SCQA Storytelling and problem solving framework | Business Communication lesson

The SCQA framework is the topic of todays podcast, continuing our series on speaking frameworks. If you need to solve problems at work and present your solutions to your colleagues then the SCQA framework might be a great structure for you. This speaking framework was created at McKinsey consultants and if you use English at work to communicate with your clients, colleagues, and customers, then you might find it useful.

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, DET 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, likely just like you, to improve the way that they communicate at work in English. Thank you so much for listening and for your time. I really do know how valuable it is. And today we are continuing our series on communication frameworks. These are the practical tools that you can start using straight away to speak more clearly and confidently in English and at work.
So, if you've been following this series, you've already heard about the 3-2-1 framework which helps you organise lots of ideas around one central point and PREP which gives you a reliable structure for sharing recommendations and opinions. Today's framework is slightly different from both of those, and I think it might be the one that some people at least will get the most use out of. It's called SCQA, and it comes from the world of management consulting. In fact, it was developed by a woman named Barbara Minto, who worked at McKinsey. Which is As many of you will know, one of the most well-known consulting firms in the world. This framework is a very human and very natural way to communicate. And once I explain it, I think you'll be excited to apply it with your colleagues, clients, and customers. I should mention that I coach a couple of McKinsey consultants in different parts of the world to help improve their communication. In fact, I coach consultants from a few different consultancies, McKinsey being one of them. One thing I love about working with business and management consultants is how structured their speaking and communication is. It's really enjoyable to listen to the way they present ideas.
So let's see if we can help you bring some of that structure to your English speaking today. Let's start off, as we often do, with the problem. One thing I often hear from the people I coach is that they struggle to get people's attention when they are presenting a problem or trying to explain a complicated situation. They might have all the information they need and their English might be perfectly clear, But the listener either loses interest halfway through or doesn't really understand why they're being told all of this.
So, If this sounds familiar, then SCQA is for you. Here's what I think is happening when you have problems like this. When we have a complicated situation to explain, many of us, we start at the beginning. We set the scene, we describe the background, we share the details, and we hope that by the end, our listener will understand why it all matters. The trouble is, your listener doesn't know where you're going. They're sitting there receiving information without knowing what to do with it yet. And in a busy workplace, this is a real problem. Because people's patience is limited and their attention is precious. S-C-Q-A.
Solves this by using the power of storytelling. Storytelling is a theme I discuss with a lot of people I coach and it's something I think I'll be doing a few episodes of the podcast on, but it's definitely a powerful communication skill to develop. SCQA gives your communication a shape that the human brain finds very easy to follow because it mirrors the structure of a story. And we are all as human beings designed to respond to stories.
So, Let's jump into the framework. The S stands for situation. This is where you set the scene. You give just enough context for your listener to understand where you are right now. It should be brief. And it should be something your listener can already relate to or agree with. You're not introducing anything new or surprising here. You're establishing some common ground and a world in which you can build your little story here. The sea. STANDS FOR COMPLICATION. This is the main part of the framework. And it's the moment where your communication really comes to life. The complication is the thing that has changed or the problem that has emerged. Or maybe the tension that exists within the story you just described. This is what makes your story interesting. Or gives it the feeling that something needs to be resolved. It's the whole reason you're having the conversation. The Q- It stands for question. This is where you make the complication explicit. By turning it into a question. What does the complication mean that we need to know or decide. This step is often the one people want to skip. Because it can feel a little unnecessary. It can feel a little redundant. You might be thinking, surely my listener can figure out the question themselves. But saying the question out loud is actually very powerful. It focuses everyone's attention. On exactly the right thing before you give them the answer. And it creates a moment of real curiosity. It removes any opportunity for misunderstanding or miscommunication. It ensures that everyone is on the same page. And one thing you might notice from these podcasts is we are always trying to reduce opportunities for miscommunications. And misunderstandings.
And then the A stands for answer. This is your response to the question, your recommendation, your solution, your conclusion. Because you've done the work of the first three steps, your answer lands with much more clarity and impact. Than if you'd simply announced it at the start.
