How to talk about PERFORMANCE at work - Business English lesson (Ep.59)

Speaking about performance at work with your colleagues and managers can be hard and if you speak English as a second language then I'm here to help! In today's podcast we hear informal and formal vocabulary that we can use to talk about performance at work. We'll hear the grammar structures that you need to use this new vocabulary correctly and we'll hear some great, natural and native sounding examples of how you can talk about performance, at work, in English.

If you speak English at work and want to sound more native and natural when talking to colleagues, customers, or clients, then I hope that the vocabulary, grammar, and communication tips in today's episode will be useful for you. 

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Also, if you're studying for the IELTS, TOEFL, or Cambridge English tests and exams then you might find some of the vocabulary in this episode really useful.

This podcast is all about helping you to communicate better, in English, at work. I work with international English speakers from around the world who use English, at work, as a second or third language and I hope that I can bring some of the ideas, vocabulary, and grammar, from those sessions, to you in this podcast.

Don’t forget that my full time job is helping international professionals who use English at work to improve their communication skills. So, if you need English to do your job but don’t speak it natively then maybe we can work together to help you to achieve your language goals. 

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Transcript

Welcome back to the Breakout Business English podcast. My name is Chris. I'm a business English and communication coach, and I've personally worked with over 1,000 international professionals just like you to improve the way that they communicate at work in England. English. Thank you so much for listening and for your time. I really do know how valuable it is. And our topic today is talking about performance, both good and bad. And bad.You know, when I was writing this episode of the podcast, I started to wonder if anyone listening to the podcast has an employee of the month program at work. That's a system where once a month, the best member of a team is recognized and rewarded for their excellence and their great performance in their work. I worked in a lot of different places as a salesperson. Starting when I was 16 and ending when I was around 24. I definitely remember a couple of those places having employee of the month programs. I definitely remember that I never won. On the other end of the spectrum, there is, of course, underperformance, which can result in disciplinary action or even dismissal. And I can tell you that I've been on both sides of that table at different points in my career. But whether you're the person receiving the bad news or indeed giving it, those are never nice meetings to be in. Today, we're going to talk about both of these situations. We're going to discuss how you can talk about colleagues who do their jobs really well, and how you can talk about colleagues who have a lot of room for improvement. We're going to hear some natural and native sounding vocabulary that we can use to describe and discuss these situations. And we'll see some interesting grammar structures that we can use with this new vocabulary. Let's get started by listening to some natural and native sounding ways to talk about colleagues who are doing their jobs really well. I really just want to commend the great work you've done on this project. I really just want to commend the great work you've done on this project. You're really excelling in this role. You're really excelling in this role. You've really upped your game this last quarter. And I want you to know how much I appreciate the effort you've put in. You've really upped your game this last quarter, and I want you to know how much I appreciate the effort you've put in. Okay, let's begin today by talking about a really Excellent word. And that is the verb to excel. To excel. That's E-X-C-E-L. And I apologize for the pun on excellent words and Excel, but hey, if you spend enough time talking about vocabulary, sometimes you like to make jokes about words. Now, although you may not know the verb Excel. I'm guessing that you've heard the adjective to be excellent.Like in my terrible joke to be excellent. So, if I describe something as excellent, then what do I mean?Well, quite simply, I mean that something is really good. It's great. It's top notch. And fantastic. What do you think we mean by the verb to excel. To excel. In our first example, we heard: "You're really excelling in this role." You're really excelling in this role. Was that our first example? Hold on. Our second example. Dear. There we go. Our second example. You're really excelling in this role.So that's the continuous or progressive form. Excelling. You're excelling. If someone excels, they do really well. If you start a new job, then your new boss might welcome you to work on your first day and say, I'm sure you're going to excel working here. I'm sure you're going to excel working here. Or maybe you want to talk about your performance in a job interview. You might tell your interviewer, I spent six months as a manager and I really excelled in that role. I spent six months as a manager and I really excelled in that role. And just to complete the set, let's talk about the noun and that is excellence. For instance, if you excel in a role, then your managers might reward your excellence. In fact, we often hear that people get trophies and awards for things like Excellence in Business. Or a songwriter. Might win an award for excellence in songwriting. I think that a lot of people can look at their job as a sport or maybe their industry as a sport, especially in roles where you're competing against each other. As I mentioned earlier. I spent roughly the first nine years of my working life in sales, and that's definitely a competitive role. I currently coach a couple of salespeople on their English and communication skills, and I get to hear how colleagues are consistently challenged to outsell each other.So, is it any surprise that we can use the phrase, up your game? To talk about improving your performance. In the second example, we heard, you've really upped your game this last quarter. And I want you to know how much I appreciate the effort you've put in. You've really upped