Business English - How to minimize problems

Hi, my name is Rebecca and in today's lesson we're going to talk about how to minimize

problems or disagreements and how to create greater agreement with the person that you're

speaking to.

You will probably recognize some of these techniques once we start to go over them because

I'm sure you've heard them in various business contexts in different places.

So let's look at an example.

The way we're going to do this is by learning how to use qualifiers.

A qualifier is a word which softens the tone or softens the intensity of whatever we are

trying to say.

So let's suppose that you work for an airline and the flight is going to be delayed and

you have to announce this to 350 tired passengers or anxious passengers.

So naturally you're not going to say we have, ladies and gentlemen, we are going to have

a long delay, no, because if you say that it's going to get a very harsh reaction.

So you try to minimize the problem by saying, ladies and gentlemen, we have, we're sorry

to announce that we have a slight delay of your flight to London.

So usually they will say it's a slight delay even though it might be a longer delay but

they say a slight delay because they're trying to minimize the problem or minimize the difficulty.

Okay?

You can use this technique quite effectively in lots of different situations, personal

and professional.

Let's look at another example.

Let's say that you have a problem.

You could go to somebody and say we have a huge problem.

We have a gigantic problem.

But if you do that, you're kind of exaggerating the extent or the degree of the problem.

So usually instead of that, we might say we have a bit of a problem.

Now in fact, it might be a really big problem but by minimizing it, you make it more possible

for people to feel psychologically that they can resolve this problem.

So it's also a psychological technique as well as a verbal technique.

We have a bit of a problem, okay?

Another example, we have a slight misunderstanding.

Perhaps we have a slight misunderstanding.

Perhaps we have a little misunderstanding, not a big one, alright?

We had a small disagreement with the client, okay, not a big one or you don't say that

it was a big one.

Say that it was a small disagreement.

In other words, something that you can resolve, some situation that you can overcome, alright?

We need a little more time to complete the project, not a lot of time.

You're going to ask for a little more time.

Perhaps you'll ask for a little more time several times to make up a lot of time but

initially if you ask someone for a lot of time, they might say no.

If you ask someone for a little more time, they're more likely to say yes, okay?

We need to make a few changes in the contract.

Now it's possible that it might take you days or weeks or months to make these changes and

in fact, there are a lot of them but you're going to say we need to make a few changes,

alright?

I hope this little lesson has helped you to learn some effective strategies to help you

communicate more effectively with your clients, with your customers, with your family as well,

okay?

That's it for now.

If you'd like to do a little bit of a review of this or if you'd like to write to us about

any other questions that you have in English, please go to our website, www.engvid.com.

Thanks very much for watching.

Bye for now.