Build Workplace English Confidence for Meetings and Interviews

All right, picture this. You're in a big meeting at work. Everyone's talking fast. Ideas are flying around. Suddenly, your boss turns to you. What do you think? Your heart races. Your mind goes blank. You open your mouth and words come out slowly, awkward, not quite what you meant. Your boss nods plightly and moves on. And you? You're left red-faced, frustrated, asking yourself, "Why is this so hard?" Sound familiar? Well, it doesn't have to be that way. Today, Izzdy is going to share how he went from feeling lost and insecure to confidently using his English every single day at work, leading meetings, giving feedback, and expressing himself

with clarity and confidence. Over the past 10 years, Izzy has taught English, worked in customer service, started his own business, and held various key roles here at Real Life. All of those in English. And the best part, he figured it all out mostly on his own. So if you have ever felt nervous, stuck, or like your English is holding you back professionally, then this episode is for you. Let's dive into episode 456 of the Real Life English Podcast. Joined here in the studio once again by the one and only Captain Immersion, aka Izzy. You ready? Hey. Ready for some fun? Going to talk about work, but we're not going to have it be too boring. No, work doesn't have to be boring either, right?

Okay, Izzy. So, I thought we could kick this off by I actually found a video while I was preparing for this lesson that I thought fit really well because we're talking about confidence at work. So, I think having a short conversation just to start out about like what is confidence is helpful, right? Mhm. All right. So, I have this short very short video from Priyanka Chopra. Let me roll the clip. Confidence is something you can teach yourself. Um, I learned it from the very strong people in my family that I looked up to that showed me that it doesn't matter what your circumstances are. It matters how large your dreams

So, what do you think about that, Izzy? Do you agree? Confidence is something you can teach yourself. Well, you know me like I'm a big start with why person starts by setting like your purpose, why you do what you do. And yeah, I don't know if like one can be confident without being purposeful so much, right? I would not believe really that's possible. At least in my case, the more purposeful I am, I think the more confident I am. That's true. I think a lot of it too is just experience, right? So, we're talking about how to be confident at work. I think a lot of that comes out of just generally the fact you've been working in English for 10 years. So, you have some confidence. Obviously, it just comes out of like, okay, I know I can do

this because I've been doing it for a long enough time, which anyone who's watching, you must have something that you're confident in. And it's probably because you have the experience, you know, you can do it, right? So, is there anything that you think that you do that most non-navives don't do at work that maybe lends to that confidence? There is. So, it's three important lessons from a decade of working in English, and I'm young, so it's a decade is like a lot for me. And yeah, these will help you go from feeling insecure to feeling confident and even like articulate in your speech, right? You're going to be able to uh use more words and express yourself more clearly and

just come across as somebody who really knows your thing, knows your as we say, right? Because you do, right? That's the thing. It's like English is a tool for you to express yourself. like you have your own knowledge about your field and you need to be able to just be that same person, that same professional at that same level in English. So let's talk about it. The first lesson that I learned that I reflected on was that we need to ask questions, right? When we started a new job. So if we need to ask questions because we need to learn, why don't we make that a superpower instead of a liability instead of a weakness?

Right? So that's the lesson that I've learned eventually. It's like a make asking questions a superpower. So that could be about a difficult word. I've had to do that so many times uh when I starting like so many technical words. Each new job was in a different field, right? First it was just teaching then I went to customer service. What does field mean in the context of work? Field is an area of work, right? So like I'm talking about customer service is a field.

There's maybe books and experts in that area. So it's a professional field you could say, right? But even in science there's fields too like physics and chemistry those were fields in that regard. So yeah um each new job I was in a different field and uh yeah that allowed me to always have so much to learn technical jargon too that comes with each field each type of work. Exactly. So find so I'd find myself asking questions about jargon, technical words, but also about things that were being explained to me, you know, either because I didn't understand it or just simply because you're just too complex

and I wouldn't shy away from asking, right, the questions. So that's something I've noticed from you actually is that I think that you're able to do that too unashamedly. So, I think that a lot of that's kind of like what separates from most non-natives in the workplace is that they feel like somehow it maybe eats away at like their credibility as a professional or something if they're asking what does that mean or that they seem like they don't know English if they have to ask what does that mean? But actually, it does show a sense of confidence because it's like you're you're curious, you want to get better, you know? Uh, and that's something that makes the best professionals are people who are really committed to learning.

