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Hello podcast people.
Now, just before we start this episode properly,
I wanted to give a reminder to the 1% or less of people listening to this,
who are in the Paris area,
or who will be in Paris on the 19th of July, is that you?
Paris 19th of July, 2024.
I'm doing a stand-up comedy show.
It's a two-man show with my friend, Charles Pelagrin.
I'll be doing half an hour of stand-up comedy.
Charles will be doing half an hour too.
Come and join us, have a good laugh.
It's a 100% English show.
Here are the details.
So the title is Luke and Charles same difference
at the French fried comedy night, 830 pm, 19th of July, 2024.
The venue is called in an English accent.
Oh, Soledula, boot 32,
room muller in the 18th-Aaron de Smont of Paris.
Entry is free,
but we encourage you to buy a drink when you arrive,
which will make the owners of the bar happy,
which is what we want.
Reserving tickets isn't possible yet,
because the event still isn't listed on the website event bright.
After the stand-up comedy show,
I'm hoping to record a live podcast episode in the room,
so you can join me for that too.
This is not confirmed yet, but I would like to do it.
In any case, if you want to come and see me performing
stand-up comedy live on stage,
this is a good show for you to come to.
Enjoy the show.
Let us entertain you with our jokes and our stories.
Have a drink afterwards and say hi and hang out a bit
and maybe be part of my audience
for a live podcast recording too.
19th of July, 2024, 830 pm,
Osolade La Butte in the 18th Aaron Dismont of Paris.
All the details are available at teachallouc.co.uk slash comedy.
You're listening to Luke's English podcast.
For more information, visit teachallouc.co.uk.
Hello listeners, welcome back to Luke's English podcast today.
I'm talking to Rob from the Business English podcast,
which is also part of the energetic English channel on YouTube.
We're going to talk about networking
and how to network effectively in order to help your business
prospects and your career.
More on that later.
First of all, let's say hello to Rob.
Hi, Rob. How are you?
Hi, Luke. Hi, Luke. Very well.
What about yourself, sir?
Not bad, thank you.
It's quite a nice sunny day today,
which always makes everything better.
Blue sky sunshine, so everything's fine.
Yeah. Can't complain.
That's not too bad.
Obviously not UK side then,
because we have our overcast umbrella up today.
Oh, really? Overcast?
Yes. Overcast.
Typical conditions.
Gray overcast skies.
Is that it?
Yeah, I feel typically British though.
So this is good news.
Good news. I feel ready for some English today.
Yeah, it's not actually raining then.
This is...
Yeah. I've been spoiled actually.
Yeah, that must be said, we've been spoiled.
It's not raining at all.
Okay, good.
So Rob, just let's get to know you a little bit
before we actually get into the subject of the episode today.
Sure.
So Rob, where are you from, actually?
So originally from York, about two hours north of London
by train in the north of England.
It was a long time ago.
It was the capital, I think, when the Vikings were here.
So, yeah, very nice old city, but that's where I'm from.
So, do excuse my northern plummy accent.
If I do drop any syllables today.
So, in Yorkshire?
Yes, this is...
I don't really picked up on a Yorkshire accent that much
to be honest in your voice.
Very pleased.
I'm very pleased.
Occasionally a client might say,
where are you from?
This sort of like interrogating question.
Where are you from?
And I think, oh, maybe I said something.
Maybe the vowel sound was a little bit too strong.
I don't know. I really like a Yorkshire accent.
In fact, my whole family, we all come from Yorkshire,
not me personally, but my parents both come from Yorkshire.
Really? What about, do you know?
Specific.
Mum in the Barnsley area, my dad from the Leeds area.
Excellent, yeah, Barnsley.
We're just down the road from Barnsley, actually.
Really?
So, the outskirts of Sheffield now.
So, I returned home like a boomerang, you know,
around the world, traveling and working,
and then returned back to Yorkshire, the county.
In previous career, I was dealing with or interfacing
with the international community presentations,
meetings, and that took me to South America,
many countries, most countries in Europe,
the far east sort of Southeast Asia area,
bit of North Africa.
So, a really good flavor of how we communicate
on an international level, you know,
when businesses and money and things are changing hands
internationally.
I really got some good exposure in that way.
So, very interesting, yeah.
And did that kind of inspire you to then start doing
a business English podcast?
Is that the reason?
Yeah, I mean, it came up during that time,
sort of, did about a decade within the space,
and discovering that there was actually a point of sort
of contention or friction when we had the non-native English
professionals displaying ideas or giving presentations
and negotiating or networking.
And, you know, it was always a thought of mine
about the could they use a little bit more
in order to get their point across?
So, you know, a lot of the frustration was them not having access
to the ripe phrases or the right terminology
in order to truly hit the point.
I mean, they got the point across, you know,
don't get me wrong, but there was this idea of,
I think they could go one level further,
and it was often in the networking in the bar
or something afterwards, it was always sort of like,
you know, sorry for my English,
and it was absolutely, you know, something I thought,
well, we might have something here.
So, this is, we have the mission statement
business English podcasts, it's for non-native English
professionals in offices worldwide,
suffering lives of quiet desperation
with their professional communication,
sort of thing.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, having worked as an English teacher
for a long time, I've taught lots of business English as well,
and I've spent time with people in companies
and worked alongside people who, as you said, you know,
have to use English, they're forced to use it
in fairly high-pressure situations,
in meetings, in negotiations, doing presentations,
writing emails, and having to build relationships in English.
And yeah, it can be very stressful for them
because of a lot of different reasons,
one of which is that they feel a lot of pressure to be perfect
and this status involved in that,
but also just being able to do the job effectively
in another language.
Yeah.
Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more.
The onus on the non-native to operate, you know,
fairly complex environments in a second language, you know,
I always, you know, I really think this is a kudos to them.
You know, it's a great position for them to be in, you know,
that they can actually command respect
and actually function a business in their second language.
When we're, you know, we haven't left go,
we're still in our native tongue,
we're not operating on their territory at all.
And so I always think, you know, it's a really great thing
for that of their individual, okay,
they may be dissatisfied with some areas of it,
but they are working in their second language
and I think that is an amazing thing
and it should be acknowledged.
Yeah, I agree, I agree.
And we talk about the fact that non-native speakers
have some work to do in terms of kind of like working
on their English and stuff.
Another question, maybe for another topic for another time
is also native speakers, I think, in this situation.
