How to Handle Awkward Moments in Advanced English with Anna Connelly • BEP 80

as every non-native English professional knows when the dialogue is flowing and everything is on track things just feel right your head's in the game you're in

the zone with that silky smooth fluency and you are feeling pretty confident about the whole experience this is the stuff of Legends these are the moments

we dream about as a non-native speaker of any language that fluidity of communication that just does the trick

but nothing can vaporize that feeling of awesome like your colleague turning around seconds before walking into a meeting and asking you if you have a

backup copy of the presentation because he has forgotten his or sending the draft document to key stakeholders instead of the final version or even

accidentally hanging up on your boss halfway through her video presentation to the investors now I wish these examples were the stuff of Legends but

these are Bonafide situations that some of our listeners have actually found themselves in on the this is bad scale

these all score right at the top end so this begs the question what can a professional do in these situations or perhaps more importantly for us what can

we say a truly difficult question and one that can befuddle even the most most accomplished senior professionals so today I will not be attempting this task

alone oh no for today I will be joined by a very special guest a professional that lives and breathes these types of high stakes high pressure communication

challenges an incredibly skilled and talented professional Communicator in the business English space I am of course talking about Anna from confident

English with Anna podcast so with the stage set let's get amongst it ladies and gentlemen welcome to the

business English podcast helping professionals communicate more effectively more confidently and with

impact with your host Rob from energetic English let's get down to [Music] business okay welcome ladies and

gentlemen to another enthralling podcast episode to do with business English today we're going to be talking about Pro phrases for Awkward Moments and I'm

joined by my very special guest as I mentioned previously it is Anna the one and only Anna from confident business English with Anna podcast Anna welcome

to the show hi Rob thank you so much for having me it's great to be here yeah it's great to have you here so awkward moments those really unavoidable moments during business business English

communication what are your thoughts on these moments are they a natural thing and should Learners really expect to encounter them even in the early stages that is a wonderful question Rob and I

think we can say that awkward moments happen to absolutely everybody in our personal lives in business they happen all the time so don't worry if they happen to you when you're speaking in

English they happen to everybody yeah completely agree it's something that we really have to just shoulder as professionals working on the international business stage they can't

be avoided So today we're going to be diving into a couple of scenarios you know we I touched on a few during the introduction just to sort of give some

context to the audience about which awkward moments we're referring to we want to really look at what we can say or how we can deal with these moments have you got any advice I think we'll

cover two sections today so firstly any opening comments or advice that you have for our listeners today on handling those awkward moments I think the biggest piece of advice I would say is

that when these awkward moments happen we tend to get very flustered people catch us off guard we're not expecting it and so it you tend to go into a bit

of a short circuit mode and especially in English if you're not expecting it and you haven't had that awkward moment before sometimes it can be a bit difficult to manage so my biggest piece

of advice is just take a breath if it happens and try not to rush too much into what you say easier said than done

I admit but just taking a second to think about it or as we're going to have a look at today knowing some nice little short phrases that can fill the

space great great that is fantastic advice so as I outlined during the introduction I want to provide that first scenario and really your thoughts on this scenario so just as a quick

reminder your colleague turning around seconds before walking into a meeting and asking if you have a backup copy of the presentation because he has

forgotten his this would be an awkward situation to be in Anna how would you handle this this moment lovely question I guess it depends whether we want to help them or not but we're going to

imagine that we want to help this person nice again coming back to what I said before it's like a short quick phrase if somebody says oh I'm really sorry have you got have you got a copy you're running into the meeting right now

you're in a rush maybe you hadn't thought that anybody was going to ask you that what I would say is here are a couple of really short phrases that you could learn that would help you in this

type of situation and also similar ones even though these sentences seem basic or simple sometimes the shortest phrases and quickest phrases are the hardest

ones to do even though they don't have conflict vocabulary or grammar so let me run you through some of these These are what popped into my head when I was thinking about this awkward situation so imagine they come up to you they ask you

for the the copy if you have a spare copy you could say sure here you go great absolutely here you are great no problem all

yours of course here you are if you don't have a spare one one thing I would say one alternative you can use rather than saying sorry is I'm

afraid a lot of people don't use this one as much as they should that's a great one that's really good yeah so for example you could say um I'm afraid I don't have one on me and then what I

would recommend is offering a solution after that with either a question or a comment so you could say I'm afraid I don't have one on me would you like to

share mine great or it could be I'm afraid I don't have a spare one you might be able to get one from John so offering a solution with either a

would you like or maybe even a sentence there as I use with May or might so I'll give you one more example it could be I'm afraid I don't have a spare copy

spare is extra by the way great you might be able to ask Sarah to print one offer you so there's some examples of what you can do if you have a spare one or you don't a nice quick sentence that

you could do in that situation that fantastic advice there about you know just offering that suggestion providing that safety net maybe and it is a suggestion and I think

that really takes off the square edges to the situation you're already feeling as if you're in a little bit of a hole as it is so giving a suggestion maybe

rounding off those square corners really helps facilitate and ease the situation that is currently unraveling fairly quickly by the sounds of it poor guy I wouldn't want to be in that position but

the way that you handled that if you said that to me I would feel very calm after it's like okay at least somebody is in control somebody's organized and that's the point trying to

stay calm and that's what comes back to my point I was saying before Rob about taking a breath trying not to get too flustered easier said than done I appreciate that but just by staying calm

