Office English

medium level

Office English / Mistakes

Episode 240219/ 19 Feb 2024

4.8(24,968 ratings)·34,323 students

Transcript

Note: This is a transcript of a spoken conversation and is not a word-for-word script.

Phil

What happens when something goes wrong at work? What do we say?

Voicenote clipsSometimes there'll be a message from somebody that says 'hi' and I almost think 'Oh no! What's coming? What have I done?' It's that guilty feeling that is maybe leftover from being told off at school or something like that.

So, I think, you know, you just have to accept that things can't be perfect all the time and it's OK to make mistakes. Just long as you learn from them.

Pippa

In this episode of Office English, we'll talk about the language we can use when mistakes happen at work.

Phil

Welcome to Office English from BBC Learning English. In this podcast we help you with business English for difficult situations. I'm Phil.

Pippa

And I'm Pippa. And today we're talking about mistakes at work. We try to avoid them, but sometimes mistakes happen. We've already heard from colleagues at the BBC that finding the language to deal with mistakes is complicated, but what about you, Phil? What do you think?

Phil

No, I think it can be complicated. Whenever you're talking about mistakes, you're dealing with how people feel and often you're dealing with how you feel yourself.

Pippa

Yes, I get really stressed if I make a mistake at work and that can make talking about it difficult. You're also sometimes worried about making a mistake. You might feel like you'll be blamed or that it'll be bad for your career. So I think it's a really stressful time and so it's difficult to know what to say.

Phil

Yes and in this episode we're going to talk through language for admitting you've made a mistake, apologising and fixing the problem.

Pippa

Let's start with owning up to a mistake, or telling somebody something has gone wrong. Do you have any suggestions for that, Phil?