This is the Business English Podcast, Episode 522.
Take notice of business English verbs.
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Hey, Aubrey.
How's it going?
I'm great.
How are you?
Good.
Aubrey, would you say that you are an observant person, someone that observes things clearly?
It really depends.
Sometimes I think of myself as very observant.
I'm pretty good at like proofreading.
I'll notice things, but then something will happen that really points out to me that I'm not Right.
Oh, did you see that?
Whatever it was on the wall or something and totally missed it.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Or in movies or something.
Right.
You have to notice certain things that are out of place to catch the plot and all this stuff.
I will not notice those things.
No, same.
I remember a film.
I don't remember what the film was, but it's Melanie Griffith and she It's like in an interview at the beginning and she's really being like the whoever's interviewing her is not appreciating her, you know, is sort of assuming that she's not very bright.
And then, as she goes to leave, she sort of says a few things that made it clear that she had observed way more than they realized.
I was like, I want to be her.
I appreciate this in other people.
I think it's impressive when someone's very observant.
Totally, totally.
100% and good stuff.
So obviously, based on our examples here, an observant person is someone that just pays attention usually to small details like very subtle things, right?
Subtleties.
Yeah, some of us are definitely better at this than others.
It is a skill.
It's impressive.
And it has to be practiced for sure.
Yeah.
And so we got a great question that inspired today's episode from Benny.
And this came from a review in Spotify.
Guys, we so appreciate your reviews over there.
I've seen some of them lately.
They are amazing, by the way.
Aubrey, five stars.
Amazing.
Yes.
Thank you, everyone, for the reviews and the ratings.
We appreciate it.
Amazing.
And Benny asked, what is the difference between notice versus realize?
Great question.
Yes.
This is a great question.
I'm excited.
Just talking about verbs today that have these related meanings.
Notice is also a noun where you give two weeks notice before quitting a job and realize can also mean accomplish.
But we today are going to focus on the verbs, the meanings of these verbs that have very related meanings.
Right.
So what would be a pro tip, like an easy tip that everyone should remember?
If they forget everything else from today's episode, remember this.
Yes.
The pro tip is first you notice something, then you realize something.
So this is interesting.
We're going to dive into some examples here.
But if you remember that, it's going to help you keep these straight.
First I notice, then I realize.
Right.
We can't realize first and then notice later.
It doesn't make any sense.
Exactly.
Good, you know, if you're on spotify, if you're an apple podcast, if you're in youtube well uh, we won't see you on youtube for this episode because this episode will not be on youtube, but all ears english does have a youtube channel, so check out that youtube channel.
Hit the follow button wherever you listen.
All right, you can leave us questions comments questions, that for the business english podcast there as well.
Sure, we would read those and see those.
That's a great place to leave questions yeah, so let's Aubrey.
And why it's different from realize.
What is notice, to notice?
Yes.
Notice is to see or observe something.
So a couple examples here.
I noticed a decline in customer satisfaction after the new policy was introduced.
Good.
Or during the review meeting, I noticed several inconsistencies in the financial report.
Yes.
Or did you notice they changed the meeting time?
And we'll get into realize in a minute.
But you can see how, after each of these, we could then say it made me realize how dissatisfied customers were, how inconsistent our reports are right.
You're noticing some kind of detail or fact that's giving you this realization.
And we also use this as kind of a more informal phrasal verb, like to pick up on something.
During the meeting, the manager picked up on a discrepancy in the quarterly sales figures.
Even in business, we use phrasal verbs a lot for these same meanings.
We might say clients quickly picked up on the lack of coordination between the two departments.
So you could obviously say notice there, but we'll also say pick up on.
Yeah, for sure.
And then let's flip to realize.
I mean, I think, the mistranslation that I hear sometimes, although it's not a mistranslation.
Sometimes people will say realize, as in make something happen right.
Have you heard it used that way?
Well, and that's what I had mentioned that these words have these other definitions as well.
That's what makes them confusing.
They don't just mean this one thing, right?
So you can say like, I realized a goal, meaning I accomplished a goal.
So you can see how that's confusing.
That has this very different meaning as well.
And again, not what we're going into today.
So just put that away for another day.
We'll come back to it another time.
But just to know, these are kind of the more common uses of realize and notice.
So what does notice mean for today, Aubrey?
Realize, right?
Sorry, realize.
Where notice is like seeing and observing something.
To realize is to become aware of something, especially when, After noticing new information or especially after thinking about something, then comes the realization.
Yeah.
So, for example, we realized that the project timeline was unrealistic after reviewing the initial data.
So maybe we noticed something in the data and then realized that that timeline was unrealistic.
Exactly.
Or she noticed that the misunderstanding was affecting the client relationship, which made her realize the importance of clear communication once the misunderstanding affected the client relationship.
So there's something that's noticed, which leads to you realizing something about it.
Yeah, it's tricky because it feels like these words should be similar or mean the same thing, but they so don't right.
They really don't.
Yeah, related, but they have very different meanings.
Yes.
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Okay, Aubrey, let's dive into a role play.
So in this business situation, I'm a manager and you are an analyst and we're attending a team meeting together.
Okay,
Yes, awesome.
Want to start us out?
Yeah, I wanted to talk about the client presentation yesterday.
