Solve your problem — in English: 3 smart strategies from a Neurolanguage coach

- Problems.

We all have them.

But what makes you good in business

is your ability to manage problems and find new solutions.

In today's lesson,

we'll learn three important problem solving skills

and learn the Business English expressions

to talk about them with your team.

Let's go.

Hi, I'm your English coach, Christina

and welcome to Business English with Christina,

where you become better at English and better at business.

So last week we learned some interesting expressions

for helping your team to solve interesting problems

in English, by understanding your problem.

And then also believing in your ability

to actually solve that problem.

And if you missed that lesson, that's okay.

You can follow the link in the notes below

if you want to go back and watch that lesson.

And I recommend that you do.

And we even began to actually solve a problem together.

And it's a problem that a lot of people

who watch my videos share.

So maybe you had that problem too.

You know, for more complex business situations

you need more advanced English.

But, I don't know.

The big question is how do you get more advanced English?

Well, why don't we get back

to tackling that problem together?

You know, a lot of the problems that we face

and that are difficult to solve

it's what we call last mile problems.

It's like we know how to get there.

We almost get there.

And then just before finishing that like last mile

of solving the problem,

we don't, we stop.

I don't know.

So what makes us like travel, figuratively,

travel like 999 miles,

and we just stop before we finish that 1000th mile.

That's not an easy word to say 1000th, but that's okay.

That 1000th mile it's like,

just before we get to the end, to solution, we stop.

Why?

It's because of our brains.

And don't stop before you get the full benefit

of this lesson.

It's very simple.

You've got one thing to do.

Go over to christinarebuffet.com/worksheets

and get the worksheet that goes with this video

so you can really learn.

And I would say assimilate everything in this lesson,

use it in your real life,

and you don't even have to go 999 miles,

you just have to go down to the link below the video.

Here's Sendhil Mullainathan,

a behavioral economist

in a great TED talk all about those last mile problems.

And in this TED talk, he's talking about brains.

Your brain, my brain,

my cat's brain?

Maybe not the cat's brain.

Anyway. And he's reminding us

that we need need to remember how the brain works

when we're trying to solve problems.

- All right, what's the problem?

The problem is this little three pound machine

that's behind your eyes in between your ears.

This machine is really strange.

And one of the consequences is that people are weird.

They do lots of inconsistent things.

- So how do you make your brain a part of the solution

to a complex problem

rather than part of the problem?

In other words, how do we create the strategies

where the brain is actually going to help us,

instead of hurting us?

First thing is start small.

Take a big problem and break it into the smaller parts,

and then work on those one at a time, step by step.

For example, someone who says

I need to be better at meetings in English, for example.

It's a very common thing that we help clients with.

And we say, "Okay, well in your meeting, first of all

what do you have to do?"

Maybe I have to open the meeting.

Maybe I have to lead the discussions.

Maybe I have to tell people will when to stop interrupting.

Maybe I have to answer questions.

And we'll look at all of those things.

And then we'll start with just maybe the first one.

Okay. Opening the meeting.

So what do you have to do for opening the meeting?

What's difficult for you?

Let's work on that one thing,

get that in place,

and then we'll move on to the next thing,

but really doing it one step at a time.

The other thing you can do

it's really forming great habits,

like taking a small step that's easy to do every day.

For example, if someone says,

"I need to work on my English for leading meetings

but I just never have the time."

We'll say, "All right,

what's the first thing that you need to do

to start getting that habit

of working on your English every day?"

And it might be something really, really, really small

like take your notebook for English

or some notes or whatever

and just put it on your desk so that you see it every day.

And you think I need to do my English today.

And get that habit.

Just get the habit of thinking

about I need to do my English today.

When that's easy, try that next little habit.

All right, next habit,

I'm gonna open my notebook and look at it for one minute.

Do that.

And when you feel like that's easy, you got that habit,

add something to it and just get the habit in place.

Starting very small, like stupid small

you're like, "Christina, there's no point in doing that."

