Welcome back to Business English Pod for today’s lesson on English idioms for describing challenges.

If you listen in on conversations in the break room at work or at a popular restaurant, what will you hear? Chances are good you’ll hear people talking about problems and challenges. And it’s not just that people are naturally negative. It’s that talking about difficult experiences can help us feel better. And it can also help us find solutions.

Beyond feeling better and finding solutions, talking about past challenges can help us learn from them. And if you’ve shared a difficult experience with someone, then your relationship will develop and grow. For all these reasons, talking about challenges has inspired lots of English idioms.

In today’s dialog, we’ll continue with a conversation between two former business partners. Simon and Allie are meeting for coffee and their conversation has focused on their old graphic design business. They’ve been talking about several different challenges, including challenges with staff. In their conversation, they use many idioms for describing challenges, which we’ll talk about later in the debrief.

Listening Questions

1. What does Allie call the situation where you do some work you like and some to just help pay the bills?
2. How does Simon describe many of the projects they worked on?
3. How does Allie react when Simon says he feels he wasn’t helping her enough?

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Welcome back to Business English Pod for today’s lesson on English idioms for describing challenges.

According to an old expression, what doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. The idea is that life’s challenges and difficulties are good for us. They help us grow. They force us to learn. And shared challenges have a way of strengthening the bonds between people.

In your work life, you can probably think of many challenges that have tested you. There’s a good chance that you’ve talked about these challenges, with your colleagues or at the dinner table with your family. You’ve also probably listened to other people describe their challenges. Yes, difficulties at work are a rich topic of conversation. And for that reason, there are many useful English idioms we can use to describe challenges.

In the dialog, we’ll hear a conversation between two friends and former business partners. Simon and Allie ran a graphic design business together some years ago. Now they’re chatting over coffee and recalling some of the challenges they experienced. In their conversation, they use many idioms to describe these challenges. Try to pick out these idioms as you listen, and we’ll talk about them later in the debrief.

Listening Questions

1. What did Allie think about the idea of keeping their office?
2. What does Simon now think about their idea to rent a big office?
3. How does Allie describe the situation in which they had a team of people they didn’t know how to manage?

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Welcome back to Business English Pod for today’s lesson on business English idioms related to strengths and weaknesses.

Job interviews, performance reviews, hiring decisions, promotions, pay raises… what do all of these important aspects of work and business revolve around? Well, one major theme is people’s strengths and weaknesses. If you can’t assess strengths and weaknesses very well – either your own or other people’s – you’re bound to make some bad decisions.

So it’s no wonder you hear so many business conversations about what people can and can’t do, or what they’re good at and what they’re not good at. And in these conversations, you’re bound to hear lots of idioms. English has tons of expressions for talking about strengths and weaknesses. And in today’s lesson, we’ll take a look at some of these business English idioms.

In the lesson, we’ll rejoin a conversation about hiring a new communications director at a mining company. Three managers are talking about the strengths the new director will need, as well as the weaknesses of the previous director, which they want to avoid. They use many useful English idioms during their discussion.

Listening Questions

1. What type of attitude does Annette say the new communications director needs?
2. What type of person does Drew think they need to deal with controversy?
3. At the end of the dialog, what kind of person does Annette say they should avoid?

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