Business English: The Science of the Deal

Inspired by Adam Grant’s series “Work Life with Adam Grant”

Today, we will work more on our Business English, specifically by looking at how to talk about workplace dynamics and deal making in English. This blog post will help English learners who have to take part in meetings as well as negotiations, and who work in U.S. companies. 

Mastering Business English is an important skill. Every time I focus on Business English with my clients, I am more and more fascinated by the nuances of the English language and how these nuances can be utilized to further my students’ careers, make their presentations more successful, and help them meet their objectives during negotiations. It is all about the details here. Details like the different connotations of words, expressions, and idioms, and how to create a mental picture in your counterpart’s mind beneficial to you and your objective. Mastering these nuances is always one of my goals when working with clients who want to focus on Business English; not simply teaching vocabulary but familiarizing my clients with the cultural codes inherent to vocabulary: a skill essential to success in the United States and around the world.

Now, let’s look into some more advanced Business English vocabulary. For this blog post, I used a talk by the famous Wharton Professor Adam Grant as inspiration to make this lesson even more informative and to be able to discuss cultural nuances as well.

Some people always feel responsible for other people’s feelings. They are people-pleasers (=always want to please others). All their actions are driven by (=motivated by) how they think they are perceived by others (=seen by others). For people-pleasers, it is often hard to overcome their inner limitations because they are so concerned about what others might think. They always try to be agreeable (=be liked by everyone). They don’t want to make anyone upset (=angry) and can have a hard time advocating (=speaking up) for themselves. Often people-pleasers are underpaid (=make less money than they should) because they never even dare to ask for a raise (=ask for a higher salary). They often avoid negotiations all together (=in general) out of fear they might damage their relationships. 

According to Adam Grant, negotiating does not necessarily have to damage your relationships. It could potentially strengthen them. Many people even take a new job without negotiating their salary because they dread (=hate) negotiating so much. They try to not damage their relationships without understanding that negotiations “hinge on (=depend on) two big priorities: results and relationships.” In addition, cultural differences might make negotiating even harder. In some cultures, for example, parents teach their children to never rock the boat (=never do anything that might upset anyone or the status quo); to just always be appreciative. 

So what are some strategies to overcome this? According to Grant, one strategy could be to not simply wait for the other party (=person/used when talking about meetings, negotiations etc.) to make an offer and leave it at that (=not do anything else) but to also immediately make a counter offer (=respond with their own offer). It could look something like that: “ "I'm so excited to work for the team, I'm super eager to do X, Y and Z, but to be honest, the rate that was communicated was much lower than I had expected. So I would love to talk more about this."”

To be continued…..