That's how simple and easy it has to be

to start getting that habit.

Next thing you wanna do is track your progress.

So keeping track of all of those times you do

that one small thing.

The simplest way to do this,

print out a calendar,

put it on your wall, on your fridge,

somewhere where you see it every day.

And every day that you do that simple habit,

put a check mark on it.

And you'll see all those check marks building up

and you will not want to break that streak.

And you'll do it just to be able to keep that streak going.

And then finally, reward yourself.

To stay motivated to meet your long term goal,

you need to have some quick, immediate rewards.

It can be anything.

You can say, "All right. If I do my habit for one week,

I'm going to buy myself a cookie at the bakery."

I don't know. Whatever makes you feel good.

Just find something where you can say,

"If I reach this goal, I'm gonna reward myself."

To say, "Hey, Christina, good job."

And another step that you can take to solving your problem,

it's using a thing called social accountability.

And that basically is a fancy way

to say not trying to solve your problem alone.

It means getting help from other people,

looking at how other people are solving similar problems,

knowing that other people on your team are looking at you

as you're trying to solve the problem

so that you have a little bit of accountability.

And you know that they're gonna see

if you make progress or not.

You know, in the example of trying to get

to a more advanced level of English,

some examples of social accountability

might be like meeting up with your coach

to show them the homework that you did

in between your sessions

and showing them what you practiced

and what you took the time to work on.

It could also be meeting with a group of people,

like a conversation club or a conversation group.

And coming to the session,

you've prepared the work to talk about that topic.

And so you come in

and you show them that you've done the work.

And because you knew that they were going to see

if you had done the work,

you took the time to actually do it.

It's much more powerful

than just trying to put it in your schedule

but then something more urgent always comes up.

And if you don't do your English,

hey, nobody's gonna notice.

You know, that is a a recipe

for never finding time to improve your English.

You know, you have a lot of expertise in something.

You don't get to where you're at

in your career today without it.

But you can't be an expert in everything, that's normal.

And sometimes may need to bring in an expert

to help you solve a problem.

That way you can continue focusing on your work

and trying to do your best

while someone else thinks about the ideas,

bringing in a new perspective

and help helping you to solve your problem.

And often,

bringing in an expert is a very worthy investment.

I mean, for example, me,

I do not hesitate to bring in an expert

for example, to do my taxes.

Because a mistake could cost a lot of money.

And I don't understand every complexity of tax law.

I've got a business coach that I'm working with

because sometimes I'm so focused on the business

that I can't see sometimes very simple solutions

to problems that I'm struggling with.

Having that coach help helps me to stay focused on the goals

and also to make sure that either I do what I need to do

or that something that's very complex and difficult

is done by someone who has that expertise

saves me time, saves me worry and anxiety,

and that is worth investing in.

If you don't use it, you lose it.

So here's how you can use what you learned today.

In the comments,

I want you to tell me about a time when you hired an expert

to come in and to help you do the thing,

solve the problem that you needed to solve.

Maybe it was a teacher or a coach,

or someone to do your taxes,

or someone to help you redecorate your apartment.

It doesn't matter.

But tell me about a time when you actually went

and got help to solve one of your problems.

You know, a lot of my clients come to me

and to my team of teachers

to help them prepare presentations,

prepare job interviews,

feel more comfortable in meetings in English,

all of those things.

Because they know that they're gonna be better

if we can help them.

Now, if this lesson was helpful for you,

I would love to know.

And there are three ways that you can tell me.

The first thing is to go ahead

and subscribe to my YouTube channel,

because that helps me,

it helps me help more people basically.

And that way I see that you're enjoying these lessons.

You can go over to christinarebuffet.com/worksheets

and you can get a worksheet to help you really practice

what you've learned in this video.

And go back and watch that video from last week.

All about identifying your problems

and believing, having that mindset that you can solve them.

All right. Thank you so much for improving your English

with Business English with Christina,

and I'll see you next time.