18 Karren Brady. Punctuation test. Multimedia learning with Business Spotlight

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1 CONTENTS 5/ Punctuation test istock 18 Karren Brady ddp The Big Picture 6 United States Drying up in California Working World 8 Names and News plus The latest from the world of business Language Test 12 Punctuation Test your knowledge of English punctuation Global Business 18 Profile British businesswoman Karren Brady 22 Head-to-Head advanced Should salaries be transparent? 26 It s Personal advanced plus Elisabeth Ribbans on rail travel in Britain 29 Business Press Behind the headlines advanced Business Skills 30 Series (10): Solving Problems plus Ten tips for successful problem-solving 35 Training Plan plus Strategies for solving problems 36 Toolbox Ken Taylor on being assertive Intercultural Communication 38 Canada plus Doing business with Canadians Careers 68 Teaching advanced Why Finnish teachers and pupils are so happy 72 Tips and Trends Networking; avoiding bad jobs Management 74 Holacracy advanced Managing without bosses 78 What Happened Next How containers revolutionized shipping 79 Executive Eye Adrian Furnham on Big Brother at work Technology 80 Artificial Intelligence advanced Computers that are almost human 83 Language Focus advanced Sand People 86 My Working Life easy Ewa Sendecka, product designer in Cracow Regular sections 3 Editorial 24 SprachenShop 37 Classified Ads 84 Feedback / Impressum 85 Preview READERS SERVICE Moodboard abo@spotlight-verlag.de Internet: Telephone: +49 (0)89/ Fax: +49 (0)89/ Multimedia learning with Business Spotlight Business Spotlight plus plus Practise the language used in the magazine with our exercise booklet. In this issue, we focus on the vocabulary you need to talk about telecommunications, an intercultural quiz on Canada and successful problem-solving. Business Spotlight Audio Our audio product offers more than 70 minutes of texts, dialogues, exercises and interviews. On this CD, listen to a short story and learn to be more assertive.

2 Dear colleagues Negotiating is a key part of life, not just at work but also at home. In fact, we often negotiate with others without even realizing it for example, when we are discussing who will take on a particular task at work or talking with our partners about which film we are going to watch on television or at the cinema. The activities in A good deal (p. 2) will help you and your students to think about and improve your negotiating skills. It is very hard to escape politics and political discussions. And despite what many people think, this can be an important topic for business small talk. Talking politics (p. 3) looks at ways of practising the vocabulary of politics that we present in our special guide, Skill Up!. Ian McMaster Editor-in-chief i.mcmaster@bspotlight-verlag.de Title Main focus Minutes Level Based on item in magazine Page LESSON ACTIVITIES 1. Key elements Intercultural awareness 60 medium Masters of the elements (pp ) 2 2. A good deal Negotiating 120 advanced A winning strategy (pp ) 2 3. Talking politics Vocabulary-building 60 medium Skill Up! 3 4. Reporting for duty* Reading and writing reports 90 easy Business reports (pp ) 3 WORKSHEET *Photocopiable material for the activity Reporting for duty 4 WARMERS AND FILLERS 1. Small homes Talking about homes 30 all levels The downside of growth (p. 26) 5 2. Girls and computers Female and male education 30 all levels Helping girls (p. 8) 5 3. A new job How to earn respect 30 all levels How to earn respect in a new job (p. 71) 5 4. Culture or cult Organizations 30 all levels Business culture or cult? (p. 75) 5 HIGHLIGHT Business Spotlight Audio 2/2015: tips for better negotiating 5 SERVICE Important dates l onestopenglish Staff Room offer 5 Business Spotlight in the classroom ist ein kos tenlos er Service für Business-Spotlight-Abonnenten in Lehr berufen. Er bezieht sich auf die jeweils aktuelle Heftausgabe. Business Spotlight erhal ten Sie im Sammel bezug für Ihre Unter richtsteilnehmer mit einem besond ers attrak ti ven Mengen rabatt. Nähere Informationen erhältlich bei: Spotlight Verlag GmbH, Abteilung Key Account, Postfach Planegg, Deutschland Tel. +49(0)89/ , Fax +49(0)89/ lehrer@spot light-ver lag.de IMPRESSUM HERAUS GE BER UND VER LAGS LEI TER: Dr. Wolfgang Stock CHEFREDAKTEUR: Dr. Ian McMaster GESCHÄFTSFÜHRENDE REDAKTEURIN (CVD): Maja Sirola AUTOREN: Mike Hogan, Ian McMaster REDAKTION: Margaret Davis, Hildegard Rudolph, Michele Tilgner GESTALTUNG: loop grafikdesign KEY ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT: Susanne Mürbeth 2015 Spotlight Verlag, auch für alle genann ten Autoren, Fotografen und Mitarbeiter. 30 Solving problems 38 Canada Thinkstockeditorial 55 Useful vocabulary Language Section Language section 46 Vocabulary The railway station easy 48 Easy English Representing your team easy plus 50 Grammar at Work Interview questions plus 52 Translation False friends and more 53 Language Cards To pull out and practise 55 SKILL UP! Get connected! 56 English for Traffic control 58 Editing and proofreading 59 English on the Move Lost luggage plus 60 Teacher Talk Interview with Ed Pegg 62 Legal English Settling out of court advanced 63 Talking Finance Going for broke advanced 64 Short Story Too good to be true 66 Products / Solutions What s new? 67 Key Words Vocabulary from this issue GUIDE Language in Business Spotlight Articles in the magazine use the style, spelling, punctuation and pronunciation of British English unless otherwise marked. US American style, spelling, punctuation and pronunciation are used in these articles. All articles are marked with their level of language difficulty. Articles not marked on the contents pages are at a medium level. (CEF stands for the Council of Europe s Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.) easy Approximately at CEF level A2 medium Approximately at CEF levels B1 B2 advanced Approximately at CEF levels C1 C2 ifml.: informal word or phrase; vulg.: vulgar word or phrase; sl.: slang word or phrase; non-stand.: non-standard word or phrase; UK: chiefly British usage; US: chiefly North American usage Cover topics Cover photograph: istock Business Spotlight Englisch für den Beruf Solving problems Contents in the classroom 5/15 Business Spotlight in the classroom This six-page supplement for teachers and trainers provides lesson activities based on articles in Business Spotlight. It is free to those who subscribe to the magazine. To order, please send an to: schulmedien@spotlight-verlag.de plus Business Spotlight Online www Go to our website for more language-learning activities, as well as news and blogs. Subscribers have full access to our online premium content