Also have some responsibility, right,
in terms of understanding what our non-native counterparts
are dealing with and about grading our English,
like choosing the right kind of English
when speaking in those situations.
That's right, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Finding, calibrating against your audience,
I think we'll go into it later,
but just having a good idea,
it's like you said, a responsibility of the native
to actually regulate your speed, your vocabulary usage
and read the room, because you have access
to probably far more vocabulary than the other individual.
And so the only thing is on you to make sure
that you're not walking into a proverbial mind field.
Yeah, exactly.
I guess the spirit of it is in these situations
that everyone has to try to adapt themselves
to the situation in order to use this language
in an appropriate way for the situation.
And that's kind of what we're talking about here, right?
I mean, it's business English.
Your show is called the Business English Podcast.
What about business English?
What do you think people associate
with the idea of business English?
Yes, it's a great question.
It's a great question.
I often liken the difference, well,
business English in general to something like the Wizard of Oz.
It's sort of like this mysterious thing,
kind of intimidating, kind of powerful,
but peaking behind the curtain
reveals something far less scary actually.
It's a bit of a paradox.
Hmm, what's the paradox then?
Well, on the one hand, you have something
that's not really that intimidating
because it uses the same phrases,
the same vocabulary as general English,
the same rules apply, more or less,
which means general English speakers
will be able to make a very strong,
very good solid start into the world of business English.
You know, you already have all the components available.
That said, on the other hand,
you have this sort of, there's a difference,
although you're using the same vocabulary,
grammar and pronunciation.
These things are still very much important,
but you have contextual accuracy.
You really need to understand the context,
the dynamics that you're operating within.
The audience, how direct you're going to be,
the formality, all these things
need to be taken into consideration.
And when you do that, you appreciate the dynamics
of what you're trying to communicate.
And therefore, this allows you to operate
in much higher pressures,
you said before, scenarios like meetings, presentations,
interviews, negotiation, all these things.
Contextual accuracy, this is an interesting term.
Yes.
The idea that the context defines the way in which you use English.
And another way of putting it would be pragmatics
or being pragmatic in English.
And that is the idea that the way that you put certain things
has certain effects on the people you're talking to.
And that relates to things like being diplomatic,
being direct, being indirect, being polite.
Maybe in things like negotiations,
applying pressure or exploring options,
it all comes down to sort of the way
that you structure language, the certain vocab that you use.
I mean, we're going to look at some examples.
But that would include things like,
the way we ask questions when we're getting to know people,
just whether we go in with a direct question
or an indirect question.
And what's the actual effect of doing that?
Yeah.
These are exactly the sorts of things
we're going to be talking about.
Do you have any examples, actually,
just before we get into the subject of networking?
Do you have any examples of moments
when business English should have been used?
And would it have been better if a certain kind of business
English had been used?
Yeah.
And general English was used instead.
Yeah, I think this is quite a question to open us up here.
So where I've been in a number of positions
where this could have taken a much more positive turn
had business English been used.
Although not always essential, general English
can get the job done.
But I was in a presentation.
It wasn't too long ago to,
it was being delivered by a junior analyst.
The audience was fairly senior.
I happen to know that the junior analyst
came from a culture where they communicate more directly,
from an English standpoint,
they're much more of a direct culture
when they communicate in their native tongue.
And so through the presentation,
the junior analyst to the senior audiences
is telling them to wait or what to repeat a question
or tell me now in terms of would you mind elaborating
on that answer?
And it was just building the friction in the air.
You could feel that the audience weren't comfortable
with the sort of questioning.
It was a great presentation.
He knew his stuff.
But the idea of just changing that communication
would have actually taken all that friction
and tension out of the air.
And I think the presentation would have gone even better
for the individual.
If you see what I mean.
So the point was that he was giving this presentation
a junior analyst.
So I guess this is someone who's job
it was to analyze some data or something
and then present his findings to the audience.
He was junior, which means he was sort of younger,
maybe a newer member of the company, presenting to senior members.
And so there just needs to be a certain level of kind
of formality or respectful tone there.
And he was just kind of being a bit too direct
and maybe a bit too informal and saying, wait, and say,
what and tell me more.
And as you said, he should have been saying things like,
I'm just sorry, just hold on for a moment.
Sorry, would you be able to elaborate on that?
That's exactly what we're talking about.
Instead of saying, tell me more, the difference
between saying, tell me more to a group of people.
And would you mind elaborating on that?
This is exactly the difference that we're talking about.
So tell me more is so straight and direct
into the point and can be perfect in certain situations.
But would you mind elaborating on that?
Kind of shows respect.
It's a bit more restrained, it's less direct.
It's a little bit more formal.
It's just the appropriate thing to say in that situation.
Yeah, it definitely feels better.
Takes off all the sharp corners, so to speak.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Exactly.
And those people would have expected a certain level of,
you just, people like that need a certain level of treatment,
a certain kind of respect.
That's right.
Yeah, I mean, there's a conversation going on
that no one's talking about.
And that is, this should be more formal.
And I think because he sort of missed the mark in that regard,
the presentation could have gone much smoother for him.
But he wasn't playing by the rules, so to speak.
From my side, most of my time has been spent
working with learners of English in business English
situations sometimes.
And I've just seen it so many times,
and not just with younger learners,
well, we used to do a business course
called Young Business English, and it would be like,
the University-Age learners.
But I also have taught, much more experienced people too.
And so many times I've been working with people,
and I've given them a role-play situation, for example.
So it could be a meeting or a negotiation
or a networking situation.
And having worked on it even, having worked on language
and stuff, and then give them the task
and just watch as the students just like operated
without using the right kind of behavioral codes,
not just struggling to find the right language
for the situation, but just applying themselves
with a certain kind of behavior.
And that's kind of what this is about
as much as anything else.
It's about applying yourself with certain behavioral codes,
knowing the right codes for the right situation,
and how that translates into the way that we use language.
And so, yeah, it's definitely some people don't just
don't realize.
I mean, we've worked in communication for a long time.
So we're very familiar with this,
but a lot of people go into these situations
unaware of how to apply themselves.
So, so let's talk about networking then, shall we?
That's the idea today.
Yes, yeah, I think that segues beautifully into,
perhaps there is no greater scenario
that demands eloquent or at least some skillful use
of business English than networking.
And I believe you're definitely the man for networking.
I think.
