There's one word that I find myself using all the time that I hardly ever hear my clients use and that is the word definitely.
In my rather small, unscientific study with my clients, I found that literally most people just avoid this word and then I realised they told me is because it's a long word, the pronunciation's a little bit tricky so I just prefer not to even bother.
Makes perfect sense but I'd really like to train you on it today and how you can use it as a senior manager in a business context because it's definitely worth learning and we use it all the time and it can be a great addition to your vocabulary as a senior manager.
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Right then. Definitely, definitely, definitely, definitely.
The reason why this word doesn't pop up though is because a lot of people use for sure instead.
For sure it's a good idea.
Are you going to come to the office party?
Oh, for sure. For sure is super common and we do use it.
It's, I would say, slightly more American English than British English from my own experience of hearing other people talk but for sure is a little bit of a bad habit that sometimes we can slip into, myself included.
What I say to my clients a lot is definitely is a nice little advanced swap if you're using for sure all the time.
How can you use the word definitely?
Well, the first use I'm going to go through with you is that it's just a one word sentence.
Are you going to come to the work Christmas party?
Do you think it's a good idea?
Oh definitely. Do you think this could be promising?
What we're saying is with certainty, definitely gets across certainty there.
Do you think the opportunity looks promising?
Definitely. I think we could be on to something.
I think we could be on to something.
It's like I think we could be going down the right path, in the right direction.
There's some potential there.
All right, let's recap.
I'm going to ask you the questions, the examples I gave you before and you can answer with definitely, you can add a little bit afterwards, whatever you like.
The important thing is we're putting it into practice.
Are you going to be at the Christmas party this year?
Do you reckon it's a good idea?
Do you think the opportunity looks promising?
Let's move on and have a look at some other ways that you could add it into your vocabulary.
I think most of all the important thing here is to really try and get the flow of the word, the rhythm of the word, so that it feels comfortable when you're saying it.
If you find that you're tripping up on a particular syllable, you've just got to keep repeating that word until you iron out those hesitations.
Here we're going to use it mid -sentence.
I'm going to give you a couple of examples.
It comes up a lot in a business context when you're giving your opinion about something.
Imagine you want to get across to your executive board that you think something is really worthwhile.
They might ask you for your opinion, what do you think about this project?
And you can say, it's definitely worth it as far as I'm concerned.
If we compare that just to, it's worth it, definitely really adds that layer of certainty, conviction, which is really what you want to get across as a senior manager, right?
Perhaps your team comes to you with a suggestion.
They lay it out on the table.
And you're considering it and you're thinking, well, I'm not sure if it's going to work, but it's definitely worth a try.
It's definitely worth a try.
It's definitely worth the go.
Again, emphasizing the fact that you've got full confidence that it's worth at least trying.
Perhaps maybe you work in a sales team and you're discussing which events or conferences that you need to go to in order to speak to the right people and network.
You might say to your boss, I definitely need to go to this conference because all the right people are going to be in the room.
And what you're getting across is there's no question that attending the conference is necessary.
If you work with clients, they might ask you for something or suggest a piece of work.
And you could say, wow, we can definitely do that.
Yeah. You're emphasizing the certainty that you can do it.
You're reassuring them.
We can definitely do that.
It's not a problem at all.
It's well within the scope of the work that we're doing.
Let's practice those sentences then and I'm going to ask you a question and I want you to use definitely in your answer.
Do you think it's worth it?
Do you think we should try it?
Do you think we need to go to the conference?
Can you provide this part of the service?
Last but not least, I'd like to wrap up with a way to use definitely this time when you're actually giving a strong sense of caution about avoiding certain things.
Imagine you are doing a very complex project with a lot of moving parts and this is a really common way to describe it when we want to talk about something that's very complicated.
There's lots of different elements.
You might advise your board, your boss.
We definitely don't want to rush too much because that could cause us problems further down the line.
Imagine you're implementing change as I'm sure maybe you've been involved in some transformation or restructuring projects.
You're hesitant about causing too much change too quickly and you advise your team by saying, you know, we definitely don't want to rock the boat too much.
Let's just do this step by step.
I'm using definitely with a negative sentence to really reinforce that caution.
Or what about if your team is going through a difficult time?
Something's happened.
There's a problem, an issue, and nobody really knows what's happened.
People are blaming each other.
Everybody is getting a bit tense.
And you might want to reassure your team and say, we definitely shouldn't jump the gun just yet.
Let's find out what's happened because remember find out is discover.
Let's find out what's happened and then we can assess and see how we need to address this.
Jump the gun just means to act too quickly or prematurely before you have all the information.
I'm using definitely with a negative sentence to really reinforce that caution.
The last little mini comment I want to make is if you're finding the pronunciation difficult, you need to think about the stress because a lot of people say this definitely.
So I understand the word perfectly but it sounds weird because I'm like the stress is in the wrong place.
And this is what happens very commonly with advanced speakers is you've got all the elements but the stress is on the wrong part of the word and you're borrowing the stress from a similar word in your own language if that makes sense.
The stress for definitely is on the first syllable in English.
We definitely don't want to rock the boat.
We definitely shouldn't jump the gun.
Are you going to be coming to the Christmas party?
Definitely. Are you going to be listening to the next episode of Confident Business English?
Definitely. Let me wrap up then.
Definitely is a wonderful word that you can add into your vocabulary to help it sound more advanced.
As I said also in the introduction it can be a nice swap from using for sure all the time as well.
I hope you found that useful and with those practical elements as well you can go back and review them too.
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Thank you so much as always for squeezing me into your very busy day and I will see you again next week.
Bye bye. Thank you.
