You're looking for English conversation, practice a conversation partner,
or maybe a conversation club,
but you feel afraid to actually speak with
other people. You know,
I have a surprising secret that will help you feel more confident in
conversation practice. And that is trust.
Today you'll learn why trust is the missing piece for feeling
confident in conversations and how you can find it. Let's go.
Hi, I'm your English coach, Christina,
and welcome to Business English with Christina.
And today's topic is something that is very important to me.
It's because, you know, I'm a business English communication coach.
I run my own business, I lead an international team,
and I hold English conversation groups all the time.
And I've learned over the years just how important trust
is. If you don't have trust,
you can't feel comfortable in conversations,
and you can't improve your English either because you, you're,
you're never sure,
you're always asking questions and you're just losing a lot of energy
that you could be using to actually improving.
And that's why trust is so important. Now,
one of the most inspiring people that I know who talks about this topic
is the researcher and professor Brene Brown.
And here's what she has to say about trust.
Trust is really important. But talking about trust is difficult.
Talking about, it's a big word.
Now, how do you know if you trust someone? If you think about it,
trust in someone or confidence in someone is
kind of hard to explain. And to get a better idea,
we're gonna listen to a short clip where Brene Brown talks about trust
in conversations.
I think you'll be inspired and you'll also learn some great
expressions in English. Ready?
What are we talking about when we talk about trust?
What are the pieces of trust that come together to make this kind of almost
unnameable feeling that we have with people? Um, and a lot of it is gut,
but as it turns out, we can really operationalize trust.
What are we talking about when we talk about,
that's a great expression because you can fill in that gap with
any word that is maybe abstract or just something that you want to get clarity
on. You know, what are we talking about when we talk about work-life balance?
What are we talking about when we talk about productivity?
Something to help you to get clarity on a concept.
Another really interesting thing to notice in this clip is that,
you know, even native speakers or advanced English speakers,
they sometimes have to stop and to search for their words. I mean,
in that clip, did you hear when she said things like, kind of,
or almost, you know,
these are ways that we are comparing a word to something else.
Maybe we didn't find the exact right word,
but we can make a comparison even if the meaning is not exact.
And that's totally natural. That's a very normal way of speaking.
You don't always have to have the exact perfect word
for each thing. Now,
what about saying that something is gut or gut instinct?
It means that, you know, it's like you, you know,
something like in your belly or in your stomach. And then we,
we say that the intestine is the second brain. And, and that's that idea.
Like you just feel it. You just know it, it you have this feeling,
this intuition, and you can't understand it,
and you don't have words to explain it. You just say,
it's my gut instinct or my gut feeling.
And all of these expressions show that it's not so easy to explain
how or why we trust someone enough when we want to learn with them
or join a conversation with them. We just, we just feel it. And as you can see,
building trust in order to create great conversations,
that is a soft skill. And like any soft skill,
the fact that it's kind of hard to explain, hard to measure, you know,
it seems like it's,
it might be impossible to improve that skill because how can we improve
something if we can't measure it, if we can't define it.
But being able to build trust and being able to feel
confident enough in yourself and in other people is a skill that
is very valuable and that you can build. Now,
Brene Brown talks about using the braving technique,
and it's a great way of looking at trust that can help you define a
great way to practice English conversations or just have better business
conversations.
And I use braiding. So seven elements of trust. B,
boundaries are reliability, a accountability,
V vault or confidentiality, I,
integrity in non-judgment and g generosity.
Now, I could talk about every item on that list for like an entire video,
but maybe let's focus on just three that are too important
for us to skip.
If you want to be able to find trust and confidence in your
English conversation, practice. Now the first one is boundaries.
And that means the rules that are there to help you feel safe
in a conversation in the conversation club that I developed my team
and I make sure that everyone knows the rules,
that it's important to take turns to share, speaking time,
to support others, and to not judge others.
Reliability is something else that will boost your confidence. I mean,
look at the Conversation club and you know when it's going to happen.
You know where it's going to happen. You know that there's a weekly schedule,
defined topics, resources, structure,
all of that is reliable for you. You can count on it.
And that way you go in feeling more comfortable knowing what's happening.
You know what to expect and you can trust it. And finally,
one of the most important ways that my team and I use this breathing
framework is non-judgment. You know,
if you wanna feel comfortable enough to join a conversation with someone,
you need to know that no one is judging you, that you can make mistakes,
that you can ask any questions,
and that it's okay to stop and search for your word to ask
for help or to say like, you don't understand or you don't know something.
So make sure that you surround yourself with people who know
that you are being brave enough to show up, to practice,
to put yourself into a situation where you know you will make mistakes.
I know it's not easy to do,
but it's so important. And I know that because I run my business in France and
I've made tons of mistakes doing that.
But I also surround myself with people where I can say like,
I did this really stupid thing, and they, you know, they,
they don't judge me for it. They're like, eh, it happens. You know,
what did you do? What was your solution? Let me suggest a solution for you.
And that just makes everything so much easier.
So now you know why trust matters for great conversations and how important
trust is if you are trying to become more confident in English
conversations, practicing speaking,
feeling comfortable speaking up in your meetings.
And if you want to join me to learn more about this conversation club and how it
can help you,
join me on January 25th for a free interactive
workshop where we go inside the Conversation Club to show you exactly
how it will help you. So if you wanna come to the workshop,
go ahead and join my newsletter to get your invitation. And so,
so that I can see you there. And as I always say, if you don't use it,
you lose it.
So here's how you can take one thing that you learned today and use it in
the con, in the comments, not the conversation. In the comments below,
tell me what is one thing that makes you feel comfortable speaking in
conversations in English? Is it the other person speaks more slowly?
Is it telling them that English is not your language?
Is it speaking with native speakers or speaking more with non-native
speakers? What makes you feel comfortable in conversations in English?
And of course, course, if you felt that this lesson was helpful for you,
I would love to know.
And there are three ways that you can tell me. Give this lesson a thumbs up on
YouTube and subscribe to my channel so you get more business English lessons
like this.
You can go over to the blog post that goes with this video and really
dive more deeply into the subject and also get more vocabulary
for your English. And watch this next lesson,
which is on five tips to speak English more confidently.
It's a great place to start if you're thinking about becoming a member of our
conversation club and starting your journey to feeling confident in
English. And as always,
thank you so much for improving your English and improving your business with
business English with Christina, and I'll see you next time.