3 Problem? What problem? Nicht immer läuft im beruflichen Alltag alles ohne Probleme. Warum diese entstehen und wie sie sich zum Nutzen aller lösen lassen, zeigt Bob Dignen im zehnten und letzten Teil unserer Serie. medium Series Part Ten Tricky problem: good planning can help you to find a solution /2015

4 SOLVING PROBLEMS BUSINESS SKILLS This article is the tenth and last in our special skills series. Each article contains ten top tips for a key area of business communication and a training plan to help you to structure your learning (see p. 35). In previous issues: Part One: Listening (2/2014); Part Two: Speaking (3/2014); Part Three: Writing (4/2014); Part Four: Telephoning (5/2014); Part Five: Meetings (6/2014); Part Six: Business Contacts (1/2015); Part Seven: Negotiating (2/2015); Part Eight: Teamwork (3/2015); Part Nine: Presentations (4/2015) You can order these issues for each plus postage by contacting us via at leserservice@spotlight-verlag.de or telephone +49 (0)89/ The ability to find the right solutions to problems, both operational and strategic, is a core competence. But with the business world becoming ever more complex, problem-solving is increasingly difficult. In this article, we present ten ideas for improving your problem-solving skills. TIP 1 Uncover the problem One of the biggest challenges is getting people to admit that a problem even exists. There is a tendency for problems to be ignored or swept under the carpet. This is understandable; people may not want to admit failure or to be blamed when things go wrong. Yet it is important that problems should be identified and solved quickly in the interests of improved innovation and performance. There are various ways that you can encourage people to discuss problems openly: l Is everything going OK? Are there any issues? l So, what issues should we discuss today? l Remember that we can learn from mistakes only if we discuss them. l I d like one comment from each person. Jackie, you start, please. TIP 2 Understand the complexity Problems tend to consist of a complex mix of psychological, interpersonal, intercultural and organizational factors. Communication problems may come from different beliefs about the right way to do things. There may be incompatibilities between company processes and the particular technologies. And people are often obstructive and confrontational as a result of unresolved psychological issues. If we try to discuss solutions before understanding the problem properly, we are likely to offer quick but inappropriate solutions. We need to collect a lot of information by talk- carpet: sweep sth. under the ~ [(ka:pit] challenge [(tsälindz] etw. unter den Teppich kehren Herausforderung, schwierige Aufgabe Kern ungeeignet core [ko:] inappropriate [)InE(prEUpriEt] incompatibility Unvereinbarkeit [)InkEm)pÄtE(bIlEti] issue [(ISu:] Frage, Problem obstructive: be ~ sich querstellen [Eb(strVktIv] performance [pe(fo:mens] Ergebnisse, Erfolg unresolved [)Vnri(zQlvd] ungelöst 4 There is a tendency for problems to be ignored or swept under the carpet Getty Images 5/