So there's our framework. S-C-Q-A. Situation On vacation. Question. An answer. Thank you very much, Babra Minto. Much appreciated. Is she still around? I have no idea. Let's do a quick Google. Barbara... Come on, Barbara. How are you doing? American author and consultant. She's at she studied at Harvard? Always nice to study to Harvard. She's 92. Bless her. She's got a website still. Currently conducts a world-renowned two-day course at 92 years old. Abra, you do enjoy working. That's just impressive. If that's true, that is very impressive.
So thank you, Barbara Mintor, for our SCQA structure. Now, a moment ago, I used the word exceptional. Bliss it. Explicit. E-X-P-L-I-C-I-T. And it's a word that I think is worth pausing on. If something is explicit, it means that it has been stated clearly directly. Leaving nothing to interpretation or guesswork. Think of it as the opposite of implied. If something is implied, you're expected to read between the lines and figure it out for yourself. If we were talking in terms of Communication across cultures, as we have done recently, this is a very common way of communicating over in East Asia. Japanese business culture, Korean business culture, Chinese business culture, things are very often implied and understood from context. However, if something is explicit, there's no reading between the lines required. Everything is laid out clearly in front of you. All you need to do is listen or read. But in this case, listen.
So, in a professional context, being explicit is almost always a good thing. Yes, different cultures will communicate differently, but if you're communicating across cultures, we definitely want to make sure that people understand.
So saying the obvious thing, being explicit is often a useful way to communicate and to agree to communicate. If your manager gives you explicit instructions, you know exactly what is expected of you. If a contract includes an explicit clause, an explicit sentence maybe, about deadlines, there's no room for confusion later. Now, you'll hear the related word explicitly used as an adverb. For example, I explicitly asked you for the report by Friday. I explicitly asked you for the report by Friday. This means that you stated that deadline very clearly and directly. Not a hint. Not a su. One thing worth knowing is that explicit has a second meaning in everyday English. You may have seen it used as a warning on music or video content to indicate that it contains adult material, maybe bad words that children shouldn't hear. And in that context, it signals that nothing has been hidden or softened. The meaning is simply about clarity and directness. It's a word that carries authority. Saying that you want to be explicit about something Signals to your listener that what comes next is important and should not be misunderstood. However, if you'd like to work on your professional communication and your vocabulary and your grammar, your communication skills more broadly, then maybe we can work together. 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 you don't speak it natively, Then I'd love to meet you. If you'd like to book some time to meet 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 very 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 that cause the biggest problems in 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 well 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. Okay, so let's get into a real-world example. Let's say that you work on a customer service team at a software company. I work with a lot of software developers and a lot of people who work in different areas of software and maybe SaaS companies.
So let's say you work in a customer service team at a company like this. And you have noticed something concerning, something worrying, you want to raise it with your manager. Now, Without any framework, you might walk in and start by explaining the history of your customer satisfaction scores and then mention that you've been getting some complaints, then describe what you think might be causing them and eventually arrive at what you think should be done. By the time you get there, your manager might have lost interest in the conversation.? Maybe you just had to work really hard to understand what you were trying to communicate, especially if you were jumping between conclusions and explanations and evidence and situation and not quite sure what was meant to go first and what was meant to follow. Let's hear this idea. Structured with SCQA. Take a listen to this. Our customer satisfaction scores have been consistently strong for the past two years and the team I know has worked really hard to build that reputation but Over the last six weeks, We've seen a drop of around 15% and when I looked into it, most of the negative feedback is coming from customers who waited more than 48 hours for a response to their first message. Ciao. I think the question we need to ask is, what do we do to get our response times back down and stop that score from falling further? I think the most immediate step is to introduce a triage system for incoming tickets so the team can prioritize urgent requests rather than working strictly through the queue in order. I've drafted a simple process that we could try out for the next four weeks if you want to take a look. Okay, so hopefully you recognized that moving through the situation, complication, question and answer sections. Did you notice how different it felt? How clear it was and how nice it was to be led through this clear structure? The manager knew exactly why this conversation was happening from the first sentence. The complication created a clear and genuine reason to keep listening. The question made the purpose of the conversation explicit. And the answer. Felt earned rather than sudden. It wasn't a surprise. In fact, it might have been something that they were excited to hear. That is SCQA doing its job. I used the word triage in that example. Which is a really interesting one. Triage is originally a medical word. In hospitals, particularly in emergency departments. Triage is the process of quickly assessing patients as they arrive and deciding who needs treatment most urgently. A patient with a minor injury might wait while someone in a more serious condition is seen immediately. If you've ever been sat for a long time in a hospital waiting room and then had an ambulance arrive and had someone rushed past you, then yes, you've experienced this. Triage. The word here comes from the French verb 3-year. My apologies to all of the native French speakers who I work with. But this means to sort or to separate. Did you notice the hesitation in my voice as I said the French verb? I don't speak French. Trier. Trier? Did I get it? Leave a comment or a review. Leave a one-star review for my French pronunciation of Trier.
