Hello there, how are you doing?
Let's continue our series, looking at the verb GET.
I'm going to take you through some more meanings and hopefully we can build your confidence with this absolutely essential Business English verb.
Let's crack on then shall we?
Welcome back to Confident Business English, you're here with me, your neuro language coach, Anna.
The next category we're going to have a look at with GET is about arriving or reaching a point.
I'm absolutely sure that you're familiar with this from a literal perspective, so this is a physical location.
What time do you get to the office?
I get to the office at 8am.
I need to get to the airport for my business trip.
So what time do you get to the office?
Now it's not just a literal physical location, but we also use GET to talk about reaching a point in a figurative sense.
And this is quite common in business.
For example, we're trying to get to the root cause of the issue.
It just means we're trying to arrive at the root cause.
There's another more colloquial way that people might say that, which is we're trying to get to the bottom of what happened, which means we're trying to arrive at the point where we understand exactly what happened.
We need to get to a point where, this is a very common set phrase, we need to get to a point where we can take advantage of more opportunities.
We're not literally arriving at a location, but we're figuratively describing getting to a certain point, reaching a stage, an understanding, or a position in a process.
I'm thinking about one of my clients who works in sales.
and if you're being strategic, you might want to say something like we need to get to a point where we are able to offer this type of service to our clients or perhaps we need to get to a point where this is no longer an issue.
Along the same lines of location, you might also hear it when people are complaining about not making progress.
We're really not getting anywhere, we're moving forward. We're not making progress and of course because it's an indefinite pronoun anywhere we're not going to use the to preposition after it.
To recap then, get can be used to talk about arriving at a physical or a figurative location.
Moving on to the next category and this is quite a chunky category with some different things I want to address here.
We're going to talk about changes because one way that get is used definitely in a business context is to talk about changes in different ways.
Let me start with the first one, which is a change in emotion.
Now this could be positive or negative.
And really all we're doing is we're swapping become for get, which is much more common and much more natural.
You might get really stressed.
If something happens and you've got a lot of work and you've got a deadline, which has a very short turnaround, you and your team might get really stressed.
You might get excited if there's a really interesting opportunity or job or a post or project, but you also might get angry.
And to tell you when you might get angry, this is a really typical situation, which is good to know how to describe.
If somebody goes over you, this is about when somebody CCs you into an email with your boss complaining about you.
So rather than addressing it with you directly, they go over you, that's annoying.
Now you might get angry at that, you might get a little bit annoyed, maybe not, maybe you just let it roll off your back, no problem.
But most people get a little bit annoyed with that, because it's like, why didn't you address it with me first?
You might get embarrassed if you make a mistake in a meeting in English, for example.
Sticking with changes can also be used as another way to say become when we're talking about things that are happening right now.
And this is when we're going to be using a lot of the present continuous with adjectives in their comparative form.
For example, a lot of people have told me that work in any type of construction or any area like that materials are getting more expensive.
You could also say materials are getting more and more expensive.
All the second example does is it suggests a more gradual.
Both of them are correct.
It just depends what you want to stress.
Another thing that my clients have told me is that transactions in general, in different contexts, are getting more complicated.
And if we wanted to show that increasing gradually over time, transactions are getting more and more complicated.
Client demands are getting more complex. They're becoming more complex. It's about changes and again more continuous, gradual change over time.
Client demands are getting more and more complex. Let's take a super short time out here because I just want to make a quick note on the difference between complex and complicated.
I want you to think about complex being about depth Whereas complicated is negative, it's messy, and it's confusing, complex doesn't carry necessarily that negative connotation.
Client demands can be complex, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're confusing.
Make sense? Continuing these sentences with changes, it doesn't just have to be very high -level things like materials are getting more and more expensive.
It could be day to day changes that are happening within your team and department.
Perhaps you could be giving some feedback to your boss and saying, it's getting more and more difficult to align with each other because we're all on different schedules.
It's getting harder and harder to keep on top of all of my work because I'm just having to take on so much. Looking at some positive examples now.
You know when you have a colleague and, let's just be honest, nobody really likes working with them.
And then they're like, oh, I'm leaving.
They hand in their resignation.
And everyone's like, oh, yeah, what a shame.
Secretly everyone's like, oh, just could you leave now.
And there's a collective sigh of relief when they leave. You could describe that by saying the atmosphere has got much better since John left. Or, the other way around, the atmosphere has actually got a lot worse since John left. And if you want to put the emphasis on it being a gradual change over time, you know what to do.
The atmosphere has got worse and worse since John has left. It also doesn't just need to be things in the past, because I've noticed I've done a lot of sense in the past there.
Imagine you're motivating your team who are working on a difficult project.
you could say look after this initial phase it will get easier or it will get easier and easier if you want to emphasize that it's continuous we just need to get through this part.
To recap then, another meaning of get is used with change.
Changes in emotion and also changes over time when we're using last but not least I want to do one more category today and this is where it gets a little bit more tricky.
This is when get is used about making people do different things.
This is so common in a business context which is where it's really important to understand and hopefully after this it might make you feel a bit more comfortable to use it.
The structure that you're going to is to get somebody to do something.
And probably you're likely to hear this in two very common ways.
First of all as a statement and secondly as a question.
Imagine you hear one of your colleagues saying something like, we really need to get the engineering team to implement the updates.
What they're saying is, we need to make the engineering team do this.
We need to get the IT team to update the system as soon as possible, to get somebody to do something.
Equally, if it's a question, your colleague might ask you, John, is it possible to get the team to approve the changes before the end of the week?
What they're asking you is, is it possible to make the team approve the changes before the end of the week?
Can you get John to send me the document ASAP?
Oh, by the way, would you mind getting Michael to chair the meeting?
You could also see that as would you mind asking Michael to chair the meeting.
This use of get then is about making people do things.
To finish, I'm going to recap from the beginning.
I'm going to ask you some questions and try to answer out loud or in your head, wherever you are.
What time do you get to the office?
Try and complete this sentence with something that you want to add.
The team needs to get to a point where Now talking about changes.
I get angry when, insert something that your team does.
Talking about changes more gradually over time, what in your industry or sector is getting more and more expensive or perhaps more and more difficult, or even more and more complicated.
Finally, talking about making people do things, I want you to think about your team or maybe it's not your direct team.
Maybe it's one of your clients or somebody that you're working with in a third party.
What do you need to get them to do this week, tomorrow, next month.
What do you need to get them to do?
Alright that's it for today then, so we walk through three key meanings of get.
In the next episode we'll have a look at three more and we'll do that step by step and build your confidence up little by little.
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Thank you so much as always for squeezing me into your very busy day.
I hope that you took away something there to feel more confident and I'll see you again next week.
Bye bye.