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BEP 191 – Getting Your Ideas Across in Meetings (3)

Business English, Communication, English for Meetings /

English Meeting Dialogue

This is the third and final part of our Business English Pod series on getting your ideas across in meetings.

Meetings in English are a great opportunity to get your ideas across and influence other people. But doing that is no easy task. You need the right combination of tact, frankness, confidence, and humility. And you need some effective language techniques to manage that combination.

In today’s lesson, we’re going to look at several advanced techniques for expressing your ideas and commenting on other people’s opinions. These include leading into opinions, highlighting consequences, and redirecting a discussion. A lot of these techniques revolve around agreeing and disagreeing. We’ve looked at many of these in the first two parts, and today we’ll continue by learning about strongly agreeing and disagreeing with negative questions.

We’ve been listening to a dialog among four managers who have to find ways of reducing travel and transportation benefits by 15%. They are continuing their debate on how best to achieve this goal. Let’s listen as the chairperson Alison leads the discussion with Stewart, Pat, and Nate.

Listening Questions

1. What idea does Pat believe is easier to sell to employees?
2. What is Stewart’s concern about Pat’s idea?
3. What does Alison suggest doing?

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BEP 190 – Getting Your Ideas Across in Meetings (2)

Business English, Communication, English for Meetings /

English Meetings - Expressing your Ideas 2

This Business English Pod lesson is the second of our three-part series on expressing your ideas clearly and tactfully in meetings.

Meetings are a great opportunity to present your ideas and become engaged in the decision-making process. Meetings often involve open-ended discussion among different types of people. For this reason, there is no easy formula that will guarantee success. Instead, you need to develop a range of skills and techniques that will help you express your ideas clearly and tactfully.

In our last episode, we looked at giving, supporting, and contradicting opinions. In today’s lesson, we’ll cover more techniques of agreeing and disagreeing. We’ll also learn how to change the scope of a meeting, which is an especially important skill for the chairperson.

Last time, we heard four managers – Alison, Stewart, Pat, and Nate – discussing how to reduce travel and transportation benefits. Today we will continue that dialog. The situation becomes a little more heated as the participants express their ideas with more force.

Listening Questions

1. What does the CEO of the company want to focus on?
2. How does Alison respond to Stewart’s ideas?
3. What does Nate think about Stewart’s ideas?

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BEP 189 – Getting Your Ideas Across in Meetings (1)

Business English, Communication, English for Meetings /

English Meeting Phrases

This is the first in a three-part Business English Pod series on getting your ideas across in meetings in english.

Meetings are an important part of most people’s jobs. And doing well in meetings requires very effective communication skills. You need to make sure you are getting your ideas across clearly with the right amount of subtlety and tact. If you do this well, then you will be able to influence people and the direction of the organization you work with.

So, how can you get your ideas across with tact and clarity? That’s what we will look at in this lesson. We’ll cover some important ways of giving opinions of differing strength. And we’ll learn about supporting and contradicting other people’s opinions.

In today’s dialogue, four managers are meeting to discuss ways of saving money on travel expenses. The chair of the meeting is Alison. The other participants are Stewart from sales, Pat from HR, and Nate from marketing. We’ll hear the group express a variety of opinions as they discuss how to cut 15% from the travel budget.

Listening Questions

1. What are three things that Pat mentions could be cut?
2. What does Pat think they should focus on?
3. Why does Stewart disagree with Pat?

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Skills 360 – Selling your Ideas (Part 2)

Business English, Business Skills 360, Communication, Persuasion /

Welcome back to the Business Skills 360 podcast. In this lesson, we’ll look at some more tips and techniques for selling your ideas.

Now, you know your ideas are good, but how do others? You need to make them think or even just feel that they are good. Last week, we looked at some techniques you can use. In this show, we’ll look at attitudes that you can adopt. This isn’t exactly about what you say, it’s about how you say it and the feelings or impressions your delivery creates.

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Skills 360 – Selling your Ideas (Part 1)

Business English, Business Skills 360, Communication, Persuasion /

Welcome back to the Business Skills 360 podcast. In this lesson, we’re going to take a look at how to ”˜sell’ your ideas and be persuasive.

You may be full of great ideas, but exactly how do you get people to buy into them? How do you get people on board with your brilliant plans? Well, today I want to share a few tools and techniques that will help you do just that.

These tools and techniques have two important effects: they build connections and they build credibility. The connections can be between you and your listeners, but they can also be between your listeners and your idea. Those connections will generate buy-in. And that credibility can be your credibility and your idea’s credibility. You, and your idea, have to be believable and trustworthy.

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