Ep 6. Speaking in meetings. How to become more confident!

Today's topic is, how to be more confident when speaking in meetings.

Some of you might know this already but my full time job is working with non native English speakers one to one on video calls to improve their’s confidence and ability when using English at work. And the number one thing that people tell me they need to improve is their confidence in meetings. How can I become more confident in meetings, how can I express my ideas better, how can I make my meetings easier. This is what we’re going to discuss today. 

For non-native English speakers, speaking in meetings can be a challenging and daunting task. Whether you’re presenting in front of a large group or just participating in a small discussion, it can be difficult to feel confident in your ability to express yourself. However, with a few simple tips, you can start speaking more confidently in meetings sooner rather than later.

At the same time, we’re going to look at some useful vocabulary and sentence structures that we can use to do this. So if you want to grab a pen to take some notes, feel free, and let’s get started.

Oh, and right at the end we’ll review a couple of the more interesting pieces of vocabulary I’ve included in today’s podcast.

Transcript

Welcome back to the Breakout Business English podcast where we help you to communicate better at work. Hi everyone, my name is Chris and I’m a business English coach and tutor. Thank you so much for listening and today’s topic is confidence in meetings. 

Some of you might know this already but my full time job is working with non native English speakers one to one on video calls to improve their’s confidence and ability when using English at work. And the number one thing that people tell me they need to improve is their confidence in meetings. How can I become more confident in meetings, how can I express my ideas better, how can I make my meetings easier. This is what we’re going to discuss today. 

For non-native English speakers, speaking in meetings can be a challenging and daunting task. Whether you’re presenting in front of a large group or just participating in a small discussion, it can be difficult to feel confident in your ability to express yourself. However, with a few simple tips, you can start speaking more confidently in meetings sooner rather than later.

At the same time, we’re going to look at some useful vocabulary and sentence structures that we can use to do this. So if you want to grab a pen to take some notes, feel free, and let’s get started.

Oh, and right at the end we’ll review a couple of the more interesting pieces of vocabulary I’ve included in today’s podcast.

Let’s get started.

Our first tip today is to speak up early.

The longer you wait to speak in a meeting, the more stressful you will find it becomes. If you have a one hour meeting and you don’t say anything until the last 5 minutes there’s a good chance you’ll spend most of the meeting worrying about what to say. Trying to find excuses to speak but never quite finding the right thing to say. Another problem that people can have is trying to find an opportunity to speak. Often native speakers talk so quickly that it can be difficult to find opportunities to speak. By the time you’ve decided what you want to say, sometimes the meeting has already moved on! To deal with this problem, and to help you relax more in your meetings, we want to think about ways to speak as early as possible. It can help to prepare in advance by thinking about comments that you might want to make at the beginning of the meeting, or maybe things that you think are important to mention before other things get discussed. Let’s take a look at some sentences that you could use to help you here.

Before we get started I’d just like to mention…

Before we get into anything today I just wanted to say…

I’d just like to jump in early and say…

Just quickly, before we get started can I mention…

Another way to speak up early of course is to ask a question. Having a question ready to go at the beginning of a meeting can be a really useful tool here. Something you’ve researched before the meeting and that it genuinely important or interesting to you. Of course, there’s a good chance that the meeting chair person will let you know that your question will be answered later in the meeting and that’s fine, but getting your thoughts out there is really useful. Remember, if it’s interesting or important to you then it’s probably interesting and important to other people in the meeting too!

And if you’re not confident about making big contributions and speaking whole groups of sentences then maybe this next tip will help.

Let’s move on now to our second tip today and that is to focus on clarity. 

When speaking in meetings, it’s important to focus on clarity rather than perfection. If you make mistakes, don’t worry too much. Focus on being clear and concise in your communication and use simple language. This will help you feel more confident when speaking. This might mean that you use more simple language or shorter sentences. Often when we try to build longer sentences we find it difficult to keep the grammar consistent and correct the whole way through. Native speakers, when they want to be very clear, will often use shorter sentences. Doing this can make the information easier for your audience and colleagues to understand. Yes, wanting to build longer sentences is a great goal, but if you want to improve your confidence then shorter sentences can be a good place to start.

Let’s take a look at an example. First, I’m going to give you an example of a long sentence that might be difficult to build. Then we’ll take a look at how we can break this down into a group of more simple sentences. Let’s pretend that you’re updating your manager on how long a project is taking. You might say this.

