L'une des raisons les plus courantes de tenir une réunion est de résoudre un problème. A meeting can be a great place to do this, because it is possible for a variety of people with different experiences and perspectives to work together to identify the problem and come up with possible solutions.

Mais, alors que nous pourrions avoir les bonnes personnes à la réunion, le processus est souvent vicié car une question n'a pas été clairement posée et n'a pas reçu de réponse: "Quel est le problème?” So, in today’s episode we’re going to focus on how to define the problem through discussion and then restate the problem as a challenge. In the second part of this series, we’ll look at how to evaluate and eliminate suggestions and then agree on a plan of action.

We’ll be listening to Kathryn, the head of Human Resources at a medium-sized company, who is meeting with department heads to discuss a problem they’re having with low staff morale across all departments of the company. Morale is a word used to describe a general feeling or mood.

Kathryn wants everyone to consider possible hidden reasons for low morale at the company. We’ll see how she helps participants focus on breaking down the morale problem. Au démarrage de la boîte de dialogue, Kathryn calls everyone to attention and begins the meeting.

Questions d'écoute:

1) What is the surface problem that Kathryn and the others can see?
2) What does the group decide is the true cause of this problem?
3) What is the challenge that the group faces at the end of the dialog?

*** Cette leçon fait partie de notre EBook en anglais des affaires pour les réunions: Les essentiels des réunions. Membres Premium cliquez ici pour télécharger le livre électronique complet.

Download: Podcast MP3

As a non-native speaker of English, you might often find yourself in situations like this: You’re sitting in a meeting or a teleconference, and some of the participants are native English speakers. They are speaking with one another very rapidly, and they are using some idiomatic or difficult-to-understand expressions. Someone says something you don’t understand, or perhaps something that is not true or that you disagree strongly with. You should interrupt to ask what they mean, to clarify, to correct – but you just can’t bring yourself to open your mouth. How do you start? How do you interrupt?

That’s the focus of today’s Business English podcast lesson. We’ll be studying useful language and expressions for interrupting and for resisting or stopping interruption.

The listening takes place in an internal meeting at Strand Technologies, a Hong Kong-based OEM of portable electronic devices, mainly MP3 and MP4 players. OEM stands for “original equipment manufacturer.” It refers to companies that manufacture other companies’ products for them. In this internal meeting, all three participants know each other well so the language is more informal and direct. Pendant que vous écoutez, pay attention to how they use assertive language to interrupt each other in order to keep the meeting on track and arrive at positive result more quickly.

Questions d'écoute

1) What does Bill mean when he says they’re facing a “bottleneck?” What is the bottleneck?
2) Why can’t Bill just retrain the engineers he has?
3) What is Mei Lin’s suggestion to speed up the recruitment process?

*** Cette leçon fait partie de notre EBook en anglais des affaires pour les réunions: Les essentiels des réunions. Membres Premium cliquez ici pour télécharger le livre électronique complet.

Download: Podcast MP3