So. Triage has made its way from a specialist context into this everyday professional language. In a business setting, to triage a list of tasks or a queue of requests means to sort them by urgency or importance.
So that the most critical things are dealt with first. You might hear someone say, let's triage the support tickets before the end of the day. Or can you triage my inbox while I'm in this meeting? It is a vivid and efficient word. And it signals a very practical prioritized way of thinking.
So before we close today, just a word about when SCQA works best and when it might not be the right choice. This framework is particularly powerful when you're presenting a problem proposing a solution or trying to get a decision made. It works brilliantly in presentations, in written reports, in emails where you need someone to take action. And in those moments where you need to quickly make sure that a colleague has all of the information regarding a developing situation. Where it's less useful is in maybe open brainstorming conversations or in very informal God. Or maybe situations where the problem itself hasn't been fully identified yet.
Like all of the frameworks in this series, SCQA is a tool for specific situations. And the skill is recognizing those situations when they appear. Now, if you've been following this series, you may be thinking this sounds very similar to Another framework, maybe this feels like you might be able to use this or maybe the para framework to achieve the same goal and that might be the case. It might be the case that for you, Two different frameworks will feel suitable and appropriate in the same situation. And that's great. These frameworks are part of a toolkit that you can use. And the more frameworks you build within Reason, the more tools you have when you are communicating ideas.
So, Speaking of ideas, don't forget that if you would like to discuss any of the ideas, vocabulary or grammar in today's episode, or work on your professional communication skills more broadly, then you can book a session with me by going to www.breakoutbusinessenglish.com. That's breakoutbusinessenglish.com or clicking the link in the show notes. And use the code PODCAST30 at checkout to get a 30% discount off your first booking.
Like I say, I've worked with well over 1,000 non-native English speaking professionals, from new graduates up to CEOs and government leaders, and even some McKinsey consultants, 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. I've actually got a YouTube video coming out, hopefully in the next couple of days, almost certainly before the next episode of the podcast on the three levels of business Mistakes that people make in their English. You might say that it is about triaging mistakes, which is what I do when I'm coaching people. Not all mistakes are equally important to work on.
So we triage mistakes and work on the most important ones first. The ones that really cause miscommunications, misunderstandings and problems. And our video, my video, about triaging mistakes. Is coming out very soon. Having said that, I don't think I actually used the word triage in the video. Definitely a missed opportunity.
So if there's a topic 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. If you're 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.
So if you found this useful and you think that there are some valuable ideas in here, then feel free to leave that review and help to grow the show. And I thank you in advance. That is everything for today. Thank you so much, as always, for listening and for your time. I know how valuable it is. And I really appreciate and respect your choice to spend some of your time with this podcast. I hope you have a great week. Keep practicing, keep building your English skills, keep listening, and I'll talk to you again next time on the Breakout Business English Podcast. Thanks a lot, everyone. Talk to you soon.