your game this last quarter.So how can we use this and how might we hear it at work? Well, one thing is that you might hear it from managers who want you to improve your performance in a sentence like, you need to up your game. You need to up your game. Then, perhaps, if you do start to perform better, then you might hear the continuous form. In a sentence like: I've noticed you've been upping your game recently. I've noticed you've been upping your game recently. Now, the real grammar professionals listening to this podcast might be saying, hold on a moment, in that sentence it sounds like up is a verb. But. Surely up is a preposition and you would be right to say that. This is a slightly strange situation where the preposition 'up' is functioning as a verb. In fact, it's a regular verb.So we've got the basic infinitive verb to up your game. We've got the past tense: You upped your game last week. You upped your game last week. And we've got the continuous form. Thanks for upping your game. Thanks for upping your game. I should say that Usually up is not a verb. And right now, I can't think of any other contexts where you could use it as a verb in this way. But hey, if you can think of any others, then feel free to leave a comment on the YouTube video for this podcast or maybe put it in a review. And if you want to excel at communicating with your colleagues, then maybe we can work together. My full-time job, as always, is helping international professionals who use English at work to improve their communication skills.So, If you need English to do your job, but don't speak it natively, then it would be great to meet you. If you'd like to book some time to work with me through one-to-one video calls, just you and me, then you can go to BreakoutBusinessEnglish.com. That's the title of the podcast, BreakoutBusinessEnglish.com and find out more. Starting on our first call, we can focus on the specific opportunities that you personally have to improve your English and communication skills and the mistakes that you make most often or cause the biggest problems with your communication. And right now, you can use the code PODCAST30, that's PODCAST30, at checkout to get a 30% discount off your first booking of 30, 45, or 60 minutes, whichever is best for you.Sometimes my calendar gets a little busy, so if you have trouble finding a time that works for you can always send me a message through the contact page on the website and ask if I have any time to fit you in. I've worked with over 1,000 non-native international English speakers from new graduates up to CEOs and government leaders to help them to achieve their goals and I look forward to meeting you. Equally, if you're interested to see how a session with me might work, then one thing that I do from time to time is analyze and break down the English communication skills of celebrities over on YouTube. I have a few political leaders on there. And just yesterday, I think, maybe a couple of days ago, I put up a video. An episode about Rafa Nadal. That's the Spanish... Tennis star there, very famous Spanish tennis player. And if you're interested to see how good his English is and what his opportunities are to improve, then Feel free to take a look at that. You can find that link down in the description of this podcast, in the show notes for this podcast. But the easiest way to find it would be to go to YouTube and search for Breakout Business English and you'll find it there. Okay, we all had a lovely time talking about colleagues who were excelling during the first half of the podcast. Let's move on now to discuss Underperformance. Here are some natural and native-sounding ways to discuss colleagues who are not doing their jobs very well. Unfortunately, if this underperformance continues, we will have to go through the disciplinary process and this could result in your dismissal. Unfortunately. If this underperformance continues, we will have to go through the disciplinary process and this could result in your dismissal. My manager told me that she's going to put me on a performance improvement plan from next week. It's not the end of the world, but I'm still pretty worried about it. My manager told me that she's going to put me on a performance improvement plan from next week. It's not the end of the world, but I'm still pretty worried about it. A Performance Improvement Plan often just known by its initials PIP or a PIP. Is a formal written document that outlines specific issues with an employee's performance and creates a structured plan to fix them. It includes measurable goals, a timeline for improvement, the support or training that will be provided, and the consequences if performance doesn't meet expectations. Often people just refer to performance improvement plans by their abbreviation PIP or PIP. Which we, one more time, pronounce as pip.So N-A-S-A, you've probably heard pronounced as NASA. This one is pip. PIPs or PIPs are used to help underperforming employees improve and meet the required standards. And can be a record of the company's attempts to assist the employee before considering dismissing them. In the second example, we heard my manager told me that she's going to put me on a performance improvement plan from next week. It's not the end of the world, but I'm still pretty worried about it. One more time, my manager told me that she's going to put me on a performance improvement plan from next week. This is a tool used by a lot of organisations, especially larger ones, and although it doesn't automatically mean that you're going to lose your job, most people who do get fired start the process by being put on a PIP.So it's definitely not a position that you want to find yourself in. I'm going to let you in on a little secret. I originally wrote this episode of the podcast with the negative and maybe even sad situations in the first half of the podcast. However, I thought that I might lose some listeners if I started off by bringing everyone's mood down.So if you're still listening at this point, then I really appreciate you persevering with this week's episode. Okay, let's take a look at the words dismissal and disciplinary. Both of which we heard in the first example. As a reminder, that was unfortunately, if this underperformance continues, we will have to go through the disciplinary process, and this could result in your dismissal. Unfortunately, if this underperformance continues, we will have to go through the disciplinary process and this could result