- 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.