Did anyone notice the change in their tone during the Q&A?
Yes, I picked up on that as well.
They seemed hesitant once we discussed the pricing.
Exactly.
I didn't fully realize it at first, but looking back, their questions were more cautious than usual.
I agree.
I noticed they stopped taking notes around that point, which might explain their follow-up email.
Good observation.
Once I realized they were concerned about cost, I tried to clarify the value, but it may have been too late.
Yeah.
Next time, if we pick up on the signals earlier, we can adjust our message in real time.
Absolutely.
Let's make sure we notice these subtle cues going forward so we can respond more effectively.
And that's actually one of the more interesting.
We talk about this in the takeaway, but this is one of the more interesting uses of notice and realize is how good are your social cues?
So there's noticing details in movies like timeline stuff, but there's also noticing social cues that some people are wizards.
Like my partner is a total wizard.
I used to think I had good social skills.
It's amazing watching my partner with social skills picking up on very subtle changes in mood and when things shift and energy changes.
It's just incredible.
It reminds me of the FBI analysts who are so good at that, right?
At noticing these very subtle changes, changes of eye, movement or head, like their little physical changes.
And that can mean so much to them.
It's amazing.
It's amazing what people could do.
What we, as human beings, can either naturally learn to do, based on our upbringing, or what we can train ourselves to do right.
You can become like a human lie detector where you notice these subtle cues, where all of a sudden you can see when someone's not being honest or I also am not that good at that.
I like to be better at it.
Yeah, it's really interesting.
Or a mood shift detector, right?
You can detect a lot of things, really, really good stuff.
So, and very useful in business, incredibly important in business too.
So, all right, let's go through this here, Aubrey.
So first thing I said was, did anyone notice the change in their tone during the Q&A?
This comes before realizing that something's going on.
Right.
Exactly.
This is you see it, you observe it, you notice it.
Then after it'd be like, OK, what do we realize?
Because we noticed that.
Yes.
Yes.
And then I said, yeah, I picked up on that as well.
So this is interesting.
We're using that more informal phrasal verb always still using them at work, even though they are a little more informal.
We need more ways to say this.
If we both said notice over and over in this conversation, it would be strange.
It would be strange.
We never want to do that.
And we've become very boring if we do that.
Right.
Boring and bored.
Boring and bored.
All right.
So then I said exactly.
I didn't fully realize it at first.
But looking back, their questions were more cautious than usual.
So we're noticing something's not quite right here, right?
Exactly.
And this is interesting because we're talking about something happening in a meeting where we were sort of noticing things but it wasn't giving us that realization in time to adjust in real time.
That's really the skill.
You can notice something, but are you getting the realization of what it means in time to change what you're doing?
That's a good point.
The pivot in the moment, right?
Yes.
Yeah.
And then the note-taking piece, did we say that already?
I don't know if we went through that.
I noticed they stopped taking notes at that point, which might explain their follow-up email.
So you are being observant during a meeting like this, right?
You see the client you know, taking notes and they seem really interested in positive.
And then they put down their pen on their face.
You see a shift in the tone.
100%.
And then I said, good observation.
Once I realized they were concerned about cause, I tried to clarify the value, but it may have been too late.
So we might be losing the client, right?
Yeah.
Right.
This is interesting.
And here you had noticed something.
And then you're like okay, once I realized they were concerned about cost, because this isn't really something you can notice.
There wouldn't necessarily, you could say, I noticed their facial expressions.
I noticed what they were doing.
I realized they are concerned.
And then we said next time, if we pick up on the signals earlier, we can adjust our messaging.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, this is not just about vocabulary here.
There is more to this about noticing, you know, the behavior of coworkers and clients, allowing that to make a realization that could mean the difference between your success at work.
It's true.
And I wonder, you know, I'm not sure how companies interview for this or sort of find candidates that do this well.
That's another question.
If you're in HR and you do interviews, how can you sense this in someone?
Because you want this skill in a person that works for your company too, right?
That is really interesting.
You can find out how observant someone is, right?
If you start interviewing them, you ask them to describe some things, maybe in the room before they entered, to see how observant they were.
That would be interesting.
Well, I know when it comes to you know, when people put out job ads they'll have very specific instructions, like reply with subject line X Y, Z.
But that's more about detail oriented.
I guess that is about observations too.
But So broadly speaking, guys, this is a really cool episode about how you take in the world, right?
You could talk to a friend or a coworker about this.
How observant are you?
Or you could even like our pets do this really well.
Like my dog picks up on shift mood shifts really quickly, right?
Because it's so important for him to know how I'm feeling, right?
Like he's dependent on me.
So this is everywhere, but it's just below the surface.
So a great topic for connection.
Right. family members, in people we know really well.
For coworkers, clients, that's more difficult when we don't know them quite as well.
Yeah, really cool topic that's just below the surface.
Good for connection.
Aubrey, what's another episode our listeners should go to?
Yes, if you missed it, scroll up to 520 right here on the Business English Podcast.
Am I Taking English Vocabulary for Granted?
Some really great phrases and some good pointers about not taking people or things in your life for granted.
Great one.
All right, Aubrey, we're off the mic for today, but I'll see you next time.
You have a good rest of your day.
All right.
See you next time.
Bye.
Bye.
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