5 Enough circles: time to return to hierarchy? Bring back the bosses Sind Sie die ständigen Anweisungen von Vorgesetzten leid? Dann schaffen Sie sie doch einfach ab! Wie? Mit Holakratie. Edward Helmore erklärt diese Unternehmensphilosophie, die von vielen gewollt wird, aber aus unterschiedlichen Gründen nicht bei jedem Anklang findet. advanced /2015 Blend Imagest

6 HOLACRACY MANAGEMENT Sick of the boss? Tired of instruction? As many as 300 companies in the US are embracing holacracy, a self-managing business philosophy that some say can make companies more robust, innovative and better attuned to the needs of customers. However, earlier this year, the Amazon-owned online shoe retailer Zappos.com, a leading supporter of no-boss, non-hierarchical governance, was shocked by a mass employee defection. Almost 14 per cent, or 210 of its 1,500 employees, took redundancy rather than give up familiar titles or positions and adapt to a holacratic system of circles in which employees decide for themselves how to do their job, also known as energizing a role. The defections have not discouraged Zappos chief executive, Tony Hsieh, from adopting a system that s designed to replace human-imposed, top-down hierarchies with flattened- What is holacracy? Is holacracy a bold step toward self-management or a progressive kindergarten? out holarchies. In a 4,700-word letter to employees, Hsieh said he believed that the holacratic system empowered employees to act more like entrepreneurs. But the US business community remains unconvinced: is Zappos a billion-dollar company being reorganized into a kind of progressive kindergarten that will ultimately implode, or is it taking a bold step into the future of self-management under an extensive code of governance and practices? The company is known for its quirks. Obsessed with customer satisfaction its motto is Deliver WOW through service Zappos calls its executives monkeys and greets visitors to its Las Vegas headquarters with cowbells. The philosophy of holacracy is described in a 15,000-word constitution. Employees are assigned a circle and roles within it are assigned, elected or formed into sub-circles. Stripping bosses of their titles is the first step. Then comes the more difficult task of distributing leadership into each role. As The Wall Street Journal noted: when everyone s in charge, there probably will be a lot of meetings. The goal is radical transparency there s no hiding behind titles or bureaucracy. As Tony Hsieh says, paraphrasing Charles Darwin: It s not the fastest or the strongest that survive. It s the ones most adaptive to change. assign sth. to sb. [E(saIn tu] constitution [)kqnsti(tju:s&n] holacracy [heu(lqkresi] in charge: be ~ of sth. [)In (tsa:dz] paraphrase sb. [(pärefreiz] strip sb. of sth. [(strip Qv] jmdm. etw. zuweisen Verfassung, Satzung Holakratie für etw. verantwortlich sein jmdn. frei zitieren jmdm. etw. entziehen Self-organizing or self-managing companies are not new. Examples include W. L. Gore & Associates, maker of Gore-Tex, which employs more than 10,000 people, and Morning Star, a tomato processor. But in 2007, a 28-year-old computer programmer, Brian Robertson, came up with the concept of holacracy and wrote its 15,000-word constitution. Robertson s book Holacracy: The Revolutionary Management System that Abolishes Hierarchy (Portfolio Penguin) was published in June. According to Harvard Business School professor Ethan Bernstein, who has led several studies of self- abolish sth. [E(bQlIS] etw. abschaffen adopt sth. [E(dQpt] etw. einführen attuned: be ~ to sth. auf etw. eingestellt sein [E(tju:nd] billion [(biljen] Milliarde(n) bold [beuld] kühn, gewagt business school betriebswirtschaftliche [(biznes sku:l] Fakultät chief executive Firmenchef(in) [)tsi:f Ig(zekjUtIv] constitution Verfassung, Satzung [)kqnsti(tju:s&n] defection [di(feks&n] Abtrünnigkeit, Flucht deliver wow etwa: (den Kunden) [di)live (wau] ifml. total begeistern designed: be ~ to do sth. darauf ausgelegt sein, [di(zaind] etw. zu tun embrace sth. [Im(breIs] etw. aufgreifen, sich zu eigen machen empower sb. [Im(paUE] jmdn. ermächtigen entrepreneur Unternehmer(in) [)QntrEprE(n :] executive [Ig(zekjUtIv] leitende(r) Angestellte(r) flattened-out [)flät&nd (aut] verflacht governance [(gvv&nens] Führung(sform) human-imposed von Menschen [)hju:men Im(pEUzd] auferlegt implode [Im(plEUd] zusammenbrechen; hier: an sich selbst scheitern processor [(preusese] Verarbeitungsbetrieb quirk [kw :k] Eigenheit redundancy: take ~ aus einem Unternehmen [ri(dvndensi] ausscheiden retailer [(ri:tei&le] Einzelhändler(in) ultimately [(VltImEtli] letztendlich 4 5/

