- Performance reviews or appraisals are part of company life
in many parts of the world,
and they can make a big difference in your career.
So let's learn some expressions
that you'll need to be your confident self
in your performance review.
Hi, I'm your English Coach Christina,
and welcome to Business English with Christina,
where you become better at English and better at business.
Before we start, let me help you a little bit
with my expertise as a neuro language coach,
so that you can show your expertise in business
and in English.
Go over to christinarebuffet.com/worksheets
and get the free activities and worksheet
that I've made for you to go with this lesson.
You can test yourself on what you learned
and better remember these expressions for your real life.
Now you may have an annual appraisal
or a performance review coming up.
This is where you're going to talk about how you've done
over the past year.
And sometimes companies also hold a mid-year review
so that they can see how you're doing every six months.
Whether you have an annual appraisal or a mid-year review,
these meetings can help you with your career path,
or the place that your career is taking you.
And that means that you could get a promotion
in your company, develop in new ways,
or learn how to build your strengths
and improve on your current skills.
The nice thing about annual appraisals
is that there are certain things that you can plan
on discussing in advance.
And when you take the time
to think about what you wanna say in advance,
you feel more confident and your English is better.
And really just taking some time
to think about your performance over the past year,
is a good idea in general
no matter what language you're using.
You're gonna talk about the big accomplishments
in the year, your milestones.
And you might start by discussing your goals
with some of these expressions.
For this year,
my key objectives were to help our team transition
to working from home.
You might also wanna talk about the objectives
that you achieved.
So you might say, we reached our target
of creating a remote onboarding program
for our new employees.
Or if you're on schedule to reach your goal you might say,
we're on target to welcome all employees
remotely by September.
You also wanna be ready to talk about your strong points
for the year.
For example, you might say,
I feel good about my leadership skills.
Or I think I've demonstrated a great deal of adaptability.
In fact, you probably have a lot of strengths.
Maybe you've shown some qualities
like autonomy that's working well on your own,
problem-solving, finding solutions for problems on your own,
or communication skills, helping others understand
what you're saying or what is important in your message.
In fact, there are many possible strong points.
I'm sure you have.
So before we get into the next part of the video,
don't forget to go to christinarebuffet.com/worksheets
so that you can get an activity that's gonna help you
identify your strong points for your annual review.
And you'll also get to practice everything
that you're learning in this video,
so that you actually remember
the things that you've learned.
Now if you're like me, you like to look for ways
that you can continue to improve.
So you'll definitely want to share that
in your annual appraisal, you don't have to pretend
that you're perfect, no one's perfect, no one is.
So here are some ways that you can talk about your goals
for your future improvement with confidence.
You could say something like,
one area where I would like to improve in the next year
is my communication with the rest of the team
and maybe you can talk about how you'd like to do that.
Maybe you could say,
I plan to take a workshop in effective communication,
or I'd like to make it a priority to hold monthly meetings
with the team.
And of course, no annual appraisal is complete
without feedback where your team or your manager
will tell you how you've done and what you can do
to improve from their point of view.
Now of course, yes.
You're always hoping to meet the expectations set out
for your role in the company,
or to accomplish the goals assigned to you
or that you set for yourself.
And if you work hard and maybe with a little luck,
you might even exceed expectations.
If you learn these expressions,
you will go into your next annual appraisal
ready to focus on your strengths and your goals
and not worry or feel blocked because of English.
Now, listening to this video is a great first step,
but keep taking these small steps over and over
and you'll be able to use these expressions
in your real life.
And if you don't use it, you lose it.
So here's the next step that you can do
to use what you learned today.
In the comments, tell us one strong point that you have.
Be proud of yourself, don't be shy.
And write down one area
where you would like to improve this year.
Again, there's no shame.
Improving is a good thing
and it's great to be aware of what you can improve.
It's a perfect opportunity to practice
and make sure that you're using the correct vocabulary
for these situations.
And if you enjoyed this lesson, I would love to know.
And there are three simple ways that you can tell me,
give this lesson a thumbs up on YouTube,
and subscribe to my channel
so that you continue receiving my business English lessons.
The second thing you can do,
go over to christinarebuffet.com/worksheets
and get that worksheet to review this lesson
and prepare for your annual appraisal.
And you can go ahead and watch the next lesson
where you can be sure that you're pronouncing
10 business English words correctly,
and these are words that learners always struggle with.
Thanks so much for improving your English and yourself
with Business English with Christina,
and I'll see you next time.