How to TALK ABOUT COMPLICATED INFORMATION at work - Business English lesson

Do you need to discuss complex or complicated information at work? If English is not your native language and you find it difficult to sound natural when you communicate complex information at work then I have some great Business English vocabulary, grammar structures, and communication ideas for you. We talk about how to simplify the information you're communicating, how to make sure that everyone in the meeting or the presentation understands what you told them, and how to ask people to use more simply and understandable English.

Don’t forget that my full time job is helping international professionals who use English at work to improve their communication skills. So, if you need English to do your job but don’t speak it natively then maybe we can work together to help you to achieve your language goals. If you’d like to book some time to meet with me through one to one video calls, then you can go to:

https://www.breakoutbusinessenglish.com/start

Also, I talk about an article in this podcast regarding the rule of threes. You can read that here:

https://bigthink.com/the-learning-curve/3-rules-express-your-thoughts-clearly

Transcript

Welcome to the Breakout Business English podcast, where I help you to communicate better at work in English. 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 communicating complex and complicated information.So hopefully by the end of this podcast you will have some more ideas, some more vocabulary that you can use to improve the way that you communicate complex and complicated information at work. There are many times and many reasons during our careers that we might need to communicate complex and complicated information. Maybe you work with other teams around your organization who need to understand your work. Maybe you need to explain ideas to clients or customers so that they know what they're paying for. Or maybe you train people on new technologies and communicating concepts is your whole job. Personally I can say that at various points in my career all of those have applied to me. Today we're going to discuss some tips for effectively communicating complex information, some natural and native sounding vocabulary that we can use to do this and some ideas for how you can communicate better at work.So let's get started. Our first idea today is to simplify and then when you think you've simplified enough simplify again. Often when we're experts on what we're explaining we can end up making things more complicated than they need to be. I always remember a great scene from the movie Margin Call which maybe you've seen it, was about the 2008 financial crisis where a senior manager asks one of his staff to explain something to him like he was a golden retriever dog or a small child. And I think that's a good audience to keep in mind. Let's listen to a couple of ways that we can talk about simplifying information.I'm going to break this down into four key ideas. I'm going to break this down into four key ideas. We can boil this down to three issues. We can boil this down to three issues. This is a complex problem but the gist is that we need to act quickly. This is a complex problem but the gist is that we need to act quickly. My goal with this presentation is to demystify the work that my team has been doing. My goal with this presentation is to demystify the work that my team has been doing. Let's start our vocabulary discussion with the word that we heard in the second example. We heard we can boil this down to three issues. We can boil this down to three issues. Boil is usually a word that we associate with heating water or liquid. If you boil something like a stew or soup for instance, then you heat it to remove some of the water. We can take this idea and apply it to information and explanations in a similar way. If I boil a topic down, then I remove all of the extra and perhaps unnecessary information and I leave only the important ideas. In the first example we heard the phrasal verb to break down as in I'm going to break this down. I'm going to break this down. This phrasal verb actually has a couple of different meanings. The first is for a piece of machinery to stop working. For instance, your car might break down by the side of the road. Hopefully not a busy road of course. However, in the context of communication we mean to divide information into separate parts in order to make it easier to understand. The first example hinted at one of my favorite communication tools and that is numbering information. By giving each piece of information a number, 1. You make it easier for the listener to keep information separate in their mind. 2. You help the listener to know when you've moved on to your next point. And 3. You give yourself an easy way to transition to your next point if you run out of things to say or get your words confused. In the third example we heard the noun gist. G I S T. The gist as in the gist is that we really need to act quickly. The gist is that we need to act quickly. The gist of something is the main part of an explanation or piece of information. For instance, if you ask me a really complicated question then I might say something like, I don't think I understand the whole question but I got the gist. I got the gist. Or maybe at the end of a long explanation I might say, I know the details might be confusing but I hope you got the gist. I hope you got the gist. One tip that I often read online is to avoid jargon. Jargon is a noun that we use to talk about specialist vocabulary that is only understood by a small number of people in a specific field. We often get so