267. Defend Your Decisions: How to Push Back Confidently in English｜Confident Business English

As a senior manager, do you ever have to defend your position?

People asking you to push back deadlines, they want more resources, or maybe they want to change something that's already been agreed.

Let's look at English vocabulary that's going to help boost your confidence in these situations.

Hello and welcome back to Confident Business English.

I'm Anna, your host and neuro -language coach.

If you love the podcast, you should definitely join as a free member.

You're going to get the transcripts, the newsletter and lots of extra content.

event link to join in the show notes so the inspiration for this episode comes from one of my clients who is a senior manager overseeing software projects and they said i've got to have this conversation with one of my team members and they're trying to get us to do a different plan than the plan that we'd

already agreed and i don't want to do that i don't want to change anything so what can i say in english that sounds good but it's also getting across that my decision is clear the core vocabulary we're going to be looking at in this episode are number one about introducing bad news essentially we're

going to use the classic I'm afraid that it's just not it's just not possible I'm afraid that's a combination of both the phrases before or it's simply not doable within the time frame nothing revolutionary here you've probably heard those phrases before But again, the question is, do you actually use

them? Do you feel confident and secure saying them?

The second vocabulary group that's really going to help you with this are phrases to express understanding.

I really appreciate your point.

I understand your concerns.

I see where you're coming from.

These phrases are so useful with difficult conversations and they just help you come across more elegant, let's say, rather than it's impossible, sorry.

Then finally, another category of phrases are where you need to draw a line.

And you could either do this in the negative or in the affirmative.

You could say something along the lines of, I'm not prepared to do this.

I'm not moving on this.

Or you could flip it and do it in the affirmative.

I'm going to stand by my decision on this one.

I believe this is the best approach.

This is the direction we're going to take, or perhaps even expression here if you want to push yourself a little bit, which is to stick to your guns.

I'm sticking to my guns on this one, guys.

This phrase, as you can probably imagine, it actually comes from the military and warfare.

From my research, which it seems that it dates back to at least the 18th century.

And it just means that gunners were expected to remain at their posts and shoot even if they were under enemy attack.

Of course, over time this has then evolved and it basically means to stand firm.

To stand firm in your beliefs, your decisions or your principles even when you have pressure as we're going to have a look at in these situations today.

The final group of vocabulary I want to introduce before we go over the examples are if you want to move the conversation on.

Imagine they brought up the issue.

You're like, okay, yeah, thanks very much for bringing it up.

But I'm not interested in talking about this anymore.

I've made my decision clear.

Let's move on. John, I really appreciate you bringing this up.

Thanks for your thoughts.

But I'd like to move on now.

Thanks very much, John, for bringing this to my attention.

And I'm happy to discuss it further if you want to but right now i'd like to move on you're being firm there that you want to continue the conversation but also giving them an opportunity to perhaps discuss that offline i bet you've heard that term before because people say it all the time apparently

the term originates from the telecommunication sector specifically in the early days of networks and telephone systems and essentially meant from moving the conversation or topic away from a live or an active system like a public meeting into a private or separate channel.

And basically, that's all it means.

It just means to take something in a group setting and have a conversation privately at another time.

Let's go through some examples and actually putting some of this firm but fair vocabulary into practice.

Imagine that your colleague wants to extend the deadline because they feel that they don't have enough time and they're struggling to keep up with all the work.

Maria, I completely understand that this is a very difficult situation, but I'm afraid that extending the deadline is simply not workable.

We've agreed the schedule with the client and the deadline is simply not up for negotiation.

So why don't we sit down offline and think about how we can figure this out and get all the work done within the timeline agreed.

I want to pick up on another piece of vocab there, which is let's sit down offline.

You might have heard one of your colleagues saying this and you're like, okay, do they actually want to sit down with me?

Like literally? I can imagine someone saying something like, oh, but I work from home.

I can't come into the office.

When somebody says that to you, it's not a literal meaning of let's sit down.

Essentially, it means let's meet and talk about what we're going to do.

Let's imagine another situation where one of your managers really wants to hire somebody else or recruit somebody else to the team and you really don't want to that's not within your budget for this year and you want to be very clear about that.

Thanks Simon for bringing this to my attention and I appreciate that we're going through a difficult moment right now but I'm afraid that I don't want to increase the resources this year.

We're going to stick with the team allocation that we have at the moment and I'm going to stand by that decision.

So I'm happy to sit down and think about how we can rearrange the resources that we already have but I want to be really clear and say that I'm not prepared to take anybody more on for this year.

To take somebody on is just to hire somebody or to recruit somebody and you'll notice there how I said I'm happy to and this is often a phrase that we'll use to offer another solution even though you're actually disagreeing with the point that they said before.

I'm happy to talk about this offline however I would like to move on right now.

I'm happy to discuss how we can rearrange resources we already have but I'm not prepared to take anybody else on this year.

Let's have a look at a final example and this time we're going to imagine that somebody wants to make changes to a presentation that's already been worked on, the contents have already been agreed and signed off and somebody's going to come back to you and ask for some changes.

Thanks very much for your thoughts Tom.

I appreciate your point about the different elements.

However I'm afraid I'm not going to make any changes especially so late in the day.

The format's already been signed off by everybody.

It's been approved therefore I'm going to stand by my decision on this one and we're going to go ahead with it as it is now.

I'm more than happy to sit down next time for the next presentation and go over it and see how we can improve it but for this one specifically I'd like to go ahead with what we already have so I hope you can understand my position on that one.

Let's finish with a slightly controversial topic at the moment which is about working models.

Let's imagine that at the moment your team works two days a week in the office and three days at home and you'd like to up that and have three days at the office and two days at home you're receiving some pushback from your team in the middle of the meeting what could you say that's firm but fair well

thank you guys I appreciate your opinions and perspective and I have taken on board all your feedback but I'm going to stand by my decision on this one I feel it is the best approach for all of us just to make sure that we're all on the same page we're not missing anything and that we can ultimately

be more productive so i'm sticking to my guns on this one i'm more than happy to talk to any of you if you have any individual concerns but i feel that we have talked about this now i've made my decision clear so i would like to move on let's wrap it up then for your next meeting or conversation where you

know that you're going to get a lot of pushback or objections think about or write out some of these sentences and what you could say they're not going to come into your speech by accident it's not a miracle you have to train yourself to use these phrases thanks as always for squeezing in some time

to have a session with me i really hope that you found that useful and i look forward to speaking to you again next week bye

[시니어 매니저를 위한 비즈니스 영어: 확고하면서도 우아하게 거절하는 법]-[267. Defend Your Decisions: How to Push Back Confidently in English]

📋 Summary

시니어 매니저를 위한 비즈니스 커뮤니케이션 전략: 확고한 의사결정의 기술

1. 나쁜 소식을 전하는 정중한 화법

2. 상대의 의견을 존중하는 공감의 기술

3. 입장을 명확히 하는 '선 긋기' 표현

4. 대화를 마무리하고 전환하는 방법

5. 실전 적용 사례: 팀 자원 및 업무 조정

결론: 의도적인 연습의 중요성

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript