With today’s technology, people don’t have to be in the same room to have a meeting. We can connect with people around the world by phone or video chat apps like Skype. Amazing, isn’t it? Until it suddenly isn’t amazing, because people don’t know who’s saying what, others are having technical difficulties, and people are leaving and joining the meeting without anyone knowing.
A good conference call requires a good facilitator. Someone to make sure everyone knows who’s in the meeting and gives everyone the chance to speak. That means facilitating introductions at the start of the meeting and encouraging quiet people to share their ideas. 毕竟, it’s pretty easy to hide or be ignored during an online meeting.
Sometimes there are technical problems that can get the meeting off track. At those times, it’s best to ask someone else to try to solve the problem so you can continue running the meeting. And just like any meeting, the facilitator should be encouraging input from everyone, including those who join late. It’s your job to integrate those latecomers into the meeting so they can participate too.
在今天的对话中, we’ll hear anEnglish teleconferenceled by Gabi. People from across the U.S. are joining the call to plan their company’s upcoming sales conference.
听力问题
1. What does Gabi ask people to include in their short self-introduction? 2. What problem does Gabi ask someone to help solve? 3. What does Gabi do when someone joins the meeting late?
欢迎回到 商务英语播客for today’s lesson on discussing solutions to a problem during a英文电话会议.
Have you ever been in a meeting where everyone just wants to complain about a problem? And maybe they criticize every solution that is suggested? 出色地, if that’s all you do, the problem will never be solved.
Discussing solutionsis all about figuring out what might actually work. It’s about finding the best solution, even if it’s not the perfect solution. So you need to learn how to agree with people’s ideas, either strongly, or with conditions. 换一种说法, you might agree but only if something else can happen.
If you’re leading aproblem-solving meeting, you’ll likely need to highlight the best solution that comes forward. Even when you have a pretty good solution, you might still want to invite more ideas. And whether you’re leading or participating in the meeting, you might offer to take the lead on implementing a solution. 在本课中, we’ll cover all these skills for discussing solutions.
在今天的对话中, we’ll rejoin a teleconference led by Jim. On the line with Jim are Jack, 和, 和安吉. They are discussing how to deal with the issue of paint fumes at a factory. They’re trying to find the best way to solve this problem.
听力问题
1. What expression does Angie use to agree strongly with Dan’s idea? 2. What solution does Jim highlight as the best one? 3. What does Dan say he wants to do about the research on different types of paint?
