Business English 360 | Business English Pod

Skills 360 – Time Management 1: Prioritizing and Scheduling

Welcome back to the Business English Skills 360 podcast for today’s lesson on time management.

When we talk about “management” and “managers,” we’re usually thinking about managing people. And that involves many different skills. But all these skills are useless if the manager can’t manage his or her own self. So good management starts with good self-management. And an essential part of self-management is managing your time effectively, which in turn depends on effective scheduling.

So, as a manager, how do you set a schedule that works? Well, that starts with prioritizing. You can think of tasks on two dimensions: importance and urgency. The first key to good time management is avoiding things that are neither urgent nor important. That includes daily distractions, trivial tasks, and anything minor that simply wastes time. The second key is to minimize things that seem urgent but are not important. A lot of meetings, emails, phone calls, and interruptions fall into this category.

Lesson Resources: Lesson Module | Quiz & Vocab | PDF Transcript

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Skills 360 – Socializing 2: Following up with Contacts

Business English, Business Skills 360, Socializing / July 5, 2021

Welcome back to the Business English Skills 360 podcast for today’s lesson on networking and following up with new contacts.

Good relationships are cultivated. They don’t just happen on their own. And if you make new business contacts – whether that’s at a conference, a networking event, or on the subway – don’t wait until you run into them by accident again. You need to follow up.

Lesson Resources: Lesson Module | Quiz & Vocab | PDF Transcript

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Skills 360 – Socializing 1: Meeting New People

Business English, Business Skills 360, Socializing / June 20, 2021

Welcome back to the Business English Skills 360 podcast for today’s lesson on socializing and meeting new people.

For some, meeting new people seems to come very naturally. But for most of us, it can be a bit awkward, or intimidating, to walk into a room full of strangers and try to strike up a conversation. Knowing that it’s important to network doesn’t make it easy. And with the return to some sort of normalcy in many countries, there’s even more pressure to beef up our social skills. So where to start?

In this Business English Skills 360 lesson, we’ll look at five ways to boost your confidence and make socializing in English more comfortable:

1. Change your mindset
2. Ask questions
3. Find common areas of interest
4. Make it easy to participate in the conversation
5. Be genuine

Lesson Resources: Lesson Module | Quiz & Vocab | PDF Transcript

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Skills 360 – Adapting to Change (Part 2)

Business English, Business Skills 360, Management English / January 31, 2021

Welcome back to the Business English Skills 360 podcast for today’s lesson on how to adapt to an ever-changing world.

Our world has been undergoing massive changes. And it’s not just the global pandemic that has wreaked havoc on the economy. There’s political turmoil, rapidly evolving technology, climate change, and calls for greater social justice. Our work and workplaces look and feel different because of this. There’s less travel, increased automation, more remote work, and moves toward greater equity and inclusion.

Nobody’s untouched by these changes. But not everybody is equally adept at dealing with them. Now, more than ever, we need to learn to accept, if not embrace, volatility, uncertainty and ambiguity. If you’re waiting for the world to go back to the way it was in 2019, you’re going to be sorely disappointed.

Lesson Resources: Lesson Module | Quiz & Vocab | PDF Transcript

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Skills 360 – Adapting to Change (Part 1)

Business English, Business Skills 360, ESL Podcast, Management English / January 18, 2021

Welcome back to the Business English Skills 360 podcast for today’s lesson on adapting to change.

You might have heard that “change is the only constant,” meaning nothing ever stays the same. That’s easy to say, but not always easy to deal with. Many of us like certainty and stability. We get comfortable and we want to stay that way. But being comfortable shouldn’t mean being complacent, especially in today’s world.

Change doesn’t always happen at the same pace. These days, change seems so fast. And the COVID-19 pandemic has introduced new uncertainties and has accelerated certain trends, like the move toward remote work. Many industries have been battered. And the fact that people are tired of the word “pivot” only demonstrates how the pace of change has accelerated.

Lesson Resources: Lesson Module | Quiz & Vocab | PDF Transcript

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