You're all absolutely, you know.
It's interesting, you say that,
because when we were preparing for this episode,
I was trying to think to myself,
what sort of examples can I give of networking myself?
And, you know, since I'm a English teacher,
really, a podcaster, do a few other things,
I just kind of thought, I don't really have that much
experience of networking, but then again, maybe I do.
And I kind of realized that as an English teacher,
there's a lot of networking involved in that.
We should probably talk about what networking is,
actually, from the beginning.
It's basically the way that we socialize in English,
the way that we strike up conversations with people
that we probably don't know very well.
And the purpose for doing it is to make connections
with other professionals that will hopefully
lead to more opportunities for future projects,
future work, and open doors professionally, basically.
So it's really about spontaneous speaking,
good listening, social English,
the aim of networking is to open up the lines of communication
and to build relationships with people.
A lot of the time, as I said, it involves meeting people,
talking to the people for the first time,
talking to people you don't know that well.
And it involves a certain mindset,
a certain approach, a certain amount of cultural awareness,
some key phrases and language structures
and the pronunciation of those structures, right?
Yes, I think that is an excellent description,
an all-encompassing one.
But really about that building and maintaining relationships,
like you said, being the real core element of networking.
And to your point about being an educator
within the professional space,
I think we have to be good at this element
because if we don't have a connection
with the students or clients
that we are imparting our knowledge upon,
then you just don't get that rapport.
You need to have a rapport with your audience
or your clients or your students.
So again, it's one of those unspoken things
that is just assumed.
I don't think any teachers in normal schools
are, how good your networking skills?
Well, it's actually a core element
to a lesser or greater extent
because if you can't build the rapport with the class,
so to speak, then you might be in trouble.
Yeah, we might associate networking
with business people in suits in a certain industry
or something, but in fact, we all do it to an extent.
It's just something that everyone does
and maybe you don't even realize we're doing it.
Yeah, absolutely.
So what about the power of networking English?
Do you want to talk about how networking in English
can do things for us?
I believe, taking it from a standpoint
of two strangers in a room, or we've just
been kicked out at coffee break of a very long and dull
presentation by the financial department
or whatever it is we've never met before.
And so we both rock up to the coffee
or the caffeine dispenser in the foyer.
And we now have this human requirements
call it subconsciously or the caveman in us.
We need to interact in some level.
So I'm just going to say something.
Otherwise, we're going to feel this tension
for a long time, this awkward situation.
And I believe that networking from this moment
is required, even if it's just a polite hello or how are you
or some other phrase, just to get that tension out of the air
immediately.
So I guess that would be one point is about removing the tension.
What do you think about that?
I completely agree.
And I also think that this is where perhaps a lot of people
start to, that they want to run screaming from the building
at this point, because for a lot of people,
the idea of networking is just not attractive to them.
And a lot of people think, it's not for me.
This is for the extroverts.
This is for the people who are outgoing and stuff like that.
And a lot of people have a negative association
with this whole idea that they would rather just curl up
into a ball with their mobile phone and their coffee
and just forget the rest of the world.
I think it's completely normal to feel,
as you said, awkward in this situation.
But it doesn't have to be.
And I think it's when you realize that everyone
sort of feels the same way.
If you can kind of change your attitude
and make it more about, rather than
being a performance where you're worried about being judged,
it's more an opportunity for you to discover
some new people and find out some interesting things
from others.
And if we put it in that way, if we become curious about the people
that we have in front of us, then that suddenly makes it
much more easy and much easier.
And there's less pressure involved, I think.
Yeah, definitely.
Taking the friction or the pressure out of the environment
is one of the key components of building a good relationship
from the get-go.
Going back to the example of being
stood at the coffee machine, we need to make sure
that the other person, and again, I think
maybe it goes back to, is this other person a threat?
What kind of caveman we need to start communicating,
Johรฉ, we're good.
We nearly fell asleep too during that presentation.
It was boring, wasn't it?
And you're looking for that point of connection,
I think, is absolutely paramount within networking.
And this is where it falls over in my experience
with most non-native professionals.
It's like, well, where do I start?
What do I ask them how they are, or about what they did
at the weekend, or how much money they earn?
They're like, well, OK, we need to do some guidance on this.
OK, so what do you suggest then?
What should someone say in that situation?
With networking from a cold start, the advice I always
try to impart is the go for something
that you're both sharing.
Now, that is the experience.
It could be the weather.
It could be the presentation.
It could be the coffee.
But something that is shared between you.
Go for that shared experience to break the ice and get going.
It doesn't need to be, and I think this is,
it comes from maybe nerves or previous English lessons
or something.
If somebody came up to me and said, hello, how are you?
My name is Rob.
It feels quite square.
Is that OK?
That's nice.
It would be, it would feel much more natural
if I'd walked up to you, Luke, during the breaking gun.
God, the coffee's strong, isn't it?
No introduction required.
No, no anything.
And the ball is rolling, and it just lays the floor open
for you to engage.
What do you thoughts on?
Yeah, absolutely, yes.
So talk about something neutral, something
that you both have in common.
And yeah, a comment on the situation is a great idea.
And a comment that has no value judgment to it really.
I mean, you can comment on the coffee that's OK.
But not necessarily commenting on the presentation
or whatever the situation is.
We're at a conference or we're at some sort of business
meeting or something like that.
Not necessarily making some judgment about the situation.
But commenting on something neutral that you both share,
exactly.
So that can include things like, yeah, the coffee.
It can just be a simple like, sorry,
do you know how this works?
Or what do you think of the coffee or just some comment
like that?
Try and keep it positive.
I generally find that it's good to keep things
as positive as possible in that situation
to avoid getting into any negative spaces.
But you can talk about the weather.
I mean, that's always fine.
If there's something to say, you know, like,
oh, Chile, isn't it?
Or if it's cold, isn't it today?
That's certainly in the UK.
You can never go wrong with that.
Or comment on the room that you're in.
And so, wow, this is the new building there.
And I haven't been here before.
It's impressive, isn't it?
Yeah.
And little things like that with tag questions on the ends,
like, oh, it's bit cold, isn't it?
This is an impressive room, isn't it?
Or coffee's very strong, isn't it?
Yeah.
I think that's the tag question element at the end,
just to open up that throat, like a game of tennis,
you know, you're serving the ball back to the person.
And I think the onus is on the other person,
not to keep hold of the tennis ball,
but to actually return it again,
to get this momentum into the conversation.
