Business events: Office English episode 6

Is every conversation at work important  for your career? Some people think so.

I think you have to be able to be very  confident and be able to show off a little bit,  

like this is what I do, this is why I'm  good at it and this is why we should work together.

Small talk is great in the way that  it breaks the ice before you can find something  

interesting to talk about with the other person. 

In this episode of Office English we're finding  

out how to be professional at work events and master the art of small talk,

which is what we call talking about unimportant things.

Welcome to Office English from BBC Learning English:

Your podcast guide to the language of the w workplace. I'm Phil,

and I'm Pippa. In this podcast, we talk about the words and phrases that can help you 

through even the most stressful situations at work. And today we're talking about work events.

Maybe it's a festive work party, maybe you're at a conference or award ceremony

or maybe you just need something to talk about with your colleagues over lunch.

Yes, there are lots of times when we might need to speak in English at work

when we're not even doing work at all  and when we use these opportunities to improve  

our professional relationships, this is called  networking. Are you any good at networking, Pippa?  

I'm not sure really. I think I'm probably quite  bad at networking when I don't know somebody,  

because I get really nervous. I'm maybe a bit  better once I start to know someone better, so  

with colleagues at work, I think I'm a little  bit better at developing good relationships.  

What about you, Phil?

I think it depends on the situation, because there are some  

situations where it's like everyone's there  to network, so because it's kind of accepted  

that you're going to be doing networking, I  can make myself do it, um but where I'm not  

so good at it, is in I'm when I'm in a much more  social situation where perhaps there isn't that  

expectation and I'm not the sort of person who's going to jump up and get out my business card

and give people a long speech on what I do and how I could make them loads of money

um yeah that feels  a bit uncomfortable to me.  

In this episode we'll guide you through these informal work 

settings, from small talk to networking, so that you can make the most of your conversations at work.

So, let's start with how to open a conversation. Imagine you're at a work  

event - maybe a conference - and you want to talk to somebody important. 

How can we start the conversation, Pippa?

Well if we know who the person is, but we don't know them,  

we could engage them with a compliment, so if we were at a conference and we'd seen them speak

we could say “I was really impressed by your talk” or we could say “I heard about your company and  

I really like the work you do” or we could say  something like “I read your report about um this  

thing and I'd really like to speak about it”, so  people always love a compliment, I find.

Yes and and also as well as these being good compliments, they they're kind of getting to the point

of why  you're interested in them, why you're interested in that company and that kind of leads on

to what you might have to offer, because you're probably looking for opportunities to work together at

some point in the future, so yeah I think that's a 

really good way to um to break the ice, to start a conversation.

Yeah, some people prefer to talk about non-work things at the beginning and we'll  

talk a bit more later in the episode about how to do that, but I find it easier um to kind of go in  

almost straight straight in um and just talk about something that they've done that's impressive  

because um that's usually a good way to talk about work. If we don't know them we can just  

introduce ourselves um, that's a good way to  start a conversation and then you want to kind  

of open up the conversation, so ask quite an open question, something like:

'How are you finding the conference?' or you could say something like: “What line of work are you in?”

That's a great expression there: ‘What line of work are you in?’ um and yeah it just means

'What do you do?’ ‘What's your job?’

Yeah, so you're opening up the conversation

you always want to keep the conversation moving like that.

So, what next? How can we move things on to work  

if we didn't start on work or, or maybe just keep the conversation going?

Ok, so maybe asking interesting questions could be key, so things like: 

‘What do you think is next for the industry?’,  

‘How did you become interested in a particular subject?’ ‘What do you think about any

industry news or the event that you're at?’

or maybe another event that's really important in your industry.  

These are all nice open questions: it's not just a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and you kind of get to know

what the person thinks about these subjects as well, which I think can be important.  

Yeah there's two really great things about that. The first is, if you ask a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question,  

so something like: ‘Are you having a good time?’

Somebody might just say ‘yes’, or even worse ‘no’  

and then what do you say to that? That makes it really difficult to keep the conversation going.  

And another thing about asking questions like: ‘What do you think is next for the industry?’  

is hopefully that person will then talk for a  long time and you don't have to do all the work  

in the conversation and you can kind of listen to what they're saying and respond to what they're saying,

rather than having to kind of keep things moving and say say your opinions all the time.

Anything else you do Phil?

