Ep 7. Teamwork and how to work better with your colleagues! - Collaboration tips - Business English class.

Teamwork and collaboration are two of the most important topics in Business English. Today let's listen to some vocabulary, grammar, phrases, idioms and ideas for speaking about this in English. As an international professional you are always collaborating with colleagues from around the world, working together to complete projects and deliver great work. Learning and understanding how we can work together better, build better teams, and have better relationships with our team mates is key to being the best professional possible.  If you're listening on Apple podcasts please don't forget to leave a review, it really helps me out! 

For non-native English speakers, and people who speak English as a 2nd language, (second language speakers), working in teams can be challenging. Listening to what your colleagues have to say, and also expressing your own ideas, making as few mistakes as possible, and creating great sentences can be a challenge that many people find really difficult.

In this podcast we're going to be listening to several tips for improving your teamwork and collaboration skills, we'll look at the vocabulary and business English that can really help us to use those tips, then at the end we'll have a short quiz to see how much of what we talk about you can remember.

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to the podcast
• 1:33 Tip 1 - Over communicate
• 4:57 Tip 2 - Celebrate success
• 9:55 Tip 3 - Clearly define roles and responsibilities
• 13:10 Tip 4 - Make it easy to ask for help and support
• 16:47 Tip 5 - Encourage casual chat and conversation
• 22:40 Speaking challenge
• 25:07 Vocabulary quiz!
• 29:01 One last thing!

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 teamwork and collaboration.

One of my favorite things to do is to help people get jobs. By that I mean, helping them to prepare for job interviews. The thing that I notice recruiters talking about more than ever is teamwork, collaborating with their colleagues and being productive together. So today we’re going to have a look at some tips for great teamwork and collaboration and the Business English vocabulary that we can use to help us do that. 

We’ll be looking at some formal and professional business English, but also as some more informal language which can be really important for building really good professional relationships, especially with native speakers. So, with that said, let’s get started and dive into our first tip.

Tip number one today is to over communicate. Communication is of course incredibly important when collaborating with colleagues. However, when English is your second language, communicating a little more than usual can be really helpful here. If you’re working remotely then there are even more reasons to over communicate! So what does this mean? 

Communicating just a little bit extra can be really useful. For instance, when you’ve finished discussing a task and everyone is about to go and work on their own. This can help to make sure that no one has misunderstood their role for instance, and also ensures that you don’t accidentally end up with two people working on the same task. Maybe when your manager has given you a task, instead of simply agreeing you could try repeating the details of the task so that they can double check your understanding. Finally, in any situation where being understood is important, adding more detail, and clarifying specifics can be really helpful. Let’s take a look at a couple of phrases we can use to do this.

I think I understand, but I’d just like to clarify.

Let me read that back to you one more time.

Just to make sure we’re on the same page, can I double check a couple of points.

Does that sound about right to you?

Does anyone have anything they’d like us to go over again?

So you might say something like:

OK, I think I understand but I just want to make sure that we’re all on the same page. Dave is going to deal with section A and I’ll deal with section B. And just to clarify, the client needs to hear from us by the end of the week. Does that sound about right?

OK, time to take a quick look at some of the vocabulary there. We had a great idiom, “to be on the same page”. This is an idiom that means that everyone is in agreement, usually about how something should be done. You might say something like, “I’m glad we’re finally on the same page about this” for instance. Similarly, you might talk on a team about getting everyone on the same page, which means that everyone agrees about what the best course of action is.

Our number two tip, and something that so many leaders I work with talk about, is the importance of celebrating success. I remember working in a team that had some really challenging KPI targets. And I remember how tough it was every week when we would hit our targets, and then next week all of that was forgotten and we all started at zero again. Celebrating success is really important in making sure that everyone feels that their work is meaningful and important. We can of course celebrate success with rewards and incentives like time off work, extra money, or prizes. However, simply talking about success is a great place to start. Let’s take a look at some phrases that we might use to briefly celebrate success at during a meeting. 

I just want to thank everyone for…

We knocked it out of the park this week everyone, well done…

This was a big project to take on and you really impressed the client…

I want to briefly talk about the fantastic work done by the whole team this week. 

The team really came through this week so I want to thank everyone for their hard work

Before we go I want to give a shout out to the marketing team for all their great work this week.

One of my favorite things to do here is to not just talk about how happy a colleagues managers are, but how happy the clients or the customers are. After all, if you work in a customer or client facing job, then these are the people you’re really working for at the end of the day. 

That second example you heard is an American English idiom. Have you ever heard the idiom “to knock something out of the park” before? This comes from the sport of baseball. If you hit a baseball so hard that it completely leaves the playing field then you have knocked it out of the park. We can use this idiom to say that someone did a really great job. For instance, “I just want to thank Emma. She took on a big project last week and really knocked it out of the park”.

