Cykl artykułów został przygotowany przez LANG LTC - Akredytowane Centrum Egzaminacyjne Cambridge ESOL, organizatora zagranicznych wyjazdów językowych i szkoleń językowych.

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Language of meetings

Those who read last month’s article know that holding meetings is a skill, which should not be taken for granted as it may take a lot of effort to master it. Once the general rules concerning running meetings have been clearly stated, the time has come to focus on how using proper language can facilitate achieving our primary goal i.e. make the corporate meetings effective.

Let’s start by imagining a corporate conference room. It is spacious but dull. White walls, a big table in the middle, a grey carpet and matching chairs. When you come to think about it, wherever you go, Berlin or Beijing, it would probably be all the same. How unimaginative! Or maybe that is what you call globalization? Anyway, the meeting is just about to begin. The participants with gloomy faces are hastily entering the room, holding on to their coffee mugs as if they contained some magic potion of which not a single drop can be wasted. After all it is going to stimulate their brains and prevent them from dozing off for another hour or so. The meeting has been called by Josh Dobson, the Managing Director in order to present and discuss sales targets for the next fiscal year. He is fully aware that it is not going to be easy to communicate the news of expansion and ambitious targets to his mangers. Thankfully, he has got the full support of Susan, the Financial Director but there is no doubt that all the others are going to fight him hard. Roger, the Sales Director is going to raise hell when he realizes how challenging the new targets are going to be. Then there is Joanna, the Marketing Director, who needs to be informed that the expectations of the Marketing Team are high while at this point they can ill afford any budget increase for marketing purposes. She is definitely not going to be happy about it either. So just great, Josh was standing there, feeling his irritation cumulate, before the meeting actually began. And why are they whispering? Cannot they just sit still and let him get through with it! Enough is enough!