soon.
I'd really appreciate it actually Brenda if you could follow up with Tim on the feature changes.
Now we're going to escalate up one level.
We're done with Simon bye -bye.
But we've got another issue on the table.
This time it's with Rachel in marketing.
She was supposed to send you a mock -up for a design by the end of last week.
It's now a few days past the deadline and you really need this because this task is dependent on other tasks in the project.
So you need to get Brenda to chase Rachel.
To chase, this is where we move into the land of a little bit more urgency.
It's interesting because in my experience a lot of professionals feel uncomfortable using this word.
Perhaps you don't want to come across too rude But this is absolutely the natural way that we would use if we want to apply a little bit of pressure We're gonna practice just to chase someone to chase someone for something and to chase somebody on something Here are some examples repeat after me Brenda can you chase Rachel, please?
Brenda, would you be able to chase Rachel for the design mock -up?
It's just it's three days overdue.
Brenda, I need you to chase Rachel on the design mock -up, if you don't mind.
it's just she was supposed to send it to me last week.
Last but not least, let's escalate even further and this is where the most urgent things and this is where we start pushing people, not literally of course, but figuratively.
We're back with Brenda, lucky us, but this time it's a much more pressing situation.
The project you're working on has had a few overruns which needed to be approved, You sent the business case to Michelle last week.
She's the project director, but you haven't heard anything back from her.
And honestly, you're freaking out a little bit because you need this decision.
Otherwise your team can't get on with the work and that's going to cause future delays.
So you really need to know if the budget was approved or not.
Here, we're going to practice to push somebody to do something and to push somebody for something.
Let's give Brenda a little bit of healthy pressure.
Poor Brenda. She's got a lot of things on her plate.
This week, here are the sentences.
See if you can repeat after me.
Brenda, could I ask you to push Michelle to give the approval as soon as possible?
I really need you to push Michelle for the approval as soon as possible.
Sorry to ask Brenda, but I would really appreciate if you could push Michelle to approve the budget as soon as possible.
You may notice that little touch there which was sorry to ask.
That's a lovely way to front a sentence where you're chasing somebody again and you could even say I'm sorry to ask again but could you push Michelle for a decision.
That is a round -up then of the key phrases you can use to follow up in different points of urgency and let's recap with the phrases side by side so you can really see the difference in terms of the tone.
We're just gonna use invoice as an example.
Brenda, when you get a chance, could you check in with John about the invoice?
Soft, nice, no worries.
Brenda, would you mind following up with John about the invoice?
It's just we were expecting it last week.
Okay, all right, turning up the pressure a little bit.
Brenda, can you chase John on the invoice?
It's just, we were expecting it last week.
John's definitely gonna be getting a passive -aggressive email.
and then finally Brenda I really need you to push on for the invoice as soon as possible so where to take it now you've listened to the phrases today and maybe actually you're already using them correctly and this is just confirmation and you can feel even more secure that yes I'm using them in the right situations if this is something you want to improve perhaps you could put the phrases on a post -it note near your screen near your computer you could use an app like Anki, to create a flashcard to review.
You can write out a sentence.
You can imagine yourself saying.
And the most important thing is to just get out there in the wild and start practicing, give it a whirl, in your next conversation or the next time you have to deal with this type of interaction.
I hope you found that episode useful and it gave you even just a little bit of a confidence boost.
I'll be putting the phrases I've talked about today in the newsletter and you can also get at the full transcript.
If you want to get your hands on that, sign up and become a member of Confident Business English.
The link is in the show notes.
Thank you as always for squeezing in this session in your busy day, whether that's in the morning or the evening.
It's been great to be with you and I look forward to continuing next week.
Bye bye.
