Business English Skills 360 – The podcast that looks at the other side of business English. Skills 360 lessons explore the full spectrum of business english in the workplace; looking at skills for management, careers and communication.
Learn business English and management skills with the Skills 360 podcast.
Skills 360 lessons are focused on the other side of business English. In other words: essential soft skills that are often overlooked in traditional language learning. Through practical tips and strategies, you’ll gain valuable insights into effective communication and management skills.
Our lessons cover a range of topics, including leadership, negotiation, presentation, meeting management, networking, and time management. By exploring these lessons, you can learn about different leadership approaches, negotiation strategies, presentation techniques, and more. You can learn how to adapt your approach and build trust with team members and develop the management skills you need to progress.
Use the links below to access the 90+ Skills 360 business English lessons we have released to date:
Effective interviewing is essential for finding the right candidate. That’s not just someone with the right qualifications but also the right mindset and skills for long-term success. Beyond education and experience, advanced interviewing techniques can help identify critical thinking, problem-solving ability, and workplace compatibility.
Spotlight on Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is a vital 21st-century skill that isn’t always listed in job descriptions. It involves analyzing, evaluating, and making logical inferences – all crucial in today’s fast-paced work environments. To assess this, use scenario-based questions tailored to the role. For instance, ask: “You are tasked with creating a low-budget marketing campaign. What steps would you take to ensure its success?” Such questions delve deeper than generic prompts, revealing a candidate’s thought process and creativity.
Challenge-Specific Questions
Understanding how candidates handle challenges is key to gauging their suitability. Ask direct questions about common role-specific difficulties. For example: “This role involves tight deadlines. How do you manage pressure?” Responses can reveal practical strategies and resilience.
Workplace Compatibility
Discuss workplace setups—whether hybrid, remote, or in-office—and ask how candidates thrive in these environments. Instead of a simple yes/no question about preferences, explore strategies they’ve used to succeed in similar settings. This helps you understand whether they’ll adapt to your unique work culture.
Long-Term Goals
Assessing a candidate’s career aspirations ensures alignment between their goals and the role. Questions like “Where do you see yourself in five years?” can clarify whether the position supports their professional journey.
With rising costs, fierce competition, and high turnover, effective interviewing is more critical than ever. By evaluating critical thinking, adaptability, and alignment with your workplace, you’ll make informed hiring decisions that benefit both the candidate and your company.
Interviewing effectively is a skill that goes beyond asking common questions – it’s about uncovering the ideal candidate who fits both the role and the organization’s culture. Here’s how to elevate your interviewing game.
Start with Fit
Interviewing isn’t just about verifying skills; it’s about evaluating fit. A candidate may have the right experience but still might not align with your company’s values, mission, or work style. Frame your questions around this concept. For instance, “Can you describe a workplace where you felt most productive?” helps identify if their preferences match your environment.
Values Matter
Understanding a candidate’s values is key to predicting how they’ll integrate into the team. Ask open-ended questions like, “What motivates you most in your work?” or “What does success look like to you?” Such questions provide deeper insights into their core drivers and compatibility with your organization’s culture.
Assess Soft Skills During the Interview
Strong soft skills such as communication, collaboration, and problem-solving often make the difference in team performance. Use the interview to dig deeper: ask candidates to share examples of handling conflicts or overcoming challenges. Observe their responses for clarity, tone, and adaptability. This will help you gauge their interpersonal and emotional intelligence.
Build Rapport without Bias
Creating a comfortable environment helps candidates show their true selves. Begin with job-related small talk, avoiding potentially sensitive topics like family or health. Remember, rapport shouldn’t overshadow diversity. A hiring panel with varied perspectives can provide valuable insights and help counter biases.
Adopt Fair Practices
Blind screening of resumes and consistent, structured interview questions can mitigate bias and ensure objectivity. This approach prioritizes finding the most qualified candidate rather than the one who interviews most smoothly.
Ultimately, an effective interview isn’t about who you personally like most – it’s about finding evidence of alignment with the job, the team, and the company. Perfecting your interviewing strategy is the foundation of successful hiring.
Welcome back to the Business English Skills 360 podcast as we continue our look at problem-solving. In this lesson, we’ll focus on the process of solving problems.
As we talked about in our last lesson, the first step in problem-solving is analysis. This means gathering all the relevant information and understanding the problem’s causes. It’s important to look at the situation from different perspectives and ensure that everyone involved has a shared understanding of the issue. Without this, you risk coming up with solutions that aren’t feasible or acceptable.
Once the problem is understood, the next step is to define your goals. Many people skip this, but it’s essential to clarify what a good solution would look like. Set clear guidelines, including your timeline, budget, and who is responsible for what. This ensures everyone is aligned and focused on the same objectives.
Now, you can move on to brainstorming possible solutions. Encourage creativity and seek input from a variety of people. It’s important to separate the generation of ideas from the evaluation. Don’t judge ideas too quickly, just focus on coming up with as many as possible. This will give you a broad range of options to choose from later.
After generating ideas, it’s time to evaluate and select the best solution. The “best” solution is the one that fits the goals and criteria you set earlier. Remember, there’s no perfect solution, only the most practical and effective given the circumstances. Make sure the chosen solution is something everyone can support.
Finally, the last step is evaluation. After implementing the solution, take time to reflect. Did it work as expected? Could anything have been done differently? This reflection helps improve your problem-solving process and prepares you for future challenges.
Problem-solving requires a clear, structured approach. By following these five steps – analysis, goal-setting, brainstorming, decision-making, and evaluation – you can tackle problems more effectively and find the optimal solution.
Welcome back to the Business English Skills 360 podcast as we look at solving problems. In this lesson, we’ll focus on the skills you need to solve problems.
Problems are an unavoidable part of life and work, and in business, your ability to solve them is critical. Fortunately, problem-solving skills can be developed.
The first key skill is analytical thinking. Instead of trying to come up with any old solution, take time to thoroughly understand the problem. What caused it? Can it be broken down into parts? Analyzing a problem requires critical thinking, which helps you understand connections, prioritize, and identify patterns.
Next is creativity, which involves looking at the problem from different perspectives and asking open-ended questions. Creativity, paired with analytical skills, leads to innovative solutions, as it helps you break free from conventional thinking. However, trial and error is often part of the process, and that’s where resilience comes in. Resilience is the ability to stay focused and calm when problems get tough. It’s about persevering, even when your first idea doesn’t work.
Collaboration is another crucial skill, as problem-solving often involves working with others. Effective communication and emotional intelligence are vital in navigating complex group dynamics, especially when tensions are high. Finally, decisiveness is essential to avoid getting stuck in “analysis paralysis.” Making decisions, even with limited information, is crucial for moving forward.
Developing these skills – analysis, creativity, resilience, collaboration, and decisiveness – will significantly enhance your problem-solving abilities.
Welcome back to the Business English Skills 360 podcast as we continue learning about cognitive bias. In this lesson, we’ll look at how to deal with the biases that impact our decision-making.
Trusting your gut and making quick decisions might work in some cases. But if you think your decision-making ability is based on perfect reasoning and complete information, well you’re wrong. You’re only human after all. And your decision-making machinery is flawed. In our last lesson, we had a closer look at exactly the kinds of biases that lead to suboptimal decisions. So how can you overcome these biases?
It’s a question that every good manager should be asking themselves. And making better decisions while avoiding biases comes down to a few key things: awareness, curiosity, and evidence. Let’s start with awareness. Now, if you tuned in to our last lesson when we talked about different types of bias, then you’re already on the right track.