Yes.
But, you know, asking the tag question is the coffee great,
it then gives me an opportunity to give you my opinion
about the coffee and that, you know, the milk
is great or organic.
I, yeah.
I can then segue into something else.
I can then transition into, is it your first time here?
Or wasn't the last presentation wonderful,
or I can't wait to see the keynote speaker today?
Right.
And it just allows the whole conversation
to open up rather than getting,
fighting through those initial sentences of,
well, I've worked here five years,
and, you know, I know Sally and HR department,
and it's all a bit square.
You want the breaks to come off as soon as possible.
And I think this is the magic of networking,
is if you can get those initial first questions
and opening lines right, you get the momentum.
It might be difficult in a business situation,
but for me, I always sort of see those situations
as a chance to kind of have a little bit of fun, you know?
And I actually want to entertain,
I want people around me to be in a good mood.
I want people to be enjoying themselves.
And so I can kind of just,
I don't know how to describe it really,
but just start to be a little bit lighthearted
about neutral things, you know,
it's hard to give an example of that,
but you know, there are biscuits available,
you know, and I might say, mmm, lovely biscuits,
god, I love these biscuits.
Yeah.
Even something like that.
And then, as you say, from there,
once you've broken the ice,
then you can start to get into the actual,
actually, the proper stuff,
which is where you're kind of saying,
so is this your first time at the conference,
or how do you know Rob,
which is always a good one when you've got someone in common?
How do you know Rob, do you work together, you know,
or have you seen any other interesting talks here so far?
Did you have to travel far to come here,
or which company are you with?
And then there's obviously what do you do,
what do you do there?
Yeah.
And most of those questions I asked,
is this your first time, how do you know Rob,
do you work together, have you seen any other interesting talks?
Most of those questions are all actually closed questions.
Yes.
Which is interesting,
because we always assume that open questions
are going to be the better ones,
but I've noticed that closed questions
will actually, they're actually more polite.
And the other person has to understand
that they're not being invited to give a simple yes or no answer,
like for example, is this your first time here?
No, no, I've been here before.
But wrong.
Yeah.
I've been here several times before,
in fact last year was my first one,
were you here last year?
You know, you got to be willing to share
that with me.
And it's okay.
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Oh, I mean, it's a great observation
about there is a responsibility
for the other person in networking.
I mean, the networking is being conducted
by both individuals, the listener and the speaker.
Listener needs to be prepared to really understand
the content of the question, but then to open it up
and keep there, like we said about that game of tennis,
keep the game going.
And so the other person has an opportunity
to listen to your perspective,
because if it's a one way conversation,
that's normally a monologue, not a conversation,
which is never fun actually,
to be on the receiving end of a monologue.
No.
So any experiences of really good networking scenarios
for yourself?
Any situations?
Oh, I don't know, I think, I mean, again,
going back to my experiences as a teacher,
often what we would have in a school I worked at in London,
we'd have day one, which would be a Monday,
and tons of new students in the school.
And at the end of the day, there would be a drink,
literally bottles of beer and soft drinks available
in the main room of the school,
and the students would be invited to come
and chat with each other.
And I mean, it's obviously because everything
was happening in English,
because I was a teacher and a native speaker,
but I would find in those situations
I'd be doing a lot of heavy lifting.
Yes.
You know what I mean?
Where you're like, so did you have to travel far to get here?
And then just like the person gives their answer.
Okay, so, you know, is this your first time in London answer?
And it's just like having to carry the whole conversation.
Pondries.
You know, you want it to be a double-sided thing
where both people are taking responsibility
for maintaining the conversation.
Yeah.
I think that's a really pertinent point that you were saying
about you having to do that heavy lifting.
And I take it, it wasn't with native English individuals.
No, not in this case.
So that's, as I said, it's probably because of the English,
you know, and the status, because I was the teacher
and because they were operating in English,
they would, they won.
They would often be a bit sort of shy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But no, I was going to drop a point about this cross-cultural
communication and, you know, it's a nice sort of transition
into something else we could talk about here is this reaching
across cultural bound.
Okay, everybody's speaking in English.
That's fine.
But you might be, you might be flavoring this English
with your communication style from your cultural perspective.
And so I know that some of my clients and regions of the world,
it is perfectly acceptable to interrupt somebody,
like just talk over the top of them because that's
what happens.
And, but you must remember that although we are speaking
in English, there are certain rules and regulations,
should we say, very British, we must abide
by whilst conducting this networking.
And so cross-cultural communication
is absolutely massive in terms of business English.
I mean, have you got any thoughts on cross-cultural communication,
interruptions, et cetera?
Yeah, there's just so many things.
Like you said, yeah, it is huge.
It's a huge thing that everyone needs to be aware of.
And it's really, mainly a question of mindset of just being aware
that there are all these invisible factors at work.
And these are factors which might influence the way that you,
the way that you, the impression that you get of someone,
that you might think that they're being very quiet
or that they don't have anything to say.
But it might just be that you haven't really unlocked them properly.
You know?
But yeah, the people who write about this sort of stuff,
the kind of academics or whatever,
the people who study cross-cultural awareness and stuff,
often what they do is they divide these national traits
or these cultural traits or behaviors
into these sort of poles or extremes.
And normally most cultures exist somewhere on a scale
between those two things, right?
So I've got some examples of these sorts of scales.
You've got like outgoing and informal versus private and reserved.
Great.
You find some cultures are just generally a lot more talkative
and social and other cultures tend to be a bit more reserved
and quiet at the beginning.
And what might be good at this point, Rob,
is if we consider certain examples of cultures we know well,
we could maybe think of English like England
and then another culture.
I mean, I live in France,
so I could probably comment about the French,
but I don't know if there's someone else,
another kind of cultural group that you could think of at any point.
Maybe Polish, I have a tremendous amount of clients
and interaction with Poland, do a lot of work
with the businesses there and professionals there.
So probably yes, Polish would be a good one.
So I don't know where each of these cultures exist
on this outgoing and informal to kind of private and reserved
scale.
I don't know.
What do you think?
In terms of the Polish communication style,
I don't know how I'd approach it,
but I would probably say urgency in terms of delivery of message
in terms of the way they conduct business is about this urgency.
So if something needs to be done, something needs to be said,
it needs to happen now, yesterday, in fact, in some cases.