that helps the whole situation stay calm essentially so we want to try and aim for that always with business Communications even if sometimes we feel flustered or a little bit out of control

great yeah fantastic advice really like that one okay I do have another scenario for you and again these scenarios as I mentioned previously I haven't just

picked them out of thin air it's a number of real life scenarios that I have dealt with with clients of mine so one particular client was dealing with

an issue as he had sent a draft document A draft copy of the document to fairly important key stakeholders instead of the final version now I don't know if

any of the listeners or yourself have ever been in this situation but I imagine your world is slowly coming to an end as the light at the end of the

tunnel is being turned off I think so do you have any advice for somebody in this horrendous scenario of sending out this draft document instead of the final

version well I think we've all been there Rob I can appreciate that feeling where you know you send out maybe a communication to the whole company and the link is wrong or you know it's it's

not a nice feeling again my first thing would be relax take a breath because sometimes we go into panic mode and then we have a kneejerk reaction where maybe

we start sending a writing an email straight away one thing I would say is do you have to send the final version I mean that would be another question is

is it salvageable yes maybe you don't have to but if you do one thing I would recommend and I would like to share a framework here actually because I think

one of the difficult things about emails is that when you have these difficult ones that you have to send it's how long it takes you to write them which maybe might be quite a long time because you're worried about making more

mistakes and especially in this example you're like I don't want to make any more mistakes I'm already really embarrassed and also if you have a framework that you can follow it's going to save you time when you have to write

emails like this so I would like to to share with you all a lovely framework which you can use which is by a guy called Chris fenning he wrote a book

called effective emails and this book changed the way I write emails so his framework is basically about making sure that people know from

the subject when they pops into their inbox they can see exactly what the the email is about and exactly what they have to do that's point being that we

receive so many emails all the time like these key stakeholders in your example Rob we see receive so many emails all the time you have to let people know what they need to do and why it's

important because let's be honest otherwise they're just going to put it in the archive or they're going to delete it or they're not going to respond to it or they're not going to respond in the way that you want so if I can start with two things that he talks

about with the subject line he says in every subject line on every email you need to include the topic the purpose and if necessary something

about the urgency of the email excellent excellent for example we probably all received an email where it says something like report new report imagine

the person responding to this email to the key stakeholder says new report and it's like okay what does that mean what do I have to do is it the new version are you sending me do I need to delete

the old version they don't know so for example if we're using the framework for this specific situation it could be something along the lines of document X

the name of the document please delete previous version latest version included great' got that in the subject they know exactly what the email is about it's

super clear and hopefully then the chances of them getting that new version quicker are higher yes I I really think

that the the clarity of the situation really helps elev at to get rid of that tension that you've created in your error maybe your mistake through sending

out that email with the wrong link or the wrong draft or Whatever It Is by communicating that being very clear very direct and not leaving anything to chance that I believe in my opinion

helps alleviate that friction and tension which is a very professional thing to do and look everyone's going to feel a little bit embarrassed it's happened to all of us but one thing you have to keep in mind is in business Comm

communication what people need is they need to know what they need to do they need to know if something's important and really no one's going to remember after a couple of days if you sent the draft document or not it's much better

as you just said there Rob to be upfront clear make sure that everybody understands so I would really recommend guys if you are interested in emails and how to write better emails Chris

fennings book effective emails is a wonderful resource great we'll put that in the link in the show notes great advice thank you for that on Anna and

sort of finally then for anybody that is rolling into work today or later on in the week or currently enduring some awkward moments at work do you have any

parting advice for them something that they can immediately action after pressing stop or pause on the podcast any advice Anna I've got one phrase

which I'd like to share with all of you today which is a very common thing that we say if there's been an awkward moment you know when all goes silent maybe

somebody in a meeting has had a disagreement and you're like okay one sentence that we use is

this okay moving swiftly on oh yeah and it would sound something like this imagine there's been a a moment an awkward moment in a meeting and you want

to continue and you could say Okay moving swiftly on then let's talk about the figures for next month so it's a really nice way to just interject if

there's been an awkward moment and move the conversation on so moving swiftly on is a nice little phrase that you could use even tomorrow or today whenever

you're listening to this episode to break that tension after an awkward moment and move the conversation on to something else that is such great advice you know

that one phrase I think it could be one of the most leveraged phrases in business English you know it's like oh it's okay moving swiftly on used yeah a

lot yeah I hear it a lot great thank you Anna for all the knowledge that you've been dropping on the episode today I really appreciate that where can the listeners find you where can we find all

of your other great material you can find the podcast confident business English with Anna on all the major platforms and if you want to say hello it would be great if you could add me on

LinkedIn I'm sure Rob you'll leave the link in there as well but if you want to connect and say hello that would be great as well great we'll leave uh both the links into the description there so

Anna just leaves me to say thank you ever so much for all your advice today on the podcast it's been absolutely excellent having you on uh and hopefully we can do this again sometime thanks for

having me brilliant see you [Music] soon well there we have it some

excellent advice from Anna there on how to handle awkward moments professionally in business English please do go and check out all her other outstanding

material and of course reach out to Anna on LinkedIn all the links are in the show notes if you'd like the free pdf transcripts of this episode they are

included in our weekly business English newsletter the three minute minutes which provide powerful phrases for use at work every single week sign up at the

link in the show notes so that just leaves me to say until next time stay focused and keep it strictly business you have been listening to the

business English podcast remember to subscribe leave a review and we'll see you next time [Applause] [Music]

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