used to talking to our colleagues and teammates that we forget that when we're talking to clients, customers or just people in other departments this really specific vocabulary might make us difficult to understand. Let's hear some requests for people to stop using jargon. Please try to stick to plain English so that everyone in the meeting has a fighting chance of understanding. Please try to stick to plain English so that everyone in the meeting has a fighting chance of understanding. If you could try to use layman's terms throughout your presentation I'd really appreciate it. If you could try to use layman's terms throughout your presentation I'd really appreciate it. Maybe we should tone down the jargon the next time we pitch this idea. Maybe we should tone down the jargon the next time we pitch this idea. We talked about jargon a moment ago so let's talk about layman's terms. A layman or lay person is someone without specialist knowledge in a particular field or professional area. We hear this piece of vocabulary a lot in legal English in courtrooms and when we're talking about the law. In that context it's used to refer to people who have no knowledge of the law or legal vocabulary and terms.So if you work in IT this would be used to talk about people who have little or no knowledge of computers or software development for instance. This can sound quite formal however. A more relaxed and informal way to say this could be plain English which we heard in the first example. Please try to stick to plain English. Please try to stick to plain English. I remember a few years ago when I was working at a university in the north of England. I worked in the IT department and one of my responsibilities was to train the professors and lecturers on exactly how to use the new equipment that we were installing. I distinctly remember being asked a couple of times to please use plain English even before I'd started speaking. I suppose IT professionals have a reputation for speaking with a lot of jargon. And one more time there was that word jargon. We can think of this as the opposite of plain English.So we have plain English and layman's terms and then the opposite of that jargon is technical language known to only a small group of people. We can talk about legal jargon, IT jargon or computer jargon and maybe medical jargon is a common phrase that we use to talk about the vocabulary and terms the doctors use to communicate with each other about their patients. Before we move on, don't forget that my full -time job is helping international professionals who use English at work to improve their communication skills.So if you need English to do your job but you don't speak it natively then maybe we can work together to help you to achieve your language and communication goals. If you'd like to book some time to meet with me through one -to -one video calls then you can go to breakoutbusinessenglish .com that's the title of this podcast breakoutbusinessenglish .com and find out more. I sometimes have offers and discounts on class packages and entering your email address on the website is the best way to find out when those limited time deals are available. I've worked with over 1 ,000 non -native English speakers from new graduates up to CEOs and government leaders to help them achieve their goals and I look forward to meeting you. Okay let's carry on with talking about communicating complex information. After you've explained what you need to it can be great to ask some questions to make 100 % sure that everyone understood what you were trying to communicate. I know that there have been times in the past when I thought I had been clear when in fact I'd left people even more confused than when I'd started. Hopefully that's not the case with these podcasts though I think I'm quite clear on these podcasts. Let's take a listen to some natural and native sounding ways to ensure that your audience has understood what you have.To say. If there's a part of this that you are not clear on let me know and I'll try to clear it up. Let's start with the two ideas in the last example. These are to be clear on something and to clear up something. To be clear on and clear up. If you are clear on something then you understand it clearly. It's clear to you. If we're planning a business trip together I might ask you if you're clear on our schedule for instance to make sure you know maybe what time we're meeting at the airport, what time our flights are, things like that. Then if you're not clear on some part of it you might ask me to clear it up. To clear it up. Which means to make something clear and take away any confusion.So one more time those are to be clear on something meaning to understand it completely and to clear something up meaning to explain something again or in more detail to remove any confusion. In the second example we heard another phrasal verb and that was to go over. To go over. As in let me know if you'd like me to go over any of that one more time. Let me know if you'd like me to go over any of that one more time. We can use this phrasal verb when explaining something for the first time however it's most often used when explaining something again. We often hear this when someone wants to check a plan or some details. You might hear people use go through in the same way to go through something. For example I just want to go through the agenda again for tomorrow's meeting to ensure that we haven't overlooked anything. I just want to go through the agenda again. Going all the way back to our first example there we heard the verb to clarify. To clarify. As in is there anything you'd like me to clarify? Clarify is simply the verb