You might also have noticed the phrasal verb to “take on” there. This is one of my favorite phrasal verbs. This means to accept a responsibility, especially a difficult or challenging one. For instance, “Emma took on a particularly important project last week and ended up doing a really incredible job”. Or maybe, “since joining the sales team Dave has taken on some of our most important accounts”. Oh, and if you have a job interview coming up, talking about challenges that you’ve taken on is a great way to present your experience.

There’s so much vocabulary here so let’s talk about one more and that’s the phrasal verb to “come through”. To come through means to successfully do or complete something. Especially something that might have seemed challenging. For instance, “this was Kate’s first time managing a whole project and she really came through”, or. “The last few days of a project are often difficult but this team always seems to come through”. We most often use this one in the past tense.

Remember that phrasal verbs and idioms are almost always informal English. So they might not be appropriate for some situations, but they can be great for building professional relationships and teams.

Our third tip today is to clearly define roles and responsibilities. 

Whether you’re in a large team or a small one, making sure that everyone knows what their responsibilities are, and what everyone else is responsible for is really important. In big teams this can be really important because knowing who to contact about a specific thing can be really difficult if you don’t know what everyone does. In smaller teams, when one person can have lots of different responsibilities this can be really important to make sure that multiple people don’t accidentally do the same job. We mentioned this a little when discussing over communication.

This tip is especially important when you’re part of a team that is working remotely. One of the most annoying things that I’ve ever experienced was completing a task, only to find that someone else had already done the same piece of work. Or you might spend time preparing for something and then find out that someone else had already taken on that responsibility.

Let’s take a look at some vocabulary that can help us out here:

Let’s establish what everyone is going to be doing this week. 

We don’t want people accidentally stepping on each others toes.

Let’s just double check that everyone knows what they’re responsible for.

Is everyone clear on what they’re going to be doing this week?

Does anyone have any questions about their part in the project?

The idiom to step on someone’s toes is fantastic here. Again it’s informal, but it’s a great way to express concern that you might be doing the same work as someone else. For instance, “I’m planning to contact the client this week and go through the plan with them. I just want to make sure that I’m not going to be stepping on anyone’s toes”. We especially use this idiom when we are worried that someone might be offended or upset if we do something that they are responsible for. For instance, “I think I might have stepped on your toes last week when I sent that update to the client and I just want to apologize”.

Time for teamwork tip number three and that is to make it easy to ask for help

Work should be challenging. We often find our work most interesting and engaging when it is not too easy and not too difficult. Having work that is challenging is important to making sure that people feel interested in their jobs and fulfilled by their work. However, this can mean that sometimes we need to ask for help. As a manager, or even just a colleague with expertise in a particular area, making it easy for your teammates and co-workers to ask for help is a great way to show that you are a real team player. Here are some great ways to make that clear when meeting with your colleagues. 

If anyone has any questions then my door is always open. 

If anyone struggles with the work then please don’t be afraid to speak up.

If you need help dealing with any of this then I’m just a phone call away. 

If anyone needs me to help out with anything they’ve been assigned please let me know.

I really like the phrase, “I’m just a phone call away”. Of course, you might also say that you’re just an email away, or if you’re working in the same office then you might be a couple of steps away. Using this sentence structure to emphasize how easy it would be for someone to contact you if they need help with anything is a great way to offer your help. For instance, “if you have any questions I’m just an email away”. Similarly, “my door is always open” is a great one to use if you’re working in the same physical office as someone you’d like to offer help to.

I mentioned the phrasal verb to “speak up” there. That’s one we discussed in the last episode of the podcast so, if you’re interested in how to use that then feel free to listen to that when you’re finished here.

We also had the phrasal verb here to “help out”. To help out and to help really mean the same thing, however using “help out” is a little more informal. So for instance, “would you like me to help you with that” and “would you like me to help you out with that” mean the same thing, the second is just a little less formal.

Tip number four today is to encourage casual chat and interaction.

This is an interesting tip because, although it doesn’t directly support a team’s ability to work together, it helps to build an environment in which that can happen effectively. One common way to do this is with ice breaker activities. Your manager might go around the room and get everyone to say their favorite movie, or maybe answer a question like, “if you were an animal what would you be?” Ideas like this can be good for encouraging teams to get to know each other at the beginning of a project, but how can we maintain and build rapport in our teams? Think about leaving unofficial time at the end of meetings for questions like this…

“So is anyone doing anything exciting this weekend?”

“Is anyone watching anything good on TV these days?”

“Has anyone taken up any new hobbies recently?”

“Is there anything exciting happening in town this week then?”

