Advice on business communications

Market Leader Upper Intermediate Unit 1

Pick one of the situations below and ask your partners’ advice (explaining your problem in more detail and with fuller sentences).

- An American boss who keeps telling you to relax

- Suddenly finding out that the gesture you have been using for the number two is rude to all your British colleagues

- A boss who only has an Elementary level in your shared languages

- Working in a French company and never knowing how to pronounce or spell people’s names

- Your boss receiving complaints about your telephone manner

- Being asked to give a presentation on communication skills to this year’s new recruits

- Always mixing up 15 and 50, 16 and 60 etc when people dictate numbers to you

- Being asked by your American boss “What are you looking so guilty about?” when you are not feeling guilty at all

- Rivals for promotion who are much more articulate than you

- Long and rambling emails from your boss

- Everyone saying that you are too direct or even rude, even though you followed the new company policy on succinct memos

- Your colleagues being too susceptible to persuasive salesmen and so often choosing the wrong suppliers

- Being naturally reserved but getting a new role that involves lots of networking

- Not understanding your Australian colleagues’ jokes

- Latin colleagues who are happy digressing from the agenda of the meeting, which drives you nuts

- Someone on a technical support helpline who uses loads of technical jargon

- A colleague who uses abbreviations and emoticons you don’t understand

- Leaving meetings without really getting what the main point was

- Being blamed for a breakdown in communication that resulted in lost business

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PDF version for easy printing: buscomm