#5 - Running a meeting - Part 2 (Practical phrases and scripts for non-native English speaker working in Tech)
Cheatsheets for synchronous and asynchronous communication
Welcome to the next part of this survival guide for non-native English speaker working in Tech. Native English speakers can also use this as a cheatsheet for synchronous and asynchronous communication as I believe the principles here are mostly language agnostic and are more about guiding the way we can think and approach certain situations in business settings.
In this second part I will share some scripts and phrases you can use to during meetings to start, set context, and present ideas.
RUNNING A MEETING (CONT)
DURING (SYNCHRONOUS)
Starting
Mindset: Let's respect other people's time and availability.
[While sitting through the awkward wait] Let's give it another minute for people to join
Let's make a start
Let's kick it off
Setting context
Mindset: remind everyone why we are having this meeting, what we hope to get out of it.
The purpose of this meeting
What we're going to cover today
A couple of topics in today's agenda
I want to share some of the things we've been working on with this group
We're sharing some of our best practices today. While we won't even pretend to have all the answers, we think it's important to share tools and practices so we can iterate and learn together.
The problem we're trying to solve is
What I'd like us to get out of this meeting is
Presenting
Mindset: I have something relevant and important to share, explain, discuss.
This still needs a bit of scrubbing, want to get your thoughts on it
We can refine these assumptions over time but this is where we're going to start
I'm not going to read through the slides here
Just FYI for now, no actions required
I want this group to be aware of this initiative and to stay in the loop
What I'd like to do is take you through this document and get some feedback on it // Do we need a meeting for this though? Yes sometimes. When? Let me know if you'd like me to talk about this on a separate post.
I'd like to now explain how this applies to what we have seen so far
Without going into too much detail before we dive in
Question? [pause 3 secs]. OK moving on / I'll take it as a no/yes.
I'll hand it over to x
X, would you like to take this next section?
I'm going to pause right here for any question, thought, or reaction
If there's only one thing you take away from this presentation, it's [...]
The point I'm making here is
Let me know when you can see my screen okay (it's coming up)
(After a connection issue) So, where was I?
I'll come back to this later but I'd finish the walkthrough first
My working outline for this series:
Managing Asynchronous Communication as a Non Native English Speaker & Running a meeting > Preparing > What and When
Running a meeting > During > Starting, Setting Context, and Presenting
Running a meeting > During > Moderating Discussions, Answering Questions, and Disagreeing
Running a meeting > During > Concluding & Thoughts on English Skills Being a Non Native English Speaker
Business Emails
Managing Up and Managing Down
Asking for Help, Delegating, Following up
Frames to Help You Think More Strategically, Critically, and Creatively
Misc (Consulting Mindset, Sharing Information, Coaching Your Team, Salary Negotiation, Sales Calls. Please suggest in the comment section any other topic you'd like me to share about.)
Make sure to check out the previous parts If you missed them and stay tuned for upcoming ones, but don't feel any FOMO for skipping around. I am proponent of more "Just in Time" and less "Just in Case" living, so you should be able to treat each part as a standalone piece.
Hope these conversational frameworks and reference phrases save you time, let you focus more on solving real problems for your teams instead of spending your brain CPU cycle worrying about what when and how to say certain things.
Originally published on Proses.ID
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