So it's a communication style that works very well with business.
However, if you're a mediator,
if there needs to be more sensitive or delicate dialogue
being conducted,
a transition that may need some balancing,
I don't know what your thoughts on that are.
Yeah, so that kind of to the pointness
that being very straight into the point,
which suggests that maybe that people from that area
might want to take examples from sort of,
I don't know, I imagine I think of Latin cultures
or maybe like South American people who
tend to be a lot more kind of gregarious or outgoing.
I mean, I don't want to make any generalizations,
but I mean, you know, having, again,
having worked with many, many people from many countries,
I have noticed that obviously,
you know, people from Brazil tend to be a lot more outgoing
than people from certain other places.
Yes. I think the French are probably a bit more outgoing,
a bit more informal,
but having said that, they are,
they have quite a lot of formality in these situations.
Yes.
Another category would be the kind of scale of
lived to work versus work to live.
So some cultures seem to put a lot of status
on your work, your professional achievement
defines who you are, your job defines who you are,
and then other cultures are a bit more focused
on the personal fulfillment,
and that life is more important than the position of your job.
And that's certainly true in France.
They're definitely on the side of the lived to work,
side of things.
To the point that it's less common in France
for people to open a conversation with, so what do you do?
Yes.
In the UK, that's just like, we just get straight in with,
so what do you do?
Yeah. In France, it's less common,
and people I've noticed will introduce themselves
with personal information first.
They'll say they're age, they'll say,
whether they have children,
they talk about their family life a bit more,
whereas in the UK, we're just like, straight in with like,
what is your job, you know,
this is how we define ourselves?
Yeah. I think it's a paradox in many ways,
as well with the British,
because there is nothing that annoys,
you know, as English natives, you and I,
I find that nothing annoys other cultures,
literally every other culture in the world
that is not a native English nation,
is our indifference, our having to read between the lines.
I mean, what are we actually saying?
And the cultures that communicate directly,
it really winds them up.
Oh, yeah.
And I sympathize with this communication style,
because I think it really ties us in knots.
I mean, is it, is it, or isn't it, you know,
is it black or white?
Is it, you know, up or down?
But it's not, it's great.
It's in the middle, it's soft and mushy.
I think this is a real challenge,
even for natives to decipher this,
this sort of hedging element.
And so for those direct communicate,
the cultures that communicate directly,
it really presents a challenge for them.
That's a really good point,
because again, that's another scale of like,
direct to indirect or saying, you know,
someone says exactly what they mean,
versus someone talks,
expecting the other person to decode what they've said.
Because in the UK, yeah, we can be a bit indirect
and other cultures too,
are famously quite indirect, like the Japanese,
for example, where other people sometimes say
they don't know what their Japanese counterparts
actually think, you know, and it's actually the,
the Japanese or British people are communicating
with different codes.
So if, for example, you show me something
and I say, well, you know, like the example I always give
is when my wife, who's French,
wants to go to the castle where my parents live
and she, we're emailing and she says,
oh, you know, I'd like to go to the castle,
my dad replies by saying, well, we could go to the castle,
but, and she thinks we're going to the castle.
I'm like, what are you crazy?
Of course, we're not going,
do we read the same email?
Because I can decode, we could go to the castle,
but that means that actually we don't really want to go
to the castle.
My dad just doesn't want to be rude.
He just wants to keep things nice.
And so, yeah, like direct cultures in France
is a more direct culture than Britain.
And so, yeah, the French can get a bit annoyed by this.
Like, what do you really think?
Just say what you think for goodness sake.
And the Brits are like, we're just trying to be nice.
We're just trying to keep things nice, you know?
Like, you know, that's what we're trying to do.
And so the intention is to keep things sweet
and we're always trying to sugarcoat things, you know?
But for direct cultures, it can, exactly,
can be confusing.
You don't know exactly what we think.
But it's just because like,
there's no one knows how to read between the lines
of each other's communication style.
Yeah, agreed.
And I think it comes up a lot in networking, you know,
when you're asking another individual about, you know,
where they're from or what have they been doing.
And if you get this soft response of nothingness,
you find it difficult to latch onto anything.
Because you need something, you need a focal point
in that networking conversation to hold onto, you know,
the coffee, the temperature, the keynote speaker,
whatever it is.
But if you're not really laying anything down
through the other person, that makes it very hard work
for them to, like you said, do all the heavy lifting
and fight through that networking situation.
But it's also worth remembering that when you're talking
to a person, if you're starting to ask them
for their opinion on a thing,
the might actually be making it very difficult for them.
Because they might feel like I'm not in a position
to give my opinion on something,
like I don't want to say the wrong thing.
I don't have the right to give my opinion.
And, you know, this is another thing.
We have like opinion related cultures
where everyone's opinion is heard
and everyone's opinion is respected.
And there's nothing wrong with it
versus more hierarchical ones
where people know their place
and asking someone to give their opinion
on the keynote speaker is a bit like putting them
on the spot and they will feel very uncomfortable
about doing that.
So you've got to understand that sometimes
asking those direct questions
can make people feel very uncomfortable.
And so, you know, there is an art to kind of like
talking about nothing sometimes.
Yes, yeah, definitely.
Yeah, great point, absolutely great point.
It reminds me I was training a couple of individuals
who come across from Southeast Asia to Cambridge.
And we were doing the training for the interviews
and things and I was saying about
you've got to have an opinion here.
Like if somebody asks you your opinion,
you have to present something and then give a reason why.
And, you know, a couple of things,
what, why is the sky blue
or the sky is blue like making a statement
and their response or would be something like,
oh, yeah, well, I guess, you know, it is sort of blue
or it's the sky is multicolored.
And I'm like, oh, yeah, well, I guess they weren't challenging
anything and I said, well, in the British culture,
we have debating societies.
So even the most ridiculously obvious thing
will be debated at length.
It's almost like a sport.
You know, you come down to the debating club
and you debate it and it's again going back
to the cross-cultural communication.
It's something that is almost inherent in our communication
style in English is that things are sort of debated
and pulled apart a little bit and maybe sometimes
your opinion is sought.
But I completely agree with you about it would be uncomfortable
for cultures where they don't provide their opinion.
They want to be reserved.
They want to keep their cards close to their chest.
They want communicating this way
and that's certainly worth bearing in mind, yeah.
Yeah, so yeah, you got to be able to read the room,
read the people you're talking to.