form of clear.So if you want to make something clear, if you want to clear it up, then you can say that you want to clarify it. And then once you've clarified it hopefully everyone in the room will be clear on that thing. There's an article I often discuss with people I coach which talks about the rule of threes. It's an article on the website Big Think which draws on an interview with the actor Alan Alda. I'll link the article in the show notes if you'd like to explore the idea in more detail. But the concept is essentially this. Say no more than three important things. Say important things three times. And say important things in three different ways. I'll give you those one more time. Say no more than three important things. Say important things three times. And say important things in three different ways.So that first point relates to information overload. To being given too much information. I talked in the last podcast about how in the past we used to only use priority as a singular noun. People always had one single priority and then suddenly in the 1930s we started using it as a plural. People got priorities more than one. How many important things do you think you can effectively communicate in one meeting or presentation? If you try to communicate more than three then maybe you could benefit from trying to be more succinct and focusing on what's really important. Often we spend hours or days even weeks thinking about what we're going to present in certain meetings or at certain events. But remember your audience is only going to have a few minutes when you're actually presenting this to take in all of that information and understand it all.So three points might be a nice number to try to stick to. The second and third ideas can really apply at the same time. Whatever your most important point is try to say it three times and in three different ways. Try to find three different methods to help your audience understand the information and give them three opportunities to get their heads around what you're trying to tell them. A little like I did just there. If English is not your first language then this might take some planning because you often need to find the right vocabulary. However if you say something the same way in three identical ways well spaced out through a meeting or a presentation then this can still help to improve your audience's grasp of the information. But equally if you're speaking to international English speakers then there's a chance that the first time you used vocabulary that they didn't quite understand. By saying something in three different ways you give them three opportunities to really understand and grasp what you're trying to tell them. That word grasp is a really nice way to talk about understanding something. In its most basic meaning grasp means to hold something tightly. Maybe you know the verb to grip. To grip something with your hand. Grasp has a similar meaning. It's the way you would hold something if you were relying on it to hold your weight for instance. When we use the word grasp to talk about communication we mean that someone fully understands something. We can see this in sentences like I hope everyone grasps the urgency of the problem. I hope everyone grasps the urgency of the problem. Or maybe I'm not sure I quite grasp what you're trying to say. I'm not sure I quite grasp what you're trying to say. Okay one more time don't forget that as I mentioned my full -time job is helping international professionals who use English as a second language at work to improve their communication skills.So if you need English to do your job but don't speak it natively then maybe we can work together to help you to achieve your language goals. If you'd like to book some time to meet with me through one -on -one video calls then you can go to BreakoutBusinessEnglish .com that's BreakoutBusinessEnglish .com and find out more. And of course that website will be linked in the show notes so you can just go down there and click it. I have offers and discounts on class packages and entering your email address on the website is the best way to find out first when those limited time deals are available. I have worked with over 1 ,000 non -native English speakers from new graduates up to CEOs and government leaders to help them achieve their goals and I look forward to meeting you whether it's to work on job interview preparation, IELTS test preparation or just generally to help you improve the way that you communicate at work. If you are listening on Apple podcasts or Spotify or anywhere else that lets you leave a review for a podcast please do so. Reviews really help this podcast out. We just hit 80 ,000 downloads for the lifetime of the podcast which is fantastic and reviews help us to spread this podcast to more people and ultimately help me to make more podcasts.So feel free to leave a review if you want to show your appreciation. That's everything for today. Don't forget that between episodes of the podcast you can get videos every couple of days on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Just search for Breakout Business English on any of those platforms and you should see me right there. If there's a topic that you'd like to hear me talk about on the podcast then I'd be excited to hear your ideas. Leave me a message or a comment on Instagram or YouTube. I think YouTube is probably the best place to leave a comment then I'm definitely going to see it and I look forward to hearing from you. That is it for today. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for your time and as always I will talk to you next time on the Breakout Business English podcast.