It's vulnerability too, right? And like if you're starting at a new job and you're in manager knows you, they know your English level, what are you trying to hide, right? So just uh um ask and if they know exactly that also you you mean to learn like you're you're establishing that uh you're in this position also to master your communication skills uh they can help you and other people too and then it will not come across as um incapable as we're saying uh but rather there will be more trust you'll feel more confident because there's nothing to hide. I think we feel uh we feel insecure because we're hiding something often times, right? So, if you don't hide it, it's so much easier. And

you don't need to ask immediately. There's two ways of doing this by the way, right? You can ask u later. You can just take note. Um and you don't have to ask the same person who said the difficult thing, the expression or explanation. You can ask somebody else, but it's better just to ask the same person if you trust them. And that's what I did. Like I was telling you about my experience and uh at the ski resort that I worked in the United States that I worked at and man everything was new. I remember my first night working with the supervisor. We I was selling tickets like there's a ticket window.

Have you ever been to a ski resort uh like that? They have the ticket window and there you go. Yeah. You're from Colorado so you know. And uh this ski resort is I think it still is the biggest uh in the United States that has night skiing and there they had like lights lighting up the entire mountain. It was crazy. And I was the only person um on my first night doing it like ticketing like selling tickets and it was really fast-paced long lines and I had my supervisor by me and everything was new like the there's expressions about the software I was using uh greeting people. I was familiar with connected speech, but still like to have somebody say to me like, "Hey, hey, how's it going?"

It's like, "What?" You know, every everything was new. I think too it can be really helpful in these situations if you can carry around a notepad or have a notepad app in your phone. So, when you're asking these questions, you're getting the new expressions and so on that you're actually cataloging them so you can study them later, right? because ultimately it's great if you're asking questions, but if you're forgetting almost all of the new expressions that you're learning throughout the day, it's like, you know, you're you don't want to be the person who's having to ask three times uh what the same expression means, right? So, definitely having ways that you can study that. And of course, for all you guys that are watching this

lesson on the app, you have the flash cards. So, like we're actually going to be publishing exclusive lesson next week just for app users. And we'll be sharing a bunch. I'm not sure exactly how many, but we have like more than a dozen uh really common work expressions that Izzy and I use probably almost every day. Uh we're teaching, I think. Yeah. And so you can study with those with a flash card and all the advanced expressions that we're using today and that way they're in your long-term memory so that you're able to actually use those naturally and confidently at work and you just seem like that person who knows their as you said when you're at work. So highly recommend. If you guys haven't downloaded the app yet,

you can do that by tapping the link down the description below from your phone and get access to this premium lesson for free. I think something related to asking questions is like maybe you're learning outside of work. Hopefully, you are. You're like watching series or reading or like doing other things to buff up on to improve your English. Uh, and it reminds me of one of the people on our team who we work with, mate, that he's really good at this is that he'll deliberately look for opportunities in our meetings uh to try out a word that maybe he learned watching a TV series. And so I'm like just I had a meeting with him yesterday and he uh he brought kind of like an issue to me and

he was like at the end he's like I'm really glad we talked that out. Like is that the right expression? Talk it out. Uh and so I could confirm that. So, I think that's a really great context to ask questions, too, is if you're trying out a new expression you learned maybe outside of work and you're wanting to confirm like, okay, did I did I use that right or am I like throwing an expression out there that people maybe are nodding but they didn't actually understand it. That's actually it. it already uh starts to introduce I would say the next uh principle or next lesson learned that I have after uh just investigating my work life and that is what mate is doing he's turning his workplace into free English

