Business_Spotlight_No3_202..

54 Business Spotlight 3/2020 LANGUAGE

LANGUAGE

EASY ENGLISH

Pitching your

proposal

Meistens hat man nur einen Versuch, um

Unterstützung für seine Ideen zu finden.

Lesen Sie hier auf Englisch, wie Sie andere

überzeugen können.

EASY AUDIO PLUS

I

t can be difficult sometimes to get your ideas

across to others at work. Colleagues and bosses

are often busy, your organization may have other

priorities, and time and resources may be tight.

So, when you do get the opportunity to pitch a

proposal, you’ll want to make sure that others

support you and your ideas. Here, we look at how you

can do this effectively.

Question

As you read the following dialogue, ask yourself what

three things Anna does to get support for her idea.

Dialogue

Anna: Thanks, everyone, for your time today. I’ll

try to keep this brief. As you all know, we’re

facing some staff issues at the moment, and

I have some possible solutions. The main

problem is that people are leaving us at a

faster rate than at any time in the past ten

years. We can’t allow this situation to con-

tinue. We’re losing our key talent.

Sven: Yes, you’re right.

Anna: And it’s taking longer to recruit new people

than we anticipated.

Maria: And even then, it’s taking too long to train

the new people and bring them up to date

with our processes.

Anna: OK, there are a number of problems here.

But the main one is that of people leaving,

and I have a proposal for how to solve this.

Sven: I’m listening.

Maria: Yes, go on.

Anna: Well, we need to understand why people

are leaving and then make some changes

to deal with those reasons.

Maria: But aren’t we doing that already?

Anna: No, not really. There’s no real exit interview

for people before they leave the company.

And if we don’t survey them on why they’re

leaving, then we’re passing up a huge op-

portunity before they walk out the door.

We need to think about what we can learn

and how we can adapt.

Sven: I’m not so sure...

Anna: OK, you might be wondering how we can

be sure people won’t just say negative

things because they’re leaving anyway. I’ll

tell you why: because they have nothing to

gain by not telling the truth. And if we’re

serious about our desire to make positive

changes, then there’s no real reason why

this shouldn’t work.

Maria: I see. You’re probably right.

Anna: The main thing we need to do is to make

sure we don’t lose any more people, or at

least reduce the rate at which they’re now

leaving the company.

Sven: Yes. We really need to do that — and soon.

Anna: And I’ll tell you how. We’re going to do more

regular surveys of all employees to find out

how they’re feeling, what’s going well and

what we can do to improve. After these sur-

veys and exit interviews, we should be able

to identify some patterns. We can then try

to avoid further loss of staff.

Maria: Right, that all sounds like a good plan.

Anna: Great. So, to summarize, I’m suggesting that

we introduce exit interviews for all leavers

and that we carry out regular surveys for all

employees.

Sven: I can agree to that.

Maria: Me, too.

Anna: Thanks. I’ll need some time to formulate

the exit interview and survey questions —

and a budget for the implementation and

analysis. I should be able to get back to you

in about a month. After that, we can decide

what action needs to be taken.

adapt [E(dÄpt]

, sich anpassen

agree to sth. [E(gri: tu]

, mit etw. einverstanden

sein

anticipate (sth.)

[Än(tIsIpeIt]

, (etw.) vorhersehen

brief: keep sth. ~ [bri:f]

, etw. kurz halten

exit interview

[(eksIt )IntEvju:]

, Gespräch beim Aus-

scheiden des Mitarbeiters /

der Mitarbeiterin

face sth. [feIs]

, mit etw. konfrontiert

werden, etw. gegenüber-

stehen

get sth. across

[)get E(krQs]

, etw. rüberbringen

get back to sb.

[)get (bÄk tu]

, sich wieder bei jmdm.

melden

implementation

[)ImplImen(teIS&n]

, Umsetzung

issue [(ISu:]

, Problem

pattern [(pÄt&n]

, Muster, Struktur

pitch sth. [pItS]

, etw. anpreisen;

hier: (jmdn.) von etw.

überzeugen

recruit sb. [ri(kru:t]

, jmdn. einstellen

summarize (sth.)

[(sVmEraIz]

, (etw.) zusammenfassen

survey [(s§:veI]

, Befragung

survey sb. [sE(veI]

, jmdn. befragen

tight [taIt]

, hier: knapp

AUDIO + PLUS

You can try our

exercises on this

topic on Business

Spotlight Audio

as well as in our

exercise booklet,

Business Spotlight

Plus. To order, go

to http://www.aboshop.

spotlight-verlag.de

MIKE HOGAN

is a co-author of Business English

for Beginners A1 + A2 and Basis for

Business B1 + B2 (Cornelsen).

Contact: [email protected]