And, you know, there's all the nonverbal stuff as well
and that includes things like the way
that we interact with other people's personal space.
In some cultures, they will stand quite close to each other.
There might be physical contact.
In other cultures, there's a lot more distance.
In some cultures, there's like the sort of macro level
of body language where everything's very demonstrative
and expressive and then other cultures
where their body language is much more minimal
and yet still significant.
So little facial expressions or small touches
can say as much as someone gesticulating with their hands.
And yeah, things like eye contact.
Eye contact, yeah.
Some cultures, it's like a sign of strength
and integrity to make eye contact and hold someone's eye contact
whereas in other cultures, that's challenging.
You don't do that.
That's like a challenge
and you don't expect someone to hold your eye as well
because they don't want to feel they're challenging you.
Yes.
And I mean, a lot of other things,
the way we exchange business cards.
Yeah, exchanging business cards here, that's a good one.
Do we still have business?
I mean, we're in the era of blooms, do things.
But yeah, you know, people do definitely, you know,
they go arms with business cards, you know,
in the arena, hurt networking,
just throwing them like Chinese, throwing stars sometimes.
It's very intense.
I think maybe we don't have business cards anymore.
I can't remember the last time someone gave me
their business cards to be fair.
Yes.
But anyway, there's loads of other things.
So you've got formality in names versus informality in names,
expressive versus restrained body language,
and large personal space versus close personal space.
Personal fulfillment.
So putting your individual sort of talking about
what you want and what you want to achieve,
putting that as priority over like the group fulfillment
and some cultures are much more collective
in the way that they see things, merit.
So emphasizing someone's merit, what they've achieved,
and what they've earned versus kind of someone's standing
in their group, welcoming risk, avoiding risk,
being innovative versus being traditional,
disagreeing openly versus more subtle disagreement,
multitasking versus linear tasking,
and then also food, like the way that we deal with food.
Yeah.
So lunchtime, for example, what's lunchtime in the UK
in an office environment?
What's it looked like?
Well, I mean, if you're working in office,
I mean, some people do a working lunch, don't they?
They just eat their sandwich over their keyboard
and it all gets quite messy quite quickly.
But in some other cultures,
this would be seen as obscene insulting in some ways
and that lunch should be taken in an establishment
that is geared up for eating.
You wouldn't bring something as delicious as food into work
and mix it with your technology.
It's an absurd.
So there's that. There's the kind of hygiene angle.
But actually from a French point of view,
the idea of just eating your sandwich at your computer
is kind of like, it's sort of like, it's a bit sad,
but also from a sort of HR point of view,
from the human resources management,
sort of like the employees' rights, human rights angle,
it's actually, it shouldn't be allowed,
like every member of staff has the right to at least one hour
and a proper lunch, hopefully provided by the company,
in the company cafeteria, a three-course meal,
plus coffee at the end.
So yeah, when I've worked at French companies teaching English,
you often end up in the cafeteria at lunch time
and it's like a 90-minute lunch.
I used to teach at the airports,
so it's Sheldon Gould and Allie airports.
I used to go and teach the various members of staff who work there.
And I would always be brought into the back of the airport
where there was a huge cafeteria
and there's like, it's unbelievable, Rob.
And it's not just the airports,
it's like loads of other companies in Paris
have got the same thing, these cafeterias,
these huge cafeterias, and there's different cues,
so there's one for the kind of meat counter,
there's one for the pizza area,
there's one for the salad bar,
there's all these different options,
and you can have a three-course meal, plus cheese,
and wine as well.
So wine as well?
There would be many bottles of wine available red and white.
So there's these guys working at the airport,
eating a full three-course meal with a salad, bowl,
and cheese, and a dessert like a chocolate moose dessert,
and they're drinking glasses of wine at lunch time at the airport.
That's the correct one.
Wow. I mean, talk about cross-culture.
I mean, this couldn't happen in the...
I mean, what did you sleep for the rest of the afternoon
after this three-course meal?
Well, no, you drink loads of coffee,
really strong coffee afterwards.
I'd just sleep all afternoon afterwards.
I'm actually with this wine at lunch time in the UK.
I think some people may take it a step too far.
Yeah, I mean, to be fair,
it doesn't happen all the time in France,
but it's definitely true.
You definitely see wine, and some people are taking it,
not that everyone does that.
But yeah, in the UK, it's not uncommon
to just sit at your computer with a sandwich,
and that might be just normal.
And so other stuff would be almost expected
to be answering emails maybe at lunch time,
and to be available,
but in France and similar cultures,
lunch time is when you do not do work,
you socialise.
I like that.
You know, I'm very much on the side of with that idea.
Is it something that we will be doing after the podcast today,
then perhaps we'll go out to wine bar somewhere?
And I'll take you to the Luke's English podcast,
cafeteria, where we have a range of different foods available.
There's sushi, there's, you know, whatever you want,
you know, just name it.
You can get a cabab, fish and chips, whatever you want.
One experience.
Yeah.
And so, you know,
so basically these national or cultural differences,
every culture exists somewhere, you know, on each scale.
And so it's worth just thinking about these things
if you're going to be doing business with another culture.
Educate yourself about the culture.
There's normally a lot of literature,
a lot of stuff that's been written in terms of advice,
if you're doing business with certain places.
Understand what you're going to be dealing with,
always be respectful.
You know, always try to be positive about the other culture.
Go into these situations as a curious person
who's really open to learning about other cultures.
You can explore the fact that you're different.
This is a great starting point where you compare one versus the other.
Try not to criticize.
I mean, I've had examples of students coming from different countries,
coming to London.
And because they were experiencing so much culture shock,
they couldn't help themselves.
They couldn't help criticizing the situation that they were in.
And talking about the food or the weather,
complaining about their, about the carpet in their homestay,
families house, talking even,
I even had students talking about the way that women in London
dressed and sort of making these disparaging comments.
And it was just absolutely terrible really
to hear that kind of thing.
So we, you know, when we experience culture shock,
often it manifests itself as a kind of like,
how do people live like this?
How do you do this?
And I've seen people having that conversation too,
like, but what do you have for breakfast?
Yes.
That kind of tone is...
100%.
No, it should just be like,
oh, that's really interesting.
Great.
So, and do you have this for breakfast?
You know, it should be more curious
rather than more like, I can't understand this.
How do you justify your culture?
Yes, absolutely.