practice as I'm calling it because it is like okay so definitely you can ask questions that's great but now if you are deliberately intentionally looking for the opportunities to use the your knowledge to use the words that you're learning then it's practice already and it's free because you're work is free right I mean you get paid obviously but see you're getting paid to practice it's even better uh and within your field so you're improving like professionally it's magic like it just depends on the way you see it now there's three ways you can practice right you can just type so you can send text you can send voice notes so just record your own or you can jump on a call. So this could be a quick call or the longer meetings

that you have already scheduled and all of these are opportunities. Now I wouldn't expect you to just immediately if you're not feeling confident for you to immediately start uh speaking too much like uh so much in long meetings with lots of people, right? But the these are gradually something that you can implement. Like if first you just text more and you send more voice notes and then quick calls with one ones, you know, just like one pe one person. Mhm. I have friends who they work in English and I've asked them like, "Hey, how many meetings you have in a week? Uh how often do you speak with people or how often do you practice your English by actually speaking or typing?" And

they say like, "Not much." You know, these are software developers, these people, these friends of mine, and they don't have to talk much. And they complain to me. They say to like, I mean, it's like, "Yeah, but I'm not really I haven't developed my English so much recently, man." Like, it's because you don't want to, right? Because you could be literally like every day you can text something. You can, but you need to be deliberate about it. So you would be going from the mindset of avoiding exposing yourself Mhm. to uh communicating more so you can uh fail faster, improve faster. Kind of similar mindset from the first one.

I really like some of the different vocab and um and collocations use there like jump on a call or to send a voice note. I'm not sure if everyone is familiar with some of these terms, but of course you guys can practice flashcards on the app if you're watching it there. So did you have any experiences where you maybe started recognizing that this was really important to actually like start using that environment, the work environment as a way to improve your English? Yeah, I mean this started early for me too in my first job. I was at that point I was teaching English was teaching kids initially but I had my co-workers my teachers who I work with some of them were Americans I you know after class I could just go home right

but I wouldn't I would just hang out I would just talk about the talk about how you went ask them about how their classes went it's small talk but it's it's it's useful and you have the option it's all about just having the option right so uh but here I can give you examples that are more current to show you that this never ends. So, uh you and I Ethan uh were talking uh about the idea of inviting Sea to join us for the lesson that we'll release next week exclus exclusively on an app, the ones with the workplace expressions, right? Because she was for us uh she was our game show host. It was really fun. And instead of just sending a quick text message to her, I sent a video because I know that was a lot to

ask too, you know. So in on Slack, the pro the software we use for communication, internal communication, there's you can just easily send a video, but if not, you can even use like WhatsApp or whatever, right? Whatever you use at work. And uh yeah, I just did that. And it was a video where was explaining what she would do and then asking her if she could do that. And for me, that's good practice. I need to practice. Not a native. So I right Portuguese is ingrained in my mind. It's my native language. So I need continue practicing English and this is how I do it.

Sometimes they're just kind of like flipping that switch even of kind of like you need to like activate it even when you're at a high level of fluency and everything because sometimes if you haven't been speaking for a long time, it's kind of like you're tripping over your words and you kind of need to warm up like any exercise. One thing it makes me think of is you said like you'd hang around after work. So there's lots of opportunities like this at most jobs, right? Like if you're working in person, which I know for probably like a lot of you guys that are listening watching, that might not be the case for you, but some of us, some people still work in the office, right? is maybe taking advantage of if

you have like a cafeteria there and eating lunch like trying to actually eat lunch with your colleagues and you can use that as an excuse to especially getting more um like more mundane more kind like everyday sort of conversation stuff with people that doesn't necessarily have to do with work and also like water cooler. This is like very classic the water cooler like the place where people go to drink water. So whatever place there is like a kitchen or something in your office where people tend to uh kind of gather and stuff you know for breaks and just finding opportunities. You can also it can be a good a good opportunity to just buff up on uh like your small talk like

