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English Skills and professional resilience

written by Francisco Sanjurjo

Getting ready for the future – rosy or bleak.

When you are sold the wonders of learning English and how it will make your life a Disney film, you probably wonder if they live in the same world as you. In this economy and political turmoil many people are in red alert and trying to get ready for the worst, because truly unexpected, exceptional events have happened in the last decade or so (yes, I am talking about the Lehman Brothers’ meltdown or that “black swan” Donald Trump). Since anything seems possible now, let’s talk about resilience.

According to the dictionary resilience is:

re•sil•ience  (ri zil′yəns, -zil′ē əns), n.

  1. the power or ability to return to the original form, position, etc., after being bent, compressed, or stretched;
    elasticity.
  2. ability to recover readily from illness, depression, adversity, or the like;
    buoyancy.

(Source: Wordreference)

The reason this term is so popular nowadays is that it is probably one of the most desirable skills for any professional – indeed for any person. The ability to survive and eventually thrive. But what does it take to become resilient?

Resilience: the skill of the day.

Resilience is all about being ready for what you know is coming or might be coming and as ready as possible for what you do not even imagine coming to your life. Have you ever experienced the feeling that your scope was like a tunnel? And how you did not even notice it until some event (catastrophic or not) shattered your perspective? Then of course,  you saw things in a different light. It may have been an event in your personal sphere (e.g. the death of a relative or a close friend) or it could be some piece of news that really got to you. But there was a before and after in your life.

So your perspective changes in the face of one of these “black swan events”. You thought you had everything under control. Or you just forgot you didn’t have everything under control. In any case, you wonder now how you can prepare for disasters, specially for unexpected disasters. The answer is building your resilience.

As far as trying to predict your future, it is a good idea to classify events in three categories: what you know for sure you can predict, what you know you can’t predict and what you don’t know you should even expect. Quoting Josh Kaufman in his book “The personal MBA”: certainties, risks and uncertainties. A certainty is having to pay your rent or your mortgage every month. A risk could be your rent or your mortgage payment being increased, or your computer being broken and having to buy a new one or pay expensive repairs. Finally an uncertainty would be your building being destroyed in a fire with all your posessions inside. Even if you are paying insurance for this kind of event, in your mind it is so remote it would catch you completely by surprise. Otherwise, if I were you, I would look for a new home!

As the saying goes, it is not safe to put all your eggs in the same basket. If the basket falls or breaks, all your precious eggs are gone. This applies to business as well. After the Lehman Brothers meltdown, there was a global crisis. But  those companies which had not invested heavily on subprime mortgages or their derivatives were in a better position to be saved. They had a more resilient position, because they were diversified. Others – many others – were caught completely unready for this kind of black swan event and had to be bailed out or were simply wiped out by the crisis.

Broadening your professional options: from risk to certainty.

By now, I dont’ know if I need to tell you this, but yet this article is all about it: acquiring solid professional skills in English is like putting your professional eggs in many baskets. You might be tempted to say two baskets (English and Spanish) but if you consider the role of English in the global economy, if you can perform your professional skills in English competently, then you chances of being hired are truly global. Of course there are many other factors to be considered, but your employability is boosted from the Spanish-speaking realm to anywhere in the world. Somewhere on this planet there is a job that fits you which can be done in English.

Your skills, your current employability are a certainty. If you can do it in English, the range of what is certain opens up dramatically. Some risks are reduced, specially the risk of getting a job offer and not being able to grab it because you are required to work in English. This reduces the risk of running out of money, of depleting your savings or having to eat into your family’s by asking them for money. It reduces the risk of sleeping badly at night or worse. It reduces the risk of not being able to provide for your family.

When the 2007 crisis hit Spain, I saw how companies that had been reliant on the spanish market sunk like the titanic overnight as their source of income evaporated. That was particularly dramatic for building companies and not even those employees who could do something else survived, because there were no jobs  of any kind. However those who could – and would! -go and work abroad survived the crisis.

I think now I need to tell you this anecdote about a friend of mine who made that jump. He was living in London at the time and through a friend, he got a date. They went for dinner and at some point the question came: so where do you work, Costa, McDonalds?

By any rate, the comment was racist and xenophobic and very, very unfortunate. But you could not blame his date for expecting that, given that type of job was very frequently carried out by spanish immigrants. A Spaniard working at Costa was a stereotype: spanish immigrants who had very good professional qualifications in many cases, but lacked a fundamental skill: they couldn’t do them in English. Meanwhile, my friend, who had scored 95% in the Cambridge Advanced test a few years back, was working a 6-figure job in a british multinational, very similar to the one he had back in Spain before that.  He had landed that job after a few weeks of interviews. At Costa, he had always been the customer.

Life beyond work.

