This is the Business English Podcast, episode 39.
Just ask for success. Welcome to the Business English podcast from All Ears English.
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Hey, Aubrey, how you doing today? Hi, I'm great.
How are you, Lindsay? Good. I am feeling good.
Let me ask you a quick question. Are you ready?
Okay. Yeah. Okay. Are you good at asking for help or asking for things that you want?
Or do you just kind of wait for them to come to you?
What's your personality? Oh man, I'm the worst at this.
When I need help, if I need support, I'm so bad at just trying to dig in and do it myself.
I keep saying, no, I can do this. I don't need, I feel like maybe it shows a little bit of like weakness if I admit I need help.
And I realize this is a fault because sometimes it ends up with really terrible consequences and I'll look back and realize I should have just admitted I needed a little support.
Right. Like, for example, you finish the project and you realize you haven't done it right or you didn't know how to do it.
So there's a lot of mistakes, things like that.
Right. Totally. You couldn't get it done in time because I bit off more than I can chew.
This is a really fun idiom for just like you've taken more responsibility than you really could accomplish.
Yes. Assuming, no, I can do this. And then you just don't do a very good job at it or don't get it done in time.
Yeah, it comes from a good place. You know, we want to do well, we want to achieve, but sometimes we just have to admit that we can't know everything or we just need help sometimes.
Yeah, that's such a strength. That's such an important quality.
I really respect it in other people. They don't let their pride get in the way and they recognize I could use some support.
I'm going to do a better job if I have more minds or more hands on this and be willing to say so.
Yeah. And I think also I just read a book recently called Who Not How by Dan Sullivan.
And it's really about as you get to the higher, higher levels of business, you have to not try to figure everything out.
You have to go and find out who knows how to do this already and what can you learn from them or how can they help you do it or just do it for you.
Oh, for sure. Right. Because your time becomes very valuable.
You have to realize what you are very good at, what your time should be spent on.
And then a lot of these other things that might take you longer than someone else, those should be delegated to the person who's best for the task.
Totally. But it's not always easy. I think our education system maybe teaches us that we should just dig in and learn everything.
And take responsibility for everything. But it's not true.
Well, it's funny. I was talking to Jessica about this, another one of our team members here, about group projects at college or high school.
And sometimes you would get assigned to a group where you're the only one you trust to do a good job.
So you end up doing everything. And that's the problem, right?
It's teaching us to do that in the business world, only trust ourselves and then you get stuck.
Yeah. Yeah, that's not good. That's not good.
So we need to kind of unlearn that. So today's episode, guys, is all about the importance of asking for help or asking for what you want in the world in both your business life and also just in your life in general with your friends, your family, whatever it is.
So let's talk about it today, Aubrey. Yeah, exactly.
Right. So first of all, we want you to realize like you shouldn't be assuming that you can't have everything you want.
Right. I think a lot of people get stuck in this mindset of sort of categorizing things and saying that's out of my reach.
Yes, I want to do that, but that's not possible.
Instead, we can adjust our outlook and realize that if we ask or if we get help from others, a lot of those things actually are possible for us.
Yeah. And that's true, too, when it comes to negotiations.
Like if you're about to sign a contract, you're selling something, let's say, and you think that what you're selling is worth this amount of money, but it just feels, oh, my gosh, it feels like such a big amount of money.
Right. You know, you will find out whether it's worth that or not based on how the person responds.
Right. But if you don't put it out there, you'll never know.
Exactly. And then when you are good at negotiating, right, everything is negotiable.
Nothing is set in stone. So you sort of have a back and forth to figure out, you know, what is this worth as far as what can be paid?
What is the value? We have to kind of figure that out sometimes.
Yeah, I love it. So guys, we're going to give you right now three examples of things that could be asked for, especially in the business world.
And then we have a quick role play to show you how to ask for something.
Right, Aubrey? Yes, exactly. Right. You want to make sure that whatever you're asking for is reasonable.
The support is possible that it's available.
It's fair. Maybe not too bold, but you know, you can be bold.
You might be surprised what is possible.
The very worst thing that can happen is you get a no and you're where you were started anyway.
Yeah, exactly. But I agree. Like we want to get a sense of how is this going to land with the other person for sure.
Yeah. So we're going to have to have our radar up and read the room a bit.
And is this reasonable to ask for? That makes total sense.
So the first example is asking a colleague to help you a little bit with your English.
Ask them to read your email before you send it.
I think a lot of our students, our listeners are working in English, maybe sending that email in English with all that grammar in there.
And we might be worried that we're making some mistakes, but we feel afraid to ask for help.
Yeah, for sure. Or if you're preparing maybe slides for a very important presentation, keep in mind, even native English speakers will often get a colleague's like a second set of eyes on slides, on something just like proof this because you often miss your own mistakes.
So don't feel embarrassed about this, right?
Even native English language speakers do this.
Yeah. Yeah. So just ask your colleague, you know, can we hop into the conference room for 15 minutes?
I'll show you my slides. I'd love to get your feedback.
Don't be afraid to ask. So that's the first example.
The second one is when you are being assigned to a project.
Let's say your manager says, hey, guys, we're taking on this project this year.
You know, maybe they assume that, you know, you're going to be on the team.
What about you leading the team? What do you think about that, Aubrey?
Ask them to be the project lead. Yes. I love that.
I think that every CEO, everyone who's running a company, they want to see people stepping up and taking leadership because they know then you're going to take real ownership over this.
It's just such an admirable quality when you're willing to take that lead, put in the extra effort, the extra time.
That's awesome. Yeah, that's huge. So don't just assume that just because English is your second language and maybe you're working with native speakers, for example, don't assume you can't be the lead on the project, right?
For sure. So ask for it. That shouldn't hold you back.
