Hello and welcome back to another little snippet.
These are my short five-minute episodes full of business English communication tips to help boost your confidence.
So in this one I really want to centre my tips on communicating effectively to peers and executives.
Let me give you some context.
I have a client and I was meeting with them this week.
They work in a large multinational company and they work in the technical department.
It's a very, very technical role.
Previously they were a consultant and they were working on projects, but now they're working within the company, if that makes sense.
Also, I just want to touch very quickly on something that comes up a lot.
What's the difference between freelance and consultant?
Both describe different modes of working or being self-employed.
However, what I would say is that freelance is often used for more creative industries.
And it can have the connotation of being more informal.
So if you work in professional services and you have done some consulting, I would call yourself a consultant rather than a freelance.
Anyway, this person is actually really overqualified for the role that they're doing.
And that's not them boasting or showing off.
In fact, they said something to me the other day.
They said a football analogy.
They said, you know, it's like I'm being played as the goalkeeper, but I should be the forward.
And the thing that they said that's holding them back is communication.
They've had this feedback.
They've said, you need to work on your communication skills.
It's not clear enough.
And what they find really difficult is getting executives on board with their messages.
We've been looking at that this week and that's what I'm going to talk about today and give you some tips based on the things that we had a look at in those sessions, because I think it could be really useful for you.
They're working on a really big transformational change project and they really need to sell that project to the exec board.
And these are some of the points that we looked at when we were doing the sessions this week.
The first thing before anything.
Coming back to the point about getting feedback, if you get the feedback that is, your communication isn't clear.
I would really suggest you try and get more specific feedback.
That's the first point.
Try and help them out a little bit and direct them to the points that they may be able to help you out with.
For example, is it pronunciation?
Are there specific words?
Is it the pace?
Am I speaking too fast?
Is it content?
Is there too much content?
Is it like content overload?
Is it structure?
Could I order it better?
Is it the length?
Do I take too long?
Try to get more specific feedback because your communication isn't clear is not really very helpful for you for a starting point.
Secondly, think about what the key message actually is.
Just spend some time to think about it.
What is it that you want them to walk out of the room thinking about or remembering?
Not how you want to say it in English.
Don't start there.
Just start brainstorming your thoughts.
Then you can work it out a little bit more in English later.
But sit and think.
What is the key message?
What do you want them to remember?
What is it important that they know?
Next point, number three, is try to link to the results and impact.
This is especially important if you're trying to persuade people why they should do something.
For example, in this session, I was constantly trying to remind them to come back to.
This means that
This means that we will lose revenue.
Or this will enable us to bring in more customers.
Or this will lead to higher profits.
So use phrases that link to the impact and the results.
Finally, think about how you can beef up your message.
Beef up is a funny little phrasal verb, but just like when you add meat to a spaghetti bolognese, you give it flavour, you give it substance.
It's the same thing here.
You give strength to something.
Think about adverbs, adjectives, and quantifiers.
For example rather than saying this is good for our customers, why don't you say this is excellent for our customers?
Rather than saying this will reduce churn, you could say, this will greatly reduce churn.
And rather than saying then this will increase revenue, you could say this will increase revenue a lot or significantly.
None of these things are outside of your reach.
They're all very simple straightforward, little things, but they do make a difference to the impact of your wording.
Let me just run through that again then.
Number one, try to get more specific feedback if you get your communication isn't clear.
Think about what the key message actually is.
Use phrases that link back to the results and impact.
And finally, think about how you can beef up your message.
All right, I hope that was helpful.
See you in the next one.