introducing conversations maybe not just about the weather but maybe like observing something that you notice with the other person like they're wearing a cool necklace or a cool shirt or you know whatever the case is and like commenting on that. uh or something we have like as a digital we're remote right something we have digitally is it's actually inside of Slack it's an app called Donut which will set up uh basically one-on-one calls with different people to have like a 20-minute call that's more informal right so I think like here at Real Life English for example that can be a really great thing for people here to take advantage of to be able to not only connect more with other people that they

work with but uh also just to have English practice at work. So, I think just like looking for what are those opportunities? Some if you work at like a big company, there might even be like clubs or committees or like extracurriculars, like all these things that are all opportunities for you to get to practice your English um in and outside of work. Yeah. And when you don't, because often times, as you were saying, you don't have the option, you can create your own opportunities. Uh so you were talking about uh doing these things so you can this can buff up your small talk. By the way, what does that mean to buff up your small talk?

Yeah, use that also like before to buff up in your English or like to improve it. So yeah, small talk is an area of English of there's vocabulary is more specific to it, right? That maybe like greetings and ask just asking how the other person is doing that you can exercise these by simply just being more curious about the people you work with. Uh this is something that I can honestly be vulnerable here and just say that I learned more to do here at Real Life English, you know, uh to um because we don't work sitting next to each other. So we can just it's very easy to just go about our day and not ask how are you doing like to not even say hello.

Just start by saying whatever task you want to talk about or project. So when you start the conversation by hey, how was your weekend? if you truly care. Perfect Monday morning. Exactly. And it's really great and it's right practice that you wouldn't get if you didn't decide to do it. It's it's an option. Yeah, that's amazing. I think just you're killing two birds with one stone there for sure. Just by building those relationships. Obviously, it's it's in your in best interest to be connected with people you're working with and at

the same time getting that English practice. I know like I had students who were living in the states and they wanted to improve their English for their job and it was like something I said like you know are you connecting with your colleagues and usually it wasn't something they were doing. So it's exactly this point that they weren't taking advantage of those opportunities to get that kind of free English practice. Uh so I'm curious is there anything else that you would do Izzy or that you still do to this day to take advantage of that workplace environment to improve your English to become more confident? Uh definitely. Um I mean the three ones

that I highlighted I think are the biggest uh so the next one the next principle that I noticed like I adopted and that made my life so much easier uh as far as being more confident speaking English is learning voraciously about your job in English. So again, it requires you to decide I'm going to do this in English. Also, I'm going to learn because maybe you know like uh if you're on your way back home, if you work in person, maybe you could listen to something just for like entertainment or maybe not listen to anything. But what if you could just like listen to one thing that's that is both entertainment and useful like for your job. So I can give you so many examples here. This is another thing

that I think I started to develop more uh here at Real Life. Before I think when I was teaching English like by myself or in the language school that I used to work at, I would watch some videos from other teachers definitely. But I think it was here that I evolved that into podcasts in books and so many things that uh we learned together. But I wanted to ask Ethan because this I'm calling this principle learn voraciously about your job in English. And by the way, the word voraciously, we've explained that in another lesson. It means in this collocation of learn voraciously is like having a big appetite for learning.

Voracious is actually literally about that. It's like a like if you're eating something literally voraciously, you're just like a lion just like wow eating fast and a lot. But uh in this context we're talking about knowledge right consuming. Mhm. And I wanted to ask you if uh if you give me a random profession so I can give you like off top of my head some examples of things that you could do if you were in that field in that profession um that you could learn voraciously with. Well, how about like a UX designer, user experience designer for an app? It's very specific. So, you're working in tech, right? UX designer, by the way, guys, like as a designer of products like a digital products, right?

