334. Business English Native Speakers Use (Explained Simply)

So let's dive in and look at the problem we're tackling today.

And this is something I hear all the time from clients, and I bet that you experience something similar too.

"Anna, I can follow more or less in the meetings, and then a native speaker comes along and suddenly I've lost everything." Isn't it ironic that actually sometimes native speakers can be the worst communicators? Not because they're trying to make life difficult for you.

Often it's just simply a lack of awareness, a lack of understanding that actually, you know, communicating in another language is quite challenging.

I do want to challenge you here though on something that I've seen can really knock professionals' confidence.

Often what I find with clients is it's almost as if they give native speakers a level of authority or superiority just because they're a native speaker.

If this is a belief that you feel you have, I'd really encourage you to try to look at it differently.

You're both in the same room.

You're both trying to solve the same problem.

You both have a role to play.

Having said that, even if you can't necessarily control how they speak, and unless you want to bring it up with them and talk about perhaps how you could communicate better, which I know could be a little bit awkward in some situations, what is within your control is to learn some of the most common business phrases so that you don't have or at least you increase the likelihood of having that really horrible feeling where you can't really follow what's being said.

Maybe you get that kind of fight or flight situation.

You're just trying to catch up.

You're survival mode, let's say.

The challenge for you as well as a senior manager is you're often not in a meeting in a passive role just to listen and you, you know, take notes.

That would be great.

You're there to add value, influence the discussion, ask questions, make decisions.

So of course, if you're not following what's being said, that's an issue.

And I totally understand that that could leave you feeling very anxious and frustrated.

But let's try and take some practical steps to address that today.

I've cherry-picked my list of difficult business phrases, and for each one I'm gonna explain what it means, the simple version, the origin, if that's interesting and relevant, and any tricks about how to remember it and nuances when you use it.

And stick around for the last one because it's a little bit of a funny one.

Might be a little bit rude, but I think you'll find it quite entertaining.

Here we go.