So you might say introduce something like this with a sentence like.

“That covers everything on the agenda so I think we’ve got a little bit of spare time here. So, is anyone doing anything exciting this weekend?”

Encouraging people to interact on an informal level, about things other than work can help to build reliable and effective teams. This can include things like encouraging colleagues to share interesting news about themselves that can start conversations. If you’re a manager you can do this by keeping up to date with your colleagues lives and asking their permission to share things that you think your team might find interesting. 

“Before we go I want to mention that Dave has recently started planning a vacation to Paris so if anyone has any tips for him then we are all ears”

Things like this can be really good to refer back to in future meetings. For instance, 

“Did anyone think of anywhere interesting in Paris that Dave should add to his to do list?”

This kind of small talk can have huge and lasting benefits and is a big component of building high quality, effective, teams. Some teams go as far as to ban work conversations during the first 5 minutes of a meeting for instance, or adding, “small talk” as an agenda item. This kind of thing is especially valuable to welcome new people into the team.

Let’s take a look at some of the vocabulary we used in that last tip.

I mentioned that we are “all ears”. If you say that you are “all ears” it means to you are ready and open to hearing ideas, opinions, and input from people you are working with. You might use it in a sentence like, “that’s my idea and if anyone has any questions I’m all ears”. This is an idiom, so it’s informal, but definitely a fun way to ask for questions and feedback.

I also talked about encouraging rapport. Rapport is the name we give to the feeling of understanding and being able to communicate well between people. We can talk about building rapport with clients, customers, and indeed our colleagues. You might not be friends with the people you work with, but hopefully you have a rapport with them. This is an interesting word to spell, we spell it R A P P O R T. The word itself has it’s roots in French, which is why we don’t pronounce that final T sound. Similar to the way that we don’t pronounce the H sound in honest.

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So, as we talked about in an earlier podcast on this channel, one of the best ways to improve your speaking is to practice answering challenging questions when you’re on your own. A lot of people discuss the same things every day, but if you don’t work in English or live in an English speaking country then you may have trouble finding opportunities to speak. So, further to todays topic I’m going to give you a discussion question. My challenge for you is to speak for two minutes on this theme. Today’s question is “what are the pros and cons of working on a remote team?” One more time, can you tell me “what are the pros and cons of working on a remote team?” And, in case you need a reminder, pros and cons means advantages and disadvantages, positives and negatives, or maybe good things and bad things. If you’d like to add a little more complexity maybe you could include a story from your past and get some past tense practice, or what you hope will happen in the future. I use this kind of exercise every day with the professionals I work with who are improving their English so why don’t you give it a go too. If you want, you can even record yourself speaking, then listen back and see if you can notice any mistakes. As I mentioned earlier, if you want to explore the idea of speaking English on your own more then feel free to listen to episode two of this podcast, released a few months ago.

OK, let’s finish with a quiz today and see how much of the vocabulary we talked about you can remember.

If I say that you, “knocked something out of the park” what do I mean. This is an American English idiom that I might use after a piece of work or a project has been completed and it means that someone did really great work or was particularly successful. For instance a manager might say, “all of the new hires have been really great additions to the office. The HR team really knocked it out of the park”.

OK, let’s have another one. Which R word means to have a high quality professional relationship with someone. The kind of relationship where you work well together and you are able to easily communicate and understand each other. If you have this kind of effective and valuable relationship then we might say that you have a rapport. For instance you could say, “I’ve always had great rapport with my managers” or maybe, “I’m confident that I can build rapport with almost any client I meet”. You can see there that we often use rapport, which is a noun, with the verb, to build. 

Let’s keep going with another idiom. Which idiom uses the word “door” to explain that a person is always available to talk to, that they are open to talking about work, and that they are happy to listen to suggestions and ideas. That idiom is “my door is always open”. For instance, a team leader might say, “If anyone has any worries or concerns about the changes we’re implementing then my door is always open”.

And let’s finish today with a phrasal verb. Which phrasal verb can mean to accept a specific responsibility, task, or duty. Remember, native speakers use phrasal verbs all the time. They are therefore especially important if you’re working with English speakers from North America, or the UK for instance. If we want to talk about how someone became responsible for something then we can say that they “took on” that responsibility. For example, “the team has been taking on a lot more work this week and I just want to show my appreciation”

Now that we’ve been through some of the more interesting and useful vocabulary from today’s podcast, feel free to go back to the beginning, listen again, and see if it’s a little easier to understand. All of the vocabulary I choose to feature in these podcasts is chosen because it can be useful to you at work, in your interactions with colleagues, clients and customers. 

That is it for today, thank you so much for spending this time with me and I’ll see you again soon on the Breakout Business English podcast.

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