Uh or digital experiences like an app or website. Usually, you have a user experience designer there. And this it's a big I think it's a lot related with marketing too and uh tech in general. So there are books that um do you know hacking growth? Do you remember that one? We were reading it I think last quarter. Yeah. So this is one about like a not just product development but everything like marketing and I think there are books that um it's not just about UX design that you could read but um about the people he work with as well like your whole departments. For example, we work in marketing. So we've read books about branding, we've read books about communication, about copywriting and same thing here. So this is like a hack

and growth or you can read uh continuous discovery habits you know and there's podcasts too like so many interesting podcasts even like uh Tim Ferrris it's one that we listen to a lot he talks about technology too and optimizing your life optimizing your work newsletters maybe that you can sign up to these are all things that we just need to be aware of what is out there again the books the YouTube channels even Linus tech tips the one that I follow and it's about computers and phones and new technologies and you know you just like you consume that kind of stuff and you stay on top of what's new.

What does that mean to stay on top of something? You are updated. You know what's going on. Mhm. You know what's new. Yeah. I think even beyond like the things that are necessarily related to your field. It can also just be like things that are related to being a better professional. Like I was just doing an interview the other day and the candidate, she was telling me about that she read um Hyperfocus by Chris Bailey and it was interesting to connect with her around that cuz I actually read that a few years ago. But it was nice cuz she said that she had read that because she has noticed that she could be more organized in her work. So even though she's we're hiring for like a

product man product marketer, right? So, even though it's not specifically about product marketing or marketing at all, it's just about being more organized. Um, or like the we've had several people here at Real Life English do the Google project management course, which is like a free online course for learning about how they do project management at Google. Uh, which is like it's kind of like a meta skill, right? Like that is good for anyone who has any sort of role in a company to be more organized. Um we've talked a lot about seven habits of highly effective people or getting things done like so all these are just

like how can you be a better more organized human being a more organized professional and so on that it's kind of like uh base skills they're going to help you with everything else. Mhm. I know we're talking about so many different books and podcasts and titles of different things that you can find out there but there's a reason for this. It's because first of all we truly consume these, right? And uh so we love these and you got to develop a passion for these two. Um and when you do it really helps with your English because you're going to be this is outside of work, you know, by yourself.

So because the other two principles I shared, it's more about when you are working. So you're asking questions or you are looking for those opportunities for speaking, typing, for using your active communication skills, right? Well, this is easier in the sense that you could even be at home or you could be uh sometime you're off uh not really working but just consuming something. Uh, and this is what you're going is going to give you, I think, the most input, the the experience that you need to actually later, you know, um, because it's really hard to, I think, just out of nowhere start using advanced words and advanced terms.

Obviously, you can take note of the words that u are coming up in meetings and stuff, but it would take longer if you're just relying on that to expand your vocabulary. So that's why we say like if you live your English uh by first identifying what's fun to you what's already the things that you do in your own language so we call it uh make fun natural convenient right living your English great and now also make it every day that's the two aspects of live your English that we talk about and this is what this principle here is I would say referring to you know uh um because It's really difficult to I think be impactful in your job and to develop confidence if uh it's something that's really distant from what your life actually is from

your own personality from what you do during your day. So insert this in your day. You're also becoming the person like a reference in the company or the place that you work, someone that people look to because it connects really well too with the other tips that we're talking about because maybe you bring this as like a topic for conversation like, "Oh, I'm reading this great book and like sharing some of the things that you're learning and everything and like that can wow people, right? can impress them and that will make you feel more confident because you're like someone who's bringing just like interesting things and you're showing yourself as someone who's proactive learning outside

of work. But also you like it makes me think of there's um one guy on our team who's actually one of the developers of our app, Rodrigo, that he we do like every two weeks we do um kind of like a review that we share with everyone on the team and one of the things we do is share what we've been learning and he has like his Rodrigo's AI corner. So he's so into AI and he's kind of like being a reference on the team and like sharing things that he's learning and that's incredible because like I've discovered so many things and it helps me to stay up to date. You can be that person, right? For AI is like something super important, right? Because if you're not learning about that and using

