Business English

Lesson 8

Task 1
Complete the table

Noun Verb Adjective

Persuasion
Assessment
Contribution
Performance
Empower

Task 2
Cross out an extra word in each line:
The world's most utilized email provider turned 20 on Monday. Gmail was being launched on
the 1st of April 2004. At that time, it was revolutionary because of it offered a huge amount of
storage, and it was free. Some people thought it was a hoax because it was announced during
on April Fools' Day. However, it was no not joke. Gmail offered an enormous 1 gigabyte of
storage for free. Many other providers only provided 15 megabytes. At first, people could be
only sign up for Gmail after a receiving an invitation. It became a "must-have" tool for
technology fans. Another other reason for Gmail's success is that it searched mails faster than
any other email service at the time. It was also more better at filtering spam.
Since 2004, Gmail has been become the world's biggest email provider. More than 1.7 billion
people use it them. That's 20 per cent of the world population.
Rank these with your partner. Put the best ways to communicate at the top:
 Email
 Social media
 Instant messaging
 Text messaging
 Blogs

What are the main means of communicating with customers?

Task 3
Comment on the statistics. Write 3 sentences to interpret the trends:

Consumer behaviour
Frequency of buying Share of Online Shoppers

Once Per Week 20%

Once Every 2 Weeks 24%

Once Per Month 31%

Once every three months 10%

3-4 Times Every three months 15%

Task 4
Listening
A. Listen to an expert. What sort of companies have been the main winners in terms of
doing business online? Do you agree with the expert?
B. Complete the notes:

Task 5. Read and discuss the questions:

Complete the advice using the words in bold from the article:

Listening

Task 6 Case.
Task 7
Work in pairs or in small groups. Tell each other who you think people generally turn to at work
when they need help to complete a difficult task. I think people generally choose ...
a) the colleague sitting nearest to them.
b) someone who has expert knowledge, even if they don't particularly like that person.
c) one of their superiors, so that person will see how dedicated they are.
d) someone they're sure won't tell anyone that they asked for help.
e) someone who is very friendly, even if that person doesn't know a lot about their area.
Read the article and answer the questions:
 To what extent do your guesses in exercise correspond to the research findings?
 Do you agree with what the article says about likability and competence?
Tick the ideas that are mentioned in the article.
1. Our choice of work partners is motivated by more than two factors.
2. Lovable stars are popular because of their personal feelings.
3. Evaluations of competence are not as important as personal feelings when we choose
work partners.
4. People don't want to work with colleagues they deeply dislike, whether competent or
not.
5. If you want other people to enjoy working with you, make sure you gain a little extra
expertise.
COMPETENT IDIOT AND LOVABLE FOOLS
When given the choice of whom to work with, people will pick one person over another for any
number of reasons. For example, if they wish to become more interesting in the eyes their
colleagues, they might decide to associate with a star performer or if they hope to see their
own career develop more quickly, they might want to spend their time with someone higher in
the hierarchy.
But, according to recent research, competence and likability are considerably more important
than any other criteria. Obviously, these two criteria matter, but what is far less obvious is how
much they matter. Competence and likability combine to produce four types of people: the
competent idiot, whose knowledge might be ten times as broad as anyone else's, but who is
unpleasant to work with; the lovable fool, who clearly doesn't know as much as the others but
is a delight to have around; the lovable star who's both one of the smartest and most likable
members of staff; and the incompetent idiot, who doesn't need a definition.
The research shows that everybody wants to work with the lovable star, and nobody wants to
work with the incompetent idiot. Things get a lot more interesting, though, when people face
the choice between competent idiots and lovable fools. The study reveals that personal feelings
play a much more decisive role in forming work relationships (i.e. not friendships at work but
job-oriented relationships) than is commonly recognized. In fact, personal feelings are even
more important than evaluations of competence. lf someone is strongly disliked, it's almost
irrelevant whether or not they are competent – people won't want to work with them anyway.
By contrast, the more likable someone is, the more their colleagues are likely to look for every
little bit of competence they have to offer.
Generally speaking, a little extra likability goes a longer way than a little extra competence in
making someone desirable to work with.
Task 8
Listening: Handling difficult people

The hothead
Hotheads get angry and lose their temper easily, which can make them terribly difficult to work
or live with. They might start shouting or get aggressive and nasty when people don't do what
they want.

The whinger
Whingers are always complaining. They don't like things are, but they don't want to change
anything either. They just want to tell you how badly everyone treats them and why every new
idea will fail.

The people pleaser

It's easy to like these people, but they're difficult to work with because they can't say 'no:
They're notoriously unreliable because they take on more work than they can handle, which
means delays and broken promises.

Listen to a counsellor's suggestions for dealing with the personality types discussed
previously. Take your notes.
Task 9
Complete the sentence with a suitable comparative or superlative.
1. Your office manager isn't as competent as ours - far from it.
Our office manager________ considerably ________________ yours.
 2. I feel less and less confident every time I make mistakes.
_______more mistakes I make,________confident I feel.
3. The registration fee last year was 200 euros, compared to 70 euros in 2019.
Last year's registration fee was almost three ________ high________ in 2019.
4. I worked less on Wednesday than on Monday.
I didn't _______ much on Wednesday as on Monday.
5. No one in our department is as helpful as Paola.
Paola is _______most ____ person in our department.
6. I have rarely worked with a more likable colleague.
He is one of ________ colleagues I've ever worked with.

Task 10
https://www.mindtools.com/a7m23wp/leadership-styles
What leadership styles are mentioned in the video?
Pick up a word/expression from the list, don’t pronounce it and try to explain to others:

framework; approach; highlight; awareness; staff turnover; one size fits all; thrive

Task 11
Role play

A manager is very busy, but one of her newer supervisors is always coming to her with problems
and seeking advice. It was okay at first, but the behaviour has continued for three months, and
by now, the supervisor should be better at problem solving. The two of them sit down to talk
about this issue.
Task 12. Vocabulary Revision