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And what would be a third thing, Aubrey?
Any idea? Yeah, to ask for a better work schedule.
So it could be that you are really struggling with whatever hours you're being asked to put in.
And you might not even realize that it's very possible for those hours to be changed.
You might be able to receive a more flexible work schedule, but you have to ask for it.
You need to let people know. Yeah, because people, your boss, your manager might not know that that's an issue, right?
If you don't tell them, they'll never know.
They'll just assume everything's cool, right?
They're busy. They don't have time, right?
So you've got to speak up. You've got to let them know.
These days, you know, people are working from home more.
So maybe what you need is a flex schedule where it's a combination of work from home, WFH, right?
As everyone says in the acronym. And two, you know, it's three days work from home and two days in the office.
You could ask for that. You know, I mean, obviously look at your company culture, see what other people are doing.
But if it seems like something that will land well, ask for it.
Yeah, I have a good example of a friend who had a child, a young child who wasn't yet in preschool.
And she was working at an office and nobody brought in kids.
She did not think this was a possibility to bring in her child.
But she decided to ask and they said yes.
They let her bring in, it was like a little pack and play.
That's what we call it, like a portable crib for her kid to play in.
And she was able to spend time with her during the day.
She was actually shocked. that the company said, sure, that's fine.
That's fantastic. I mean, the truth is companies spend a lot of money recruiting and hiring new people.
Hiring, training is a lot of money, so they don't want to lose you.
And if it's brought to their attention that they might eventually lose you just because they can't accommodate your schedule, most of the time they'll act to accommodate you because they don't want to spend that money on finding someone new.
It's just too much work. Exactly right.
Especially if you've shown yourself to be an excellent employee, hardworking, dependable.
They want to keep you. They're going to try and make it work.
Yeah. So the idea here is understanding the value you provide in the world and then having the confidence to ask for something more that you need.
Exactly. Yeah. Okay. We have a good role play here for a fourth option, which I know you guys have been in this situation at work where you're assigned to a project and you're realizing I need more support.
I'm either not going to get this done in time or maybe I'm not the best job for each of these different tasks.
And we're going to do a little role play to show you how you can ask for that support.
Love it. Okay, here we go. So, all right, I'll start.
I was hoping to talk to you about the project I'm working on.
Sure. What's up? I know this is due Friday and I really want to make that deadline, but I've run into some snags.
Okay. I'd like to ask if I can have a little additional support.
Sure. What do you have in mind? If we could add a couple of team members to the project so I can delegate a few of these tasks, that would be extremely helpful.
That's a great idea. I think Mark has some bandwidth this week.
He would do a great job. I can assign him to create some of the videos.
Who else would be able to help? How about Samira?
I could use some help prepping the Q&A and I think she'd do a great job.
You got it. I'll email them both today. Thank you.
Oh, this is good. And I think it's really key to notice you had prepared.
You had thought about this before. You weren't just coming and saying, I need support.
And then when your supervisor says, what do you have in mind?
You say, I don't know. What can you do for me?
You clearly had thought it through. You had ideas of what could help.
That's huge. I feel like that is so huge.
Because again, I think that managers are so busy, and they kind of want you to come to them with the answers.
Exactly. Great idea. And you know, because it Yeah, it's one thing to have a problem.
But it's another level of thinking and dedication to find the solution and be willing to execute that.
Right? Exactly. You might find they just ask you, Okay, perfect.
What's the solution? Tell me. You need to have it already.
Exactly. No, that's huge. And I want to highlight a bonus vocabulary today in this role play.
I've run into some snags. That's a great one.
Yeah, what's a snag? It's any kind of problem, right?
It's just a sort of more slang way to say I'm having a problem.
This comes from, I used to go fishing a lot with my dad.
And this makes me think of him because we would always get our fishing line snagged on trees or caught on a rock.
Oh, yeah. So he was like in the stream half the time undoing the snags of our fishing lines.
Did you go fly fishing? Was that fly fishing or just normal fishing?
We called it creek fishing. So yeah, not fly fishing on a big lake.
It'd be like a small creek that has big willow bushes on both sides.
So it was really easy to snag your line when you have young kids throwing a line into the bushes.
It sounds like you spent the whole time in the water getting it.
Getting the things unsnagged. But it's true.
This is great vocab to use instead of saying I have a problem.
This is kind of lighter weight to say, oh, I've run into some snags.
It's nothing I can't handle. It's just a little bit of a hitch, a little bit of a problem.
Definitely we can get past this. We just need to look at it.
We need to fix this. Yeah, I love that.
That is so good. That's so good. So guys, the bottom line here, the takeaway for today is ask for help, understand your value, ask for help, but then also have kind of a solution in mind.
If it requires an open, yeah, requires an idea, have that solution in mind, come with the problem and the solution.
Yes, I love that. Oh, this is going to be so great for you guys for business English, working in English.
Thanks for doing this episode today, Lindsay.
It's a good one. This has been great. And thanks for this roleplay, Aubrey.
I appreciate that. Our listeners love these roleplays.
And by the way, where can our listeners find more from you?
Where are you hanging out most days? Yes, Jessica and I record on the IELTS Energy podcast.
So if you're studying for IELTS especially, make sure you're following IELTS Energy.
We have three episodes every week, tips, strategies, insider examiner advice for the IELTS exam.
Yeah, that is such a great show. It is the first place to start.
And really, the only place you need to get started if you're going to take the IELTS anytime in the next one to two years, I would say.
That's fantastic. All right, Aubrey, this has been great.
Thanks for hanging out on the show today.
Yeah, thanks. See you later. All right. Take care.
Bye. Thank you for listening to Business English, a podcast just for you, the high achieving global professional.
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