Imagine you have to deal with the following situations, in which you have to give feedback.

Plan what you will say.

a) you share an office with a colleague who often goes out, without telling you for how long. When clients phone, you are unable to tell them when to call back. What suggestions can you give your colleague?

b) one of your staff, who often visits clients, insists on wearing jeans at work, despite the office dress code which states “no jeans”. You feel it is necessary to discuss it formally with the staff member.

Writing

Read the following email and suggest ways the supervisor could deal with the problems in the department. Role-play a conversation to follow the email, with you as Charlie and your partner as Sam. Reply to the email with your own ideas.

Lesson 4. Praise

Warm up

I. In what circumstances do you praise colleagues at work?

II. Do you find giving praise or receiving praise more difficult? Why?

III. What is your approach for giving negative feedback to colleagues?

Listening

I. Listen to three situations where someone is giving praise. In each dialogue 1-3, what did someone do well? What has happened as a result?

What did they do well?	Result
1)
2)
3)

II. Look at the extracts from the conversations. Complete them with the useful phrases for giving praise from listening the script. Then listen again and check your answers.

1. I'd just like to say I'm ___________________________how successful our stand was...

2. Jane, you ___________________get such a good location.

3. Well ___________________, Jane.

4. I want to tell you ___________________________________your presentation yesterday. You did a ________________________ .

5. I really ______________________________included the customer stories.

6. Anyway, they love it - you_____________________ very well.

Speaking

Role-play the following situations to practice giving praise. Before you begin, decide how you will introduce the topic, and what specific aspect(s) you will praise.

1 Boss to employee - praise for a report.

2 Boss to employee - praise on winning a large new contract.

3 Colleague to colleague - praise for the new company website.

Writing

1) One of your colleagues has just returned from an international conference, where they represented your company. You hear that their presentation went very well. As you are working from home, you decide to drop them an email to congratulate them.

2) You are the boss of a small retail store. A new member of staff noticed that somebody was regularly stealing from you, and by reporting it to you has saved you a lot of money. Write a letter to the member of staff, praising them and telling them the results of their action.

Lesson 5. Compromise

Warm up

Compromise /komprsmaiz/ when people are arguing, they make an agreement called a compromise by giving up part of what they want

• Do you often have to reach compromise in your job, studying?

• Think of an occasion when you solved a disagreement or problem by compromising.

Active Vocabulary

When trying to reach a compromise, we often discuss the effects of possible actions or events on the situation. In order to do this, conditional sentences are often used:

If I had the chance.

If we bought 10,000 of them,...

I would make a lot of changes if I had the chance.

If we bought 10,000 of them, we'd have storage problems.

If I were you, I wouldn't accept that offer.

If I agreed to those conditions, would it affect my pension?

Would it affect my pension if I agreed to those conditions?

Lexical exercises

Match the two halves of the sentences:

Would they accept the offer	we'd leave the company.
Our rent would be lower	would you agree to pay sooner?
If I were you,	I'd apologize for my mistake.
If we gave you a 10% discount,	if we included transport costs?
If our boss expected us to work overtime,	if we employed more staff?
Would people start leaving	if we moved out of the centre.

Listening

I. Derek is the owner of a chain of Turkish restaurants in Ireland. The manager of one of the restaurants is a Turkish woman called Ayse. She wants to talk to Derek about something important. Read this summary of the first part of the dialogue. Then listen to the dialogue and correct the text where it is wrong.

Ayse wants to talk to Derek, her boss, because today she's received a letter from her family in Turkey, saying there's a problem at home and they need her to come home for three or four days. Derek seems to understand her problem and it's a busy week.

II. Listen to the second part of the dialogue and underline the part of the sentence in Italics that is correct.

1. Derek will not agree to Ayse's request because he cannot manage without her / he feels she is not being honest.

2. Ayse's main worry is her duty to her family / money.

3. They understand / do not understand each other's point of view.

III. Listen to the third part of the dialogue. What compromise do they reach?

IV. Look at the extracts from the dialogues. Complete them with the phrases used by Ayse and Derek. Then listen again to all three dialogues and check your answers.

1. I know it's a busy time of year, I do. I __________________________your point of view.

2. But put______________________ - imagine if it were your family.

3. This is what I suggest. Let's both ______________________and I'll phone you tomorrow morning.

4. Right, er... I've ________________________ thinking.

5. On the _______________________I need someone with your experience and ability with the staff and the customers.

6. So what _________________________ - if you went in four days' time that would give us time to show the ropes to someone else.

7. Let's ____________________then.

Speaking

Respond to the following problems. Try to use language from the unit.

1) a regular customer says they are having financial problems and cannot pay for the goods or services you have provided. You need the money but do not want to lose a good customer.

2) there is an urgent project at work. Your boss wants you to work extra hours for the next two weeks, including all day Saturday and Sunday. No extra money is available to pay you for this.

Writing

As part of a presentation to new employees, you decide to suggest some “tips for reaching agreement”. Write four or five tips that you could show as part of the talk.