Hello and welcome back to another little snippet on confident business English.
In this one, I want to talk about how you can make your life easier with English communication, which should hopefully help you feel more confident.
As a story to start, since last year I've got really into cooking and one of my best recipes, which has excellent reviews, is a bolognese sauce.
Now, at the beginning, of course, it was a disaster.
I really didn't know how to make it and I had to have the recipe book right next to me all the time.
It took me quite a few iterations to get it right.
And of course it meant that the recipe book was really dirty and, you know, sometimes I miss things.
I didn't always get it right.
But after I'd followed it a few times, it was absolutely on autopilot.
And honestly, right now I could do it with my eyes closed.
Which is great because I don't need to stress about it.
You know when you're making a recipe and you don't really know all the steps.
It's kind of stressful.
But now, you know, I can play around with it a bit because I can maybe add something else in here.
Sometimes I put in white wine.
Sometimes I put in red wine, a little bit of Lee Perrin sauce.
It's never exactly the same every time I do it, but I know how to make the standard recipe and it still works.
This is a great way to think about certain things that I would really recommend that you learn on autopilot.
For example, if you have to introduce yourself on many occasions, if that's a typical interaction you have maybe it's visiting clients, maybe it's introducing yourself to people in the department I would absolutely recommend getting that short introduction on autopilot.
Secondly, I have a few clients at the moment who have to give a presentation about their organization.
And it's something they have to do in lots of different contexts.
It's a standard thing they have to do.
And what we have been working on is getting that to the state where it's autopilot.
Why?
Because it makes your life so much easier.
You don't have to think about it.
And instead of thinking about this thing that you have to do all the time, It's just okay.
Actually, I'm going to think about how am I going to manage this negotiation in English, which is a little bit more challenging and difficult?
So you put your energy in the right place.
Anything that you have to do many times, which is more or less the same.
I highly recommend getting that on autopilot.
A little bit like my recipe, right?
And then it doesn't have to be the same every time, but you know the standard structure.
So how do you do this?
First things first, of course, you need to come up with the wording.
That can take some time and you want to play around with it a little bit as well.
If it's a personal introduction, it doesn't have to be very long.
Equally, if it's a short presentation, You have to think about what exactly you want to say within that time and you'll change it and move things around.
And once you've more or less got your wording, then what I would recommend and this is what I said to my client as well was I gave them a prescription.
So I said, OK, like your doctor gives you cold medicine if you have a cold.
I said OK, your prescription is twice a day to practice out loud, once in the morning, once in the evening.
And in this specific case, I think their presentation was about three minutes.
So that's three minutes in the morning, three minutes in the afternoon, over two weeks.
It could be working days, Monday to Friday.
And after that, review.
And you'll see that just by doing that of course it's not anything revolutionary, but your flow will be better.
You will hesitate less.
And in which case you'll be more fluent.
It might not be the same every single time you do it, and that's absolutely fine.
You want to allow for a little bit of change here and there, but you're making your life so much easier and you're not reinventing the wheel every single time.
So pick something that you can learn on autopilot.
This is your English prescription.
Practice twice a day, once in the morning and once in the evening, and see how you get on over two weeks.
At that point, you can review.
You might want to change it.
And then, of course, you want to keep it fresh.
But if you're always practicing at work anyway, and then you've ticked something off your list.
I know I go on and on about getting the easy, basic things on autopilot, but it's absolutely true.
You're a busy person.
You've got lots of things in your plate.
So make your life easier.
A little bit like me making the bolognese sauce.
All right, then I hope that helped and I will see you next time.
Bye-bye.