7 PICTURE THIS! Bernhard Förth Getting carried away by all the gadgets? ON THE DESK Nowadays, reaching for the phone isn t the only option when we need to talk to someone. In this illustration, we focus on the various devices and technology that is available to us. 1. computer, PC [)pi: (si:] Computer, PC 2. screen Bildschirm 3. webcam [(webkäm], Webcam, Netzkamera camera 4. video call Videoanruf, -gespräch conference call Telefonkonferenz 5. icon [(aikqn] Icon, Symbol 6. smartphone Smartphone mobile (phone) Handy (US cell (phone)) 7. charging dock, Docking-Station docking station charger Ladegerät 8. instant messaging Nachrichten-App, app Instant-Messaging- Dienst cross-platform plattformübergreifend text (sb.) SMS(-Nachricht); jmdm. eine SMS schicken 9. (loud)speaker Lautsprecher 10. router Router 11. antenna Antenne 12. extension lead (UK) Verlängerungskabel [li:d] / cable / cord 13. socket, outlet Steckdose multi-gang socket Steckdosenleiste 4 SKILL UP! ISSUE 34

8 What are they saying? Will: Hey, Sandra. I can t see you. Have you got your camera turned on? Sandra: Where do I turn it on? Oh, is it this icon down at the bottom of the screen? Will: Ah, there you are! Is this your first-ever video call, then? Sandra: Yes. How did you guess? It s so nice to see you! This is much better than texting. Could you call me on the landline, please? My battery s nearly dead! What you need adapter Adapter application software Anwender-Software bumper [(bvmpe] (Handy-)Schutzhülle cable Kabel case Hülle display [dis(plei] Display handset Handapparat high-speed mobile broadband schnelles, mobiles Breitband landline Festnetz line Leitung LTE (Long-Term Evolution) network LTE-Netzwerk mains (power) adapter UK Netzteil, Netzgerät (mobile) device (mobiles) Gerät mobile network (US cellular network) Mobilfunknetz mobile operating system mobiles Betriebssystem receiver Hörer (rechargeable) battery Akku screen protector Bildschirm-, Displayschutz SIM (Subscriber SIM-Karte Identification Module) card USB (Universal Serial Bus) stick USB-Stick VoIP (Voice over Internet IP-Telefonie, Internet- Protocol) [voip] Telefonie Wi-Fi (wireless fidelity) [(wai fai] Wi-Fi, WLAN 14. plug Stecker 15. tablet Tablet-PC 16. social networking app App für soziale Medien 17. keyboard Tastatur 18. wireless mouse schnurlose Maus Bluetooth Bluetooth 19. telephone Telefon button [(bvt&n], key Taste cord Schnur, Kabel 20. microphone Mikrofon [(maikrefeun] mic [maik], mike ifml. Mikro 21. headphones Kopfhörer Did you know? l Bluetooth technology is named after a Danish king, Harald Bluetooth Gormsson. (There are a few theories as to why he was called Bluetooth from a love of blueberries to a fondness for blue clothing.) Back in the tenth century, King Harald united Danish and Norwegian tribes into a single kingdom. Bluetooth technology started by Ericsson, IBM, Nokia, Intel and Toshiba links computers with other devices by enabling cable-free connections. l Smart is an informal synonym for intelligent. ISSUE 34 istock SKILL UP! 5