Hello and welcome back to Business English Pod. My name’s Edwin, and I’ll be your host for today’s lesson on business English idioms for talking about relationships.
They say that success in business is all about relationships. Certainly, your success in a particular workplace is greatly dependent on how you relate to those around you. That includes your colleagues, your collaborators, your staff, and your bosses. If you don’t develop good relationships, then it probably doesn’t matter how great your work is.
Relationships aren’t just important, they’re also interesting. What do you and your colleagues talk about when you chat socially? A lot of your conversations are probably about the people at your workplace. Who isn’t getting along, who is getting along a little too well, who doesn’t like who, and who is being a bit too nice to everyone.
Whatever kind of relationships you’re talking about, there are hundreds of English idioms you can use. If you listened to our 925 English lesson on describing people, then you learned some useful basic expressions. In this lesson, we’ll take that to the next level with some great idioms for describing relationships.
In the dialog, we’ll hear a conversation between three colleagues: Brooke, Mark, and Ivan. They work for an insurance company that has just put together a new team to work on a new product. The three colleagues are keen to talk about the complex web of relationships among the people on this team.
Listening Questions
1. What is the relationship between Chuck and Dave?
2. What does Brooke think will change between Dave and Anna?
3. What’s the relationship between Becky and Dave?
Download: Podcast MP3
