Business English Communication Skills
All Business English lessons for communicating in English. Our English communications skills lessons are listed below with the newest lessons first.
Communication
Business English communication lessons for communicating in english for business and work. Learn how to communicate in English professionally.
Skills 360 – How to Overcome Cognitive Bias
Welcome back to the Business English Skills 360 podcast as we continue learning about cognitive bias. In this lesson, we’ll look at how to deal with the biases that impact our decision-making.
Trusting your gut and making quick decisions might work in some cases. But if you think your decision-making ability is based on perfect reasoning and complete information, well you’re wrong. You’re only human after all. And your decision-making machinery is flawed. In our last lesson, we had a closer look at exactly the kinds of biases that lead to suboptimal decisions. So how can you overcome these biases?
It’s a question that every good manager should be asking themselves. And making better decisions while avoiding biases comes down to a few key things: awareness, curiosity, and evidence. Let’s start with awareness. Now, if you tuned in to our last lesson when we talked about different types of bias, then you’re already on the right track.
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Skills 360 – What is Cognitive Bias?
Welcome back to the Business English Skills 360 podcast for today’s lesson on cognitive bias. These are factors that affect our ability to make good decisions and reasonable judgments.
Cognitive biases are factors that can negatively impact our decision-making and judgments. We make numerous decisions daily, ranging from significant ones like hiring employees to minor ones deciding where to go to lunch. These decisions often rely on intuition, information, and others’ perspectives. However, biases, which are unconscious tendencies, can lead to suboptimal decisions.
One common bias is the confirmation bias, where we focus on information that supports our existing beliefs and ignore contradictory evidence. This can cause us to become entrenched in incorrect views. Another is the sunk-cost fallacy, where we stick to a decision due to prior investments, even when it’s not the best choice.
The halo effect and horns effect are biases where one trait of a person influences our overall perception of them, often leading to misjudgments. For example, attractiveness can be wrongly equated with competence, while negative traits can overshadow a person’s capabilities.
Intuition can sometimes mislead us, making data crucial for decisions. However, biases like sample size neglect, where we draw conclusions from insufficient data, can still occur. Availability bias makes us overestimate the likelihood of recent events, such as fearing flying after hearing about a crash despite its relative safety.
The planning fallacy leads us to underestimate the time needed for tasks, often because we consider only the best-case scenarios. Recognizing these biases is the first step to mitigating their effects.
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Skills 360 – Adapting your Communication Style (2)
Welcome back to the Business English Skills 360 podcast for today’s lesson on how to adapt your communication style to different situations.
No doubt you’re aware of different communication styles, but do you think everyone has just one style? More likely your style on a good day looks different from your style on a bad day. Your style during a regular staff meeting might be different from a meeting where you’re going to read the riot act. Indeed, your style in a crisis should be different from your day-to-day communication.
Clearly, different situations require different approaches and different kinds of language. And underlining everything here is the importance of relationships. If you’re a solo entrepreneur working with your own money and with no staff, well, chances are you’re not listening to a podcast about communication styles!
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Skills 360 – Adapting your Communication Style (1)
Welcome back to the Business English Skills 360 podcast for today’s lesson on adapting your communication style to your audience.
Think about the different conversations you had at work yesterday, with your boss, with colleagues, with clients, and with your direct reports. Think about how those people spoke to you. Guaranteed, you will notice that these different people had different communication styles. One person might have been cheery and chatty while another was brusque and efficient.
Now, think about how you responded to these people. Was your communication style consistent in all situations? Probably not. And it shouldn’t be! The best workplace communicators are adaptable. They change their style to suit the situation and the audience. And that adaptability is critical for success.
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Skills 360 – Top 10 Business English Skills (2)
Welcome back to Business English Skills 360 for today’s lesson on the top 10 business English skills.
In our last lesson, I focused on small talk and English conversation skills such as expressing opinions, asking questions, rejecting ideas, and getting action. Of course, conversation is what comes to mind when someone talks about language skills. But a lot of our English communication is not conversation, per se. Your skill set has to include a lot more than expressing opinions, agreeing, disagreeing, and making small talk.
Imagine for a second that you’re delivering a presentation in English or conducting a training session. What kind of skills do you need in those situations? Well, one thing you need to master is talking about how something happens or how something is done. By that I mean describing a process or giving instructions.
The key skill here is what we call sequencing, or putting your ideas in a logical order and making that order clear to your audience. To do this, you might use simple words like first, second, third, next, and finally. But you might also use expressions like “at this point, meanwhile, and subsequently. Using this kind of language helps you organize your ideas, and you’ll be less likely to lose your audience.
Connecting words aren’t limited to processes and instructions. Adept English speakers will use all sorts of words to connect their ideas and structure a good argument. Think about proposing an idea to your boss. Will you rattle on and hope he picks up the thread of what you’re trying to say? Or will you present a cohesive and persuasive argument using expressions like because of this, therefore, nevertheless, and furthermore?
Now I am not suggesting that you pepper your speech with these kinds of words just to sound intelligent. There’s a time and place for these formal expressions. But the importance of organizing your ideas holds true in any situation. And in more casual circumstances, you can simply rely more on simpler words like and, but, and so.
Besides presentations or training, another important situation with a special skill set is bargaining, or negotiating in English. And I’m not just talking about high-level talks on corporate partnerships or negotiating a major business deal. Any situation that involves give and take, cooperation, or compromise involves a kind of bargaining.
Maybe you and a colleague are trying to design a website together. Or you and your boss are trying to figure out a work schedule. Or you are trying to get two of your employees to agree on a project budget. These are all situations that demand bargaining skills. You need to acknowledge both sides and propose trade-offs. Often this requires you to make conditional sentences, using words like if, unless, and as long as. And if those statements are hypothetical, you’ll have to make sure you get a handle on important helping verbs like would and could.
I’ve talked a lot today about organizing your ideas, and about situations that require clarity of information. This brings me to another essential skill: summarizing. What happens after you’ve presented a clear and logical argument, or you’ve negotiated a compromise in a meeting? Well, you need to ensure everyone can latch on to the main ideas. That’s when you summarize.
You might hear a summary introduced with expressions like to sum up, or let’s recap briefly. But the real skill is figuring out what those main ideas or points are and then stating them concisely. You can’t repeat everything that was said verbatim. You need to distill only what is essential and paraphrase ideas appropriately.
Now before I do exactly that with my own ideas for this lesson, I’ve got one more essential but challenging skill for you: speaking clearly. You probably know some people who seem to just have a knack for clear speech. But it’s not just innate talent. You can learn to sound clear too, if you put in the time and effort.
So practice correct pronunciation. Try to enunciate clearly, even when it doesn’t feel natural for your mouth to make certain shapes or sounds. It gets easier with practice. But if you mumble, or don’t make the effort to try to produce the right sounds and intonation, then it doesn’t matter what you say, because people won’t be able to understand you.
Now how about that summary? I’ve covered five essential skills for every ace English speaker. First, there’s the ability to present a sequence or step-by-step instructions. Next is the skill of connecting your ideas logically. Then there’s bargaining and summarizing. And finally, you need to work on your pronunciation and intonation.
Lesson Resources: Lesson Module | Quiz & Vocab | PDF TranscriptDownload: Podcast MP3