You can hardly separate being able to use your professional skills in English competently from being able to do other things. That’s a desirable bonus. Even if you had the social skills of Sheldon Cooper, the possibilities that open for you, just by being able to access things in English, are unquantifiable. Anything that is written, said, sung, shouted! in English is now within your range. Most importantly you get it first hand, and nothing gets lost in translation. Your world view will be more complete and accurate. And this is also important for resilience: you still may be unable to predict a black swan event, but better, first hand information will certainly help you manage your certainties and risks. Which eventually will make you readier for the unknown.

As ready as possible. Anything. Anytime. Anywhere.

 

 

21st October 2018 0 comment
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Communication SkillsProfessional SkillsSoft SkillsWriting Skills

A better life through better e-mails

written by Francisco Sanjurjo

I hope you have read my post about how to write better reports and as a result, how to make your life and your readers’ lives better. This time I am going to tackle e-mail writing. Not everybody writes reports. However, people  who are not flooded by emails are hard to find in any workplace.  So improving your e-mail writing skills might give you faster returns, since you are going to use it from day one.

So what makes great e-mails? In a professional, corporate environment, e-mails perform several functions:

  1. They transport information.  I mean, that is why we send e-mails right? To tell each other things.
  2. The advantage of this over speaking is that unless you are recording the conversation or there are witnesses to it, it is gone with the wind.
  3. Therefore an e-mail can be used as a reminder, as storage for information that has been received – or sent! (Did I send you that… let me check my sent-messages folder… oh crap it is in the out-box.)
  4. You do business through them: you buy from your suppliers, you sell to your clients, you send and receive bills… you make money! And if your emails are not up to the task, sometimes, you lose money.

So how can I write better e-mails?

Establish routines, for your e-mails to be more efficient (and manageable!) find a system, a protocol that works for you. Priorities first. My suggestion is to go with the WH- words, quickly brainstorming for potentially risky aspects.

Who wrote it (or who is writing it!)

If you have received an e-mail and plan to write back, you have to consider who is it that is writing: is it a client or a supplier, is it a routine marketing promotional message or is it a message from the CEO of a big multinational? If you are writing it, you must not forget who you represent and what you stand for. Specially if you are the CEO!

Who will receive it.

Anything said  about writing it applies to the receiving end. You must apply whatever you know about the receiver and if you do not know much – or anything – about them, you must be businesslike and respectful. There is always time to relax your manners, but not until you see the other part gives you signals that you can do it.

What the e-mail is about.

This is different from the reason you are writing: if you are writing concerning a shipment it could be for many different reasons, but if it is a shipment, you should not forget the reference of the shipment! So it is not the same discussing things with a prospective client than with a client you have been dealing with and with whom you see eye to eye.

The reason for writing.

Is it business as usual, a reasonable request or an urgent demand that debt be paid? So the tone of the message changes.

When has it been written.

Is it urgent, or am I writing ahead of time? is a deadline about to be met or are you past the deadline?

Where is it being written (to and from).

This above all is a matter of cultural issues when there is a potential for misunderstanding because you and your correspondent have different cultural backgrounds.

What expectations do either side have?

Are you hoping to make this person or company a new client? Are you trying to put out a fire and solve a conflict? or is it the confirmation of something being received?

What about the structure of e-mails? A common pitfall, specially if many e-mails are written internally to colleagues within the company is to drop the protocol.  However that kind of problem pales in comparison with the faces people can pull when they receive an email whose body simply does not make sense. People want to read an e-mail. If they have to make an effort to decipher what you are saying, that is bad for your business.

How can I make sure my message gets clearly across? Once more, if you have read my post about reports, you can guess much of the advice suggested for reports can be scaled down to e-mail writing: planning, organization, keeping a cool head and not jumping directly to writing whatever crosses our mind.

In a way it is easier to reply to an email, because it is just a matter of reacting: answering questions, requests. They ask, we answer. However real life is messy and a request for information about a specific product could be the perfect chance to point out another in passing.

Whatever you have in mind, paragraphs are your best friends: if the email covers more than one topic or that topic is complex, break it down in paragraphs. Each paragraph should be internally coherent around a main concept. This makes for easier reference if anybody needs to go back to it and look for something specific. Nobody likes to look for a needle in a haystack. Therefore if paragraphs follow a logical sequence, if their content is internally coherent and if sentences are well structured and connected with each other, your emails will be received with pleasure, even if they are bad news.

Questions, doubts? Feel free to leave your comments below or contact here.

15th September 2018 0 comment
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Communication SkillsProfessional SkillsWriting Skills

ARE YOUR REPORTS GOOD ENOUGH?

written by Francisco Sanjurjo

Think of the things that take you most time at work, and which you feel should not take such a long time.

Unnecesary, badly planned meetings come to mind, going through your e-mail inbox every morning – specially after you have been on holiday. Presentations bring out your perfectionist panicky self because you need to defend them in front of an audience.

Reports anyone? Reports can be tiring in two ways: writing them and reading them. You probably have no control over how people write the reports you have to read, but maybe your reports are driving people nuts or putting them to sleep.