Yeah, I mean, I would echo that.
Like you said, staying curious, staying inquisitive,
I mean, is one of the bottom lines
or the unspoken rules of communicating internationally?
Like, we've, we've, we've hammered already the point,
if you're speaking in English, yes, that's half the job,
but you now have an obligation to approach everything
with an open mind because you're now on the international stage
being judged by all the non-native speakers
interacting in that ecosystem.
So having the child's mind, you know, staying inquisitive,
you know, enjoying these new miraculous ideas
and discoveries that you may encounter,
I think this is very, very important.
Yeah, yes.
You've got to try and take the right approach
and be curious and open and so on.
What else, Rob?
What else can we add in terms of networking?
It's a very big subject.
I would, I would sort of bring it to a head
or draw it to a close in some ways,
but by providing like a singular concept of being inquisitive,
like, like we just mentioned, staying inquisitive
and be open-minded about whatever is happening.
I mean, networking, you can't network with yourself.
So by definition, there's always some,
at least one of the party involved.
And it's some sort of technique that I teach
on a lot of my courses or seminars
if I'm doing any sort of education at scale.
It's called a spotlight technique.
And that is basically throwing that spotlight
onto the other person.
And it is a game of you push it on them
and then they push it back on you.
And you are just constantly forcing this emphasis
and spotlight on the other person by asking those open
or closed questions and getting them to elaborate
on points about whatever it may be.
And something quite magic happens,
I think, in that process of even if you say very little,
the other person, so consciously,
is building that relationship with you
because they're talking about where they were at the weekend
and how long they've worked at the company.
And they can leave that conversation feeling like
they've got to know you very well
because they've been the one disclosing
this information to you.
And it's quite an interesting thing.
Yeah, building trust.
Yes, this is kind of, we active listening,
listening to what someone has said
and just accepting what they've said,
not putting any judgment on it,
but being totally open to what they say.
This really helps to make the other person feel trusted,
which is like the basis of any good relationship.
And active listening.
So this means you listen to the person
but you show them that you're listening.
And that's body language as well.
Again, I'll give examples of students I've seen in class
where I give speaking exercises.
And one student is back here.
They ask a question which I've provided
and the other student gives their answer and they go,
okay, next, which is terrible.
Instead, what they should be doing is leaning in
and kind of, with some sort of open facial expression
and listening to the person give their answer
and really showing that person that they are listening
and taking on board what they're saying.
And paraphrasing what they've said.
So when someone has said something, you kind of like,
just sort of repeat it back to them,
which again is a great way of showing that person
that you're really taking on board what they've been saying.
Yeah.
That repeating back to that,
I think they did some study in a restaurant
could have been in France actually about repeating
the waiters were two sort of set groups
about this social experiment where the waiters were either
not going to say anything at the end of the order
right and everything, but they delivered their food
and drink and the experience was very pleasant
in the restaurant, but the second controlled group,
the waiters were asked to repeat back the last three words
that the client, the customer had said
and they found some ridiculous increase in tips
at the end of this experiment.
Just by repeating the last couple of words
that somebody says to you, you find this engagement,
experience by the other person goes through the roof.
Absolutely, that's very interesting.
And I do like it when waiters repeat my order back to me.
So I said, I'll have this, this, this, and this and they go,
okay, so one of this, one of this, one of that, one of that,
okay, great.
And because you feel like, okay, that person has actually
taken on board what I said, they have listened,
they got it right.
And it just makes you feel a little bit more comfortable
and taken care of.
Yes.
Now we're not finished Rob because we're going to continue
this conversation on your podcast.
Indeed, indeed we are.
Because there's more stuff that we can talk about
in terms of networking.
I think we've got into quite a lot of good stuff.
We talked about the cross-cultural things.
We talked about breaking the ice.
We talked about the importance of active listening.
We talked about certain conversation starters,
the right kind of attitude that you should have
about being curious and interested and fascinated
in other people and seeing networking
not as a moment when you're going to be put on the spot,
but really a chance to find out a lot about some new people
that you have in front of you.
So we've talked about quite a lot of stuff,
but we're going to continue the conversation on your show.
By the way, how do people find your show?
How are they going to find this next part of our conversation?
So we are on all podcast platforms.
We are the Business English podcast
or the Business English podcast.com.
We should hopefully still be on page one
of a very popular search engine.
OK, and I'll put a link in the description as well
for the next part of this conversation.
So listen as you can just check the episode description.
You'll find a link there and that'll
be what you'll need to do next.
OK.
All right, Rob.
Good.
Appreciate you having me on the show today, Luke.
It's been an absolute blast.
Been fantastic.
Thank you.
Yeah, it's been good to talk about this subject.
I don't often talk about Business English on my podcast,
so it's really good to kind of get into the subject
for a change.
And I'm looking forward to part two of this.
Brilliant.
Thanks very much.
See you next time.
OK, so that was Rob from the Business English podcast.
And if you want to listen to the second half of this conversation
because we continue to talk about it, as you just heard me mention,
then you could listen to it on Rob's show.
The Business English podcast available wherever
you get your podcasts.
Also Rob's website, thebusinessenglishpodcast.com.
If you want to hear the rest of our conversation about networking,
and there are plenty of other comments and insights and bits
of advice and stuff on that subject.
Thanks again to Rob for contributing to this episode.
And Rob took the time to prepare comments and questions
and some structure for the episode.
So that was really nice of him.
I appreciate that.
Thanks a lot, Rob.
And everyone, so I hope you enjoyed this episode
and found it to be useful.
I think there was a lot of advice in there
and a lot of comments around the subject of networking
in English in an international context.
And the things you need to consider and some things you could do
and some specific things you can say
when you're trying to build relationships,
start up conversations, and generally get to know people,
either for work purposes because you're trying
to expand your professional network,
or maybe in non-business situations as well.
If you're just trying to get to know people
and just trying to expand your social circle,
I think a lot of the stuff that we talked about
is relevant to a variety of situations.
Leave your comments in the comments section.
I would like to know your thoughts on this whole subject.
First of all, your experiences.
Do you have experiences of networking in English internationally?
Talk about them.
What experiences do you have?
What things have you learned about doing this?
Do you have anything to add to the things
that you heard Rob and I talking about?
We'd love to know your thoughts.
So just leave your thoughts in the comments section.
But otherwise, I'll let you go ahead and listen
to part two of this.