that as a partner in your work, you might be disrupted. So all of us should be learning about that. But it can be anything that you're fascinated about is like be that person that people look to know more about this topic. I just thought about this like if you do this then other people will come to you as you're saying and then practice like your workplace being free English practice will be even easier to make that happen because you won't be like it won't be you just going to people come to you know so these are synergistic right these three they kind of feed off each other and they support each other these three principles really like let's just think about it just to wrap up the whole

overview of the three big ideas. The first one is that we need to ask questions anyway. So, might as well just make them our superpower. But if we take note of words and concepts and ideas that we're curious about and that we don't know what it mean what it means, uh that will probably show up also in a book or in a podcast that we can look into. So, it doesn't need to end there. Once we ask, okay, oh, this is what it means. Okay, great. How about listening to a podcast about that, right? uh or go on YouTube and look it up. Um and then once you learn since your workplace is free English practice, you could talk about it with somebody.

Maybe they give you an idea like maybe uh so watching a video will give you an idea of something to implement and now you can go to your manager or peer and say, "Hey, check this out. What if we did this?" Um you didn't have to do it, but you're being proactive. It's it's valuable for everyone, especially for you. So yeah, this is these are three big ideas are really uh powerful I'd say and that's what I have for you and it's honestly what I share like the other day I think um couple months ago I was training a person uh on our team uh exactly like coaching him helping develop his English and these were the thing these were the three things that I would talk most about and every week we met to be like hey um are

you doing this thing you know And I could notice that when he would share his own opinion in a meeting or something that he would show some of that uh some of the experience already, you know, that he was learning and practice practicing here and there uh kind of showing up and meaning he was speaking out more. Oh yeah. Great. Well, before we wrap up today's episode, I wanted to not neglect to give some love to one of our Avid fans, one of our Avid app users, Voracious App user. You used that before. And so this week's shout out goes to Ibraim Muhammad. Sorry if I mispronounced that. Do you want to do the honors of reading his five star review?

All right. So Ibrahim said this uh real life English is one of the best apps for learning real everyday English. The lessons are engaging and full of useful expressions that people actually use. The teachers speak clearly and with different accents which really helps improving your listening and speaking skills. highly recommend for anyone who wants to speak English more naturally and confidently. A yeah, Ibraim. And yeah, that's us, right? The teachers. I always forget like um sometimes I read these like, "Wow, these guys are really good." It's like, "Oh, yes, that's me." Thank you. I really appreciate it.

Humble brag. And it's great too like so many app users have told us that the app is helping them to improve their confidence. Uh and that's includes in work situations. So like that's one of the I think applying the three lessons you gave us today Izzy is if you learn expression in the app and then you can use it at work right that's just uh a lot of app users have told us that it like gives them the best feeling inside when they can confidently use one of those new expressions they've been studying with the flash cards at work. So try for free if you're not there yet by tapping the link down the description below and we look forward to seeing you over there and really hope that it also

helps you to feel more confident and natural at work. All right, Izzy, Captain Immersion, thanks so much for joining me today. It's great picking your brain a bit, gleaming some expertise from your 10 years of working in English. I appreciate it. Uh, this is a great opportunity for me to review it too. Now, I think I'm more confident in sharing these with friends, with students, with anyone. Something I admire a lot about you because I have had very limited experience having to work in the languages that I speak fluently. Like I have I'm quite fluent I think for like everyday use which I think a lot of people it's actually the opposite like

uh they're good with English at work but then they don't have like the real life experience. So I'm glad I can get some of your advice about it. Maybe I can start applying that to my own languages. That said remember that no matter what divides us that which unites us like wanting to speak English better at work is far greater. 1 2 3 A Yeah. You've watched movies your whole life. They've made you laugh. They've made you cry. And maybe they've even changed a little bit of who you are. And yeah, it's no secret movies can help you learn English, too. But here's something you probably don't know. You're only

scratching the surface with them. And by that I mean you're just using about 10% of the total potential a movie