Over the course of the project we’ve encountered several challenges that have made progress slower at certain points than we would ideally have liked. However, I feel that once the project is wrapped up the client will see that the amount of time and effort we have put into this piece of work is justified. 

OK, there’s 2 sentences. Maybe it felt like more than two? This is a bit of an extreme example maybe, however this is certainly something a native speaker might say. Ok, let’s try to say this in a more concise and clear way. 

We’ve encountered several challenges while working on this project. This means that our progress has been slow. We would have preferred to work faster. However, when we wrap up the project I think the client will be happy. They will see that the amount of work was justified. They will also see how much effort we have put into it. 

Here we have 6 sentences. That’s three times the amount of sentences in the first example. Breaking up your ideas in this way is something that you can do to make yourself easier to understand, to make your ideas clearer, and to help your audience to understand you. We often hear politicians and business leaders do this when they are speaking about particularly controversial or contentious subjects. By this I mean, topics that they know people disagree about and maybe even argue about. 

Oh, and did you notice the phrasal verb in these examples? I mentioned “wrapping up” the project. To wrap something up means to finish it. Just like the last thing you do when you are going to give someone a gift is to wrap it, the last thing you do at a meeting or an event is to wrap it up. We can use this in a simple tense, for instance, “let’s wrap this up for today and come back tomorrow”, or a continuous tense, “I asked the CEO a couple of questions while we were wrapping up the meeting yesterday”.

Our third recommendation today is to use visual aids.

Using visual aids such as slides or charts can be a great way to help you communicate in meetings. They can provide a helpful visual reference to support your points and help you stay focused. One of the most common things that I see people doing is writing scripts for themselves. They write down exactly what they’re going to say, every single word,  and they either try to read from it during their meeting, or even worse they try to memorize every single word and then just repeat it during a presentation or when speaking during a meeting. This is often a terrible idea. We might forget what we want to say, or maybe we want to change what we’re going to say and we find it difficult to do that. Instead, thinking of your speaking as a series of ideas is a far better way to do this. If you can write down a couple of bullet points, or notes, for things that you want to discuss and then speak generally around those ideas then that’s great. However another great way to do this is to use visual aids. This could be videos, photos, charts, graphs, or anything else that is being discussed in the meeting. If you have something to point at, and to ask everyone else to look at then you have a little road map for what you’re going to say, which can really help you to avoid getting lost. Here are some phrases that you could use to bring people’s attention to your visual aids. 

I have some pictures here to illustrate what I’m saying.

If you’d like to take a look at this video you’ll see what I’m talking about…

This chart demonstrates my point perfectly.

As you can see from this video…

This graph might explain this better than I can.

I’ve got some pictures here to put this in context/

You could bring your own visual aids, or if you can find out what is going to be presented during a meeting or presentation then maybe you could use that to help you prepare.

Make small contributions.

If you don’t feel confident enough to make a large contribution or to offer an entire idea in a meeting, then you can take this more slowly. Try making small contributions and little comments. These can help you to get used to the idea of speaking in meetings. Making small contributions takes the pressure off you. Your contribution is finished only a moment after you begin speaking, which makes starting a lot easier. Two of the most effective types of small contributions are agreeing with people and giving brief opinions. Both of these have the extra benefit of being nice for your colleagues to hear so maybe you can use them to help build those all important professional relationships too! Afterall, everyone likes to be told they’re right, or they have a good idea right? There are many types of little contributions that you can make, here are just a few.

That’s a really good point.

I agree, 100%

That’s a really important point.

That’s really useful information, thanks.

Thanks for filling us in.

Thanks for bringing us up to speed.

And of course, using this together with our last tip about speaking up early can be really powerful.

Our next tip today is to know how to interrupt politely.

As I mentioned earlier, one of the most difficult things can be to find the right moment to speak. Especially when native speakers are speaking quickly. Knowing how to politely interrupt someone is a skill that a lot of people find useful. A big tip here is to avoid using direct words like “want” and use words like COULD, or WOULD instead. The idea here is to be more indirect when interrupting. So a sentence like “I want you to say that again” might become, “could you say that again please”, “would it be possible for you to say that again please”, or even just “can you say that again please”. If you have something important to say and you feel that you need to say it right now, try using one of these polite and professional interruption phrases.