in your dismissal.So let's start with disciplinary. This is stronger than a PIP. Anything disciplinary is intended to correct someone's bad behavior or maybe even punish them for doing something wrong. Often this is simply for not doing your job properly. This is usually a very formal and structured set of procedures that your employer goes through. If your employer takes disciplinary action against you, then you can be sure that if you don't take decisive and immediate action to correct the issue that they've identified, you are going to lose your job. This word disciplinary is a noun. And it comes from the word 'discipline'. Discipline. Discipline can be a verb to discipline someone, which is to tell them how bad they've been, the terrible thing that they've done, and to discipline. Punish them often for that. But it can be used as a noun. And... Interestingly, if it's a noun, it's very often a good thing. If you have discipline, or maybe are very disciplined, then this means that you behave in a strict and controlled way in order to be successful. I think some of the most disciplined people in the world are professional athletes who compete at a very high level. If you want to be the best athlete possible, then you need to be very disciplined to have a lot of discipline when you are deciding things. What to eat, how often to train, and things like this.So if you have a lot of discipline, then it means that you are very careful about following the rules, either rules set by other people, or maybe just rules set by yourself. So, let's take a look at that second word there, and that was to dismiss. To dismiss. Or, as you heard earlier in the first example, the noun dismissal. Dismissal. There are a lot of ways to talk about when an employer chooses to end the contract of an employee. We can talk about firing someone, of course. I think that's quite a well-known one. You were fired yesterday or they are going to fire someone. If you are laid off, then this means that there is not enough work for you to do or maybe not enough money to pay you or maybe both.So layoffs are never something that is a nice thing to hear about. People often get laid off in large numbers, 10, 20, 100 people might get laid off at the same time. We could say that an employee was let go. That's quite a nice way to do it, quite polite way to do it. If you're in a meeting, you might get told, we're thinking of letting you go, or we're going to have to let you go. However, a very formal way to say this. Is to say that you need to dismiss someone. To dismiss someone. This is the kind of wording that you will see written on the formal documents that are discussing this.So, to dismiss someone. Or to handle someone's dismissal or proceed with a dismissal is a formal way to say that your contract has been ended, you've been fired, you've been let go, and indeed you have been dismissed. I should say that not every time you hear the word dismiss will it mean that someone has been fired. If you have, again, a very formal setting, then dismissing someone might mean that they are told you can leave now. We often see this in the military. If a leader, if a military leader wants people to leave and you don't need to stay anymore, you might get told you're dismissed. You are dismissed. And we often hear this in schools as well. When a teacher has finished a class and the teacher wants their students to leave, they will dismiss their class. They will dismiss their class.So there are a few different contexts for dismiss, but if you hear it with regard to your job and you're not in school or in the military, then there's a good chance that you're losing your job. Definitely not a good day. Don't forget that if you would like to discuss any of the ideas or vocabulary or maybe grammar, etc. In today's episode or work on your communication skills, then you can book a session with me to work on your skills in English communication and English language in general by going to www.breakoutbusinessenglish.com. That's breakoutbusinessenglish.com or clicking the link in the show notes. And use the code PODCAST30. That's PODCAST30. To get a 30% discount off your first booking. I've worked with over 1,000 non-native English-speaking professionals, from new graduates up to CEOs and government leaders, to help them achieve their goals, and I look forward to meeting you. Between episodes of the podcast, you can get videos every couple of days on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Just search for Breakout Business English. And if there's a topic that you'd like to hear me talk about on the podcast, then I'd be excited to hear your ideas. Leave me a message or a comment on one of my YouTube videos and I look forward to hearing from you. As I mentioned earlier, if you're interested in seeing the kind of thing that we do during coaching sessions, then head over to YouTube and take a look at some of those videos, breaking down the English communication skills of some world leaders, some business leaders, and most recently, a couple of days ago, the tennis star, the athlete Rafa Nadal, who is a native Spanish speaker there. If you're listening on Apple Podcasts, then I invite you to leave a review. Every review really helps me out and helps to push the podcast to new listeners and to grow the show. If you found this podcast useful. And you think there are some valuable things in here, then feel free to write a couple of kind words, and I thank you for that in advance. That's a great place to request a topic for a future podcast. That is it for today. Thank you so much for listening and for your time. I know how valuable your time is and I really, truly appreciate and respect your choice to spend some of it with this podcast. I hope you have a great week ahead and yeah, we're getting to the end of 2025 now. I know it's a time for celebration in a lot of parts of the world. It's certainly a time for celebration here. I live in the northeast of England. We have our Christmas tree up. Christmas song is playing in the kitchen most of the time. And I'll be seeing lots of family and friends over the next couple of weeks.So I hope that whatever the end of your year looks like, I hope you have a great time. There are more episodes of the podcast due before the end of the year. I think we've got one more scheduled, but have a great end to 2025. I'll probably say the same thing again in the next podcast and I'll see you next episode. Indeed. Thanks a lot, everyone. Talk to you soon.