Let’s make a checklist of areas for improvement – which does not mean you need to tick all the boxes:

  1. Grammar and spelling mistakes. Yes, that gets in the way. You probably know it and now you wish your teachers, your parents and yourself had pushed you harder that way.
  2. General writing skills. starting from the basic “plan, think, write”. Unless it is a highly mechanical task or you have a template to follow in which you hardly change anything but numbers. In that case, it is not a report, it is a form! (And reading forms disguised as reports is really boring.
  3. Connected with the previous point, organization skills are fundamental.

Goals you should set yourself:

  1. People should be able to find specific information easily. Maybe they are looking at your report only to find a specific piece of data, and making them read the whole thing to find just a piece of data is cruelty. Creating an index with internal links is a great idea. There should be an index for the reports sections and also an index for graphs, charts etc. Or pile them up at the end of your writing. In any case, when looking at them becomes necessary to understand what you are talking about, always give a page reference.
  2. Unless you have done this thing a million times – in which case maybe you don’t need me! – go from rough to polished. What does this mean? Start by making an informal list of things you want to include in the report. One big mistake people make when writing a report is start writing directly. In contrast, if you have a clear plan, with clear goals, writing will be more smooth. Do not trust your mind to remember everything. Write. It. Down. That will help your mind focus and it will impact on the quality of your writing.
  3. Create a solid structure: down to paragraph level. If a paragraph is not in your planned structure it should not be in your report. Everything should have a function. Result: people will read only what is strictly necessary.
  4. Follow a logical sequence and don’t create loops. This is why it is so important to plan down to paragraph level: you start something, you finish something and everything about that specific point is together in that neat paragraph you just wrote. Also, if you need to add some information later, for example updating a report to include new developments, you will know where to put it and people who read the previous version will know here to find it. It will save you time and effort when writing and it will do the same for your readers.
  5. Remind yourself not to write sentences which are too long. It is better from all points of view to write sentences which are no longer than two full lines. Instead, force yourself to use connectors such as however, nevertheless, although… in order to connect sentences and not so much within sentences.
  6. Inspire yourself: if you find a report – or other documents such as a technical manual – that you found easy, pleasant to read – go back to it and pay attention to how it is written.

Feel free to make your comments about this post, and if you feel you might need professional help to take your report writing skills to the next level, contact me here.

 

15th September 2018 0 comment
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Communication SkillsCourses and SeminarsLanguage SkillsProfessional Skills

Face-to-face or Online?

written by Francisco Sanjurjo

You have a busy life. You have shifting timetables, unscheduled, last-minute meetings. Maybe you still prefer the warmth of face-to-face classes. Maybe you travel around the world across multiple time-zones. Or maybe you just have time at the weekends when you are in your house in a village (but you have WIFI!)

Looking for options that fit your unpredictable life? Get in touch here.

12th September 2018 0 comment
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Communication Across CulturesCommunication SkillsLearning TipsProfessional Skills

Skills in English: the cultural shock.

written by Francisco Sanjurjo

When we acquire a skill in a new language it is more than just putting words together. When you come in contact with new people, even in your own culture, you store information in your brain about how to deal with them: how they need to be greeted, how they like to go about doing things or what sets them on edge.

When we approach a different culture, a different language, a different country, we need to acquire the “ways of the land”. That is the way things are done in the particular place where the skill is going to be used. This is particularly important when learning to do things in English. It is truly a global language and that means that people will use English in environments where nobody is a native speaker. English and “how things are done” do not go automatically hand in hand.

One factor in this is  the huge number of varieties of English: English has been nativized in many countries, like The Philipines, or Singapore. In other countries people do not use “English” strictly speaking, but creoles, local languages that have formed using English as their foundations – often because it was the language of the colonists –  but including many local vocabulary and grammar items.

Try this easy experiment: if you live in a medium-sized or big city and use public transport – or even walking down the street – eavesdrop subsaharan immigrants when they are talking among themselves. Often they come from countries that used to be british colonies and they speak english-based creoles. (Or French-based creoles in some cases.

A second factor is what happens in countries like Spain where English is not a language people use in everyday life. The influence on English when it is spoken as a foreign language or a second language depends on the contact the speaker has had with an English speaking culture and also with whether the person or people spoken to are native speakers or second language speakers as well.

People who come from monolingual contexts – quite common in Spain – will feel their heads spinning by now. What is the protocol if nobody is a native speaker? It is not an easy issue. Even if there are native speakers, they could be in the minority.  Usually native speakers are the most problematic in international environments, where they are just one more player in the game. In any case, common sense and politeness dictate that one should stick to the rules and customs of the host country. And of course, observe and adjust as you go. Again, common sense.

In conclusion, using English as a language for international communication is a matter of juggling with the different cultures, the origins of people and the location and situation where communication takes place. It requires an open mind, ready to not be shocked at anything – which doesn’t mean everything goes – and also ready to learn.

18th September 2015 0 comment
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