All right then.
This is basically it then.
This is pretty much the end of the episode.
And let's see.
Thanks for the responses to last week's episode.
It was nice to know that people enjoyed listening to that.
That was the three hour plus ramble,
which was called still-rambling.
It's no longer raining,
but I am still rambling.
Look, I'm still doing it.
I can't stop apparently.
But yeah, it was nice to get some comments and stuff
from people who enjoyed that episode.
Let's see.
A lot of people made it all the way through to the end,
even though there was about three hours and 19 minutes of it.
A lot of people made it to the end.
And people were leaving comments about the piece of cake
that was left on my desk for about 24 hours.
Not covered, not in a...
What would you call those boxes?
Those plastic boxes, I can't remember,
Tupperware, not sealed inside a Tupperware box.
Not put in the fridge, not kept in a cool dark place.
Just left on my desk for about 24 hours, half eaten.
A lot of people were wondering,
what happened, Luke?
What happened with the cake?
Well, no, I didn't eat that.
I that went in the bin.
The cake went in the bin.
I didn't want to risk it.
To be honest, the cake was already not...
It wasn't the most delicious cake already.
It was already a little bit dry anyway.
But after all that time, it was just...
I had a taste of it and I thought, no,
I probably shouldn't risk it.
I don't know.
Is it a risk to eat a piece of cake
that's been left out for 24 hours, 23 hours?
Is that a risk?
Probably not.
It's probably not that deadly, is it?
But anyway, I just didn't fancy it.
So I thought, what am I going to do?
I've got nothing to wrap it up in.
I would take it home and wrap it up and take it home
and then put it in the fridge
and enjoy it with a cup of tea or something later.
But I didn't have anything.
The simple solution was just to get rid of it.
So I'm really sorry to everyone who...
For the cake lovers out there who were like,
no, you should never discard uneaten cake.
It did go in the bin.
But anyway, it was nice to see that a lot of people
got to the end and they were leaving comments about the cake.
Also about the music as well.
It was nice to talk about the guitars and stuff in this room
and stuff like that and to do a song at the end.
But you know what?
I've got to stop doing songs on the podcast.
I do.
I have to stop doing them because you know why?
Especially on YouTube, they get flagged.
They get copyright restrictions on them.
Because obviously those songs are, you know,
the rights to those songs are owned by companies or people.
And so if I sing a song on YouTube,
then that episode often gets demonetized.
Which means that probably the record company
who owns the rights to the song,
they claim the rights to monetize the video.
So they say you can publish this, but you can't monetize it.
So every time I do that, I don't earn any revenue
from those little automatic ads that you get.
Or if you're a YouTube premium subscriber,
you know, I also get a little tiny bit of revenue per view.
But if there's a copyright restriction,
then I get no money at all.
So essentially just sort of podcasting for free
whenever I do that.
Just for the pure love of the music.
So I don't know.
I don't think I should continue doing that.
It's not wise is it really from a, just from,
not just a business point of view,
just from every point of view, you know, why should I,
why should, you know, that's going to cost me quite a lot of money.
I need that money.
I need to buy baguettes, you know, and stuff like that.
So I don't know, maybe I need to start another YouTube channel.
I have actually got another YouTube channel.
I have actually already got one where I play music
and just do cover versions and play along to songs
on the bass guitar and stuff like that.
So maybe in the future, if I want to do more songs,
I can just do them on that channel, which, you know,
which doesn't really make any money from ad revenue.
There's about 12 subscribers on there
because no one knows about it.
The channel is called L'oucoulรฉe Lee.
It's like ukulele, but L'oucoulรฉe Lee, you see?
See what I did?
I'll leave a link to it in the description.
I mean, there's not very much there.
There aren't really many things there at the moment.
It's just a few kind of bass guitar videos,
but I'll leave a link to that in the description
that maybe if I did songs, I could just put them on there instead
and that could be a separate thing.
But anyway, what do you think?
What do you think?
It's a pity, isn't it, really?
Because it's nice to sing songs.
It's nice to do that.
But maybe it's time to call it a day
on the songs, on the podcast, which, you know,
again, also a pity because I had several episodes planned
all about certain songs where we would explore the lyrics
and explore the story behind the song and stuff like that.
I think it's okay to read out the lyrics,
especially if I'm, you know, doing it for educational purposes,
like explaining the words and stuff.
I think that's okay, but I wouldn't be able
to actually play the song.
Maybe that's, maybe this, maybe it's for the best.
Maybe it's for the best, because I wouldn't want to sort of
destroy those otherwise beautiful pieces of music
by doing my own special cover versions of them.
So maybe it's for the best.
Anyway, it's time for me to stop rambling, right?
It's stop raining, so I should stop rambling.
And in fact, go and eat some lunch.
And I will not be having a three-course meal with cheese
and a side salad and a glass of wine.
I'm not going to, that's not,
it's, people don't do that every day in France.
I didn't want to give the impression that, for example,
at the airports near Paris, that all the members of staff
are getting drunk on wine.
I mean, that's absolutely not the case, of course.
But certainly wine is available,
and it's normal in cafeterias that wine is available,
but not everyone's drinking it.
And people are very responsible, you know,
it's just like a small glass of wine, just to, you know,
this is the lifestyle in France.
This is the way to live, isn't it?
And it's not like in the UK where you have one drink
and then you're like, let's go crazy,
let's go out on the lash.
And then everyone's binge drinking and, you know,
it's like a Friday night in the town center
of any English town.
No, in France, there are a lot more controlled
and reasonable about it.
It's more just like just enjoying a nice moment
and enjoying the taste of a nice glass of wine
with your, whatever it is,
whatever French food that you're eating.
Anyway, time for me to stop this now.
Okay, thank you for watching.
Thank you for listening.
Don't forget to like and subscribe
if you're watching on YouTube.
If you're listening to the podcast,
it would be lovely if you could write a nice review
of this show.
Maybe if you're using Apple podcasts,
you could use the Apple Podcasts page
to write a review of this show.
That would be wonderful.
It really helps.
It helps massively if people leave reviews of the show.
And so yeah, all right, good.
Lovely, have a lovely morning, afternoon, evening, night,
wherever you are in the world.
And I will speak to you next time,
but for now, it's just time to say goodbye.
Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye, bye.
Thanks for listening to Luke's English podcast.
For more information, visit teacherluke.co.uk.
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