Um well, maybe you want to prepare some opinions or have some  

talking points depending on what's important in your industry. So you might say: 'I'm fascinated by  

how artificial intelligence will change our  industry - it means we can do work much faster.'  

Or maybe you want to talk about the problems with it, I don't know.

Yeah, so this is really good if you're nervous to speak, you could have a think about some opinions  

or some questions or some interesting things to talk about with people.   

Um you might be confident just to have a natural

conversation, but if you're not so confident  preparing a couple of thoughts is always useful.  

OK, so if we've got this far, we're doing well,  but how do we get on to networking?  

What phrases can we use, Pippa?

Yeah so networking is kind of where we use this relationship that we've started  

and we use it for our career, so uh we could start by saying something like: ‘I'd really love to talk  

more about my ideas for modernising the industry’, um so you can offer them something.

You could say  ‘Can we grab a coffee sometime?’ or ‘Can I get your contact details?’ Um, so you show that   

you want to continue this really interesting  conversation that hopefully you've just  

had, um, with them, and you're giving them  something.

You just, you don't just want something from them.

Yes, this idea - sitting down for a coffee, it's great, it's a - it's kind of a great way of  

saying yeah I want to talk about the work you do, the work I do and find the ways that we can work  

together, but it's getting a coffee and it kind  of, particularly in these kind of  

networking contexts, it's like everyone knows what that means.

Yeah and maybe you might be at a virtual event,

so saying: ‘Can I get your email?’ is a good way to be able to follow up with, contact somebody  

later um and then you can, you can ask them more questions um because yeah we don't always

meet in person these days. You might not be able to go for a real coffee, but you might be able to go for  

a virtual coffee. Um another thing you could um say is ‘I would be interested to work with you on  

a project’ or ‘I would love to show you around my office’ or ‘I'd love to show you around my  company.’

This will depend on on whether you can show them around your office and you might not  

feel that the first time you meet someone you could say this um it's really a judgment but you might

want to think about, you know, a potential future professional relationship with this person.  

Yeah think about the things that you want to get out of it.

What are the things that are important for you from a work point of view?

Hmm, and we can often be really embarrassed about the fact that we kind  

of want something from someone um in a networking context, but actually sometimes it's easier

just  to ask, you know, rather than being nice to someone just because you want an opportunity.

If you're clear that you'd really like to work with them then that's good, and they might respond well to that.

And remember they're probably at this thing because they're looking for people to work  

with as well, so they're probably interested to hear what what you've got to say.

Remember, networking can be difficult for native speakers too!

Let's hear again from our BBC Learning English colleagues.

I think you have to be able to be very  confident and be able to show off a little bit,

like this is what I do, this is why I'm good at  it and this is why we should work together.

Small talk is great in the way that it breaks the ice before you can find something interesting  

to talk about with the other person.

So, Jiaying talked about using small talk to break the ice to  

get the conversation moving, so small talk is, um, what we call chatting about unimportant things,  

talking about small things, um and that's a  good way to kind of get a conversation going  

before we talk about the work that we want  to talk about.   

Yes and, certainly in the UK, most work conversations contain some small talk.

a really common one is talking about the weather,  

it's a really easy one of course: in the UK the weather changes so often there's always  

something worth talking about, even if it's just a complaint.

Also you could talk about recent events,  

or observations, um so if you're at a conference or a party you could make some observation about,  

um, what's going on. It can feel really strange and really silly to talk about what we might think are  

boring things as a way to start a conversation, but it just um can sometimes just loosen somebody  

up which means just relax them so they're ready to talk.  

I think with small talk often we're trying to find things that we have in common with people, aren't we?

So it might be, at an event you're often asking about things related to the event,

so it might not be the weather, it might be how you got there.  

There, might be something that happened, there might have been a really interesting talk that  

everyone's talking about and so that might be the thing that you ask or you're trying to find  

out what someone thinks and then what's really - what will really help you build a relationship  

is if you're showing genuine interest in the  other person that that really helps build that  

relationship so then you can take it to other places afterwards

and you can start asking the more networky questions.

And lots of networking is about developing relationships, as we've said,  

and so working on your conversational English is really important and you can find loads of  

programs and courses to help with this on our website. That's BBC Learning English dot com.

And that's it for this episode of Office English. Next time we'll be  

talking about the phrases used to give bad news at work. Join us then. Bye. Bye.