Could I just jump in for a moment and ask…

Could I just add something…

Would it be possible to ask a question about that last point please?

Could I just ask you…

Sorry to interrupt but, could you elaborate a little on the last slide please.

You might notice that I used the word JUST in a couple of those phrases. This shows that you’re asking something simple, or maybe something quick. It shows that you’re not going to take up a lot of time and probably don’t have any further questions. Also, using the word SORRY at the beginning can help to make your interruption even more polite.

Using one of these polite interrupting phrases and slightly raising your hand at the same time can be really effective. The slightly raised hand shows that you want to speak. How about giving this a try during your next meeting?

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Our next tip is to practice.

One of the best ways to get more confident when speaking in meetings is to practice. Whether it’s in front of a mirror or with a small group of friends, you need to practice speaking aloud in English as much as possible. This will help you become more familiar with the language and help you build your confidence. It’s also a great way to find opportunities to use the vocabulary or the grammar that you’re working on in a low pressure environment. I am always surprised by how many people I work with who tell me that they in fact rarely speak English. If your goal is to become more confident when speaking then you need to be speaking as regularly as possible. Now, many people don’t have the opportunity to do this at work, so we need to find another solution to this problem. I’m here to tell you that, practicing speaking on your own can be a really powerful tool to start making your English flow more like a native speaker. If you’re interested in exactly how you can build an English speaking habit or routine then I invite you to take a listen to episode 3 of this podcast where I go through a great method to start speaking regularly and really start building this essential habit. I sometimes get asked, “should I practice my presentation or my question in the mirror?” And the answer is yes, if you want to, this can be helpful. But remember, it’s the 21st century. We’ve come a long way since we invented mirrors! How about recording yourself on your phone or your computer? Then you can listen back and see how well you communicate your ideas. 

By following these tips, non-native English speakers can learn to improve their confidence when speaking in meetings. With practice, clarity, and preparation, you can learn to feel more comfortable expressing yourself in English.

OK, so did you notice any vocabulary in today’s podcast that you’ve never heard before. I put a couple of things in that you might find useful to use at work. A couple of formal words, and a couple of informal, native, and native, phrasal verbs.

One of our small contributions was, “thanks for filling us in”. What does it mean to fill someone in? If you fill someone in then you give them important information, or maybe information that you recently discovered that they might not know. Maybe you found out that a client has requested a change to a project and you want to fill your team in on the details. Or you could say, “we’ve decided how we’re going to spend the money and we wanted to fill you in”. As with most phrasal verbs this is informal and in this case it’s equally common in both British and American English.

When we talked about using polite interruptions we used the word elaborate. Do you know what this means. Once more, the sentence was “Sorry to interrupt but, could you elaborate a little on the last slide please?” Any ideas? Ok, here’s what it means. To elaborate means to add more detail, to tell your listener more about something. For instance your boss might tell you that the company is going to be hiring some new people. A formal way to ask for more information would be to ask, “could you elaborate on that a bit please?”. You’ll notice that the preposition that we usually use here is ON, we elaborate ON things. Or maybe you could use this in a presentation, for instance, “I’m going to give you an overview of the project first, then I’m going to elaborate on some of the more interesting parts”.

Let’s look at another phrasal verb. Our first tip today, right at the beginning of the podcast, was to “speak up” early. To speak up has a couple of meanings. Maybe you’ve heard this used to ask someone to speak louder, as in “could you speak up please, I can’t hear you”. However, this can also mean to speak openly, honestly, and frankly about something. For instance, after you’ve told everyone about something that worries you in the project your boss might say. “Thanks for speaking up, I’ll see what I can do about that”. Or maybe you could ask, “if anyone thinks there are any problems with this idea feel free to speak up”. This is another informal phrasal verb.

That is about all we have time for today, thank you so much for listening. I really hope you found today’s podcast useful. This is a topic that a lot of the people I work with ask about so I’m excited to be able to share these ideas with you. Don’t forget that if you’d like to work with me to improve the way that you communicate at work then go to www.breakoutbusinessenglish.com/start, that’s www.breakoutbusinessenglish.com/start. If you’re listening to this on Apple podcasts then please feel free to leave a review, it really helps me out. So until next time, my name is Chris, this is the Breakout Business English podcast, and I’ll see you next time.