节目资讯
刊物:职场秘诀
日期:2009-01-09
难易度:High
关键字:fall short, walk (somebody) through, go with the flow, frame, miss the
mark
Advanced Studio Classroom is on the air.
It’s time to continue How to Succeed at Work today in our Advanced class.
Thank you for coming.
So stay tuned.
Welcome back, everyone.
And especially welcome back to our new staff members, Ryan and Winnie.
How are you today?
Great.
It’s great to be here.
Thank you.
Did you like the program yesterday?
Yeah, it was a lot of fun to be a part of it.
Thanks.
Well, you know, Winnie, I think you’re making new friends all over the world.
Did you know that?
Yeah. You know, I don’t think I realize how many people are actually listening
to me right now.
Hello, there.
That’s true.
And you know, when you go any place, when you go back to New York, somebody will
say, ”Hey, I heard you on Studio Classroom.” ”You did?” And you go to London...
I mean we have people all over the world listening to Advanced.
Did you know that, Ryan?
I didn’t. It’s hard to imagine.
Don’t get scared about it though, because, you know, they’re our friends, right?
Ha...
Of course.
But you know, we all want to succeed and we are trying to succeed as
communicators.
We hope that we can communicate to you what other people are writing about and
help you understand it, so you can have a better life by having better English.
Is that a good goal?
It’s a very good goal.
It is.
And you know, we want to help people succeed.
And we need English and so we have to find out how to succeed in English.
Now if you just studied English every day and learned new words and new
vocabulary, would that work very well for you - if you were studying a language?
No. For me, I’ve really gotta be using it. I’ve got to be talking.
Same thing as people correcting me in my pronunciation, stuff like that.
Just reading, I don’t know, it’s boring to me.
Right. And I think everybody learning a language wants to learn more about
what’s behind the language, why people do it that way and how to use it.
And so, in our Advanced class, we try to learn things that we need in our life
by using English.
And by using English more, it will become more part of our life.
So let’s get down to our lesson today.
Now yesterday we started on page 16, and what is the title of our article again,
Winnie?
The title of the article is How to Succeed at Work.
OK.
Now many books have been written on how to succeed.
And you could talk about how to succeed at being a mother or being a teacher or
something.
But this week, these few days, we’re talking about how to succeed on your job.
Is that very important for many people, do you think, Ryan?
Yes, it is.
And it’s very important to know, um, the expectations of what’s expected of you
because every job is different, and sometimes it’s not easy to know.
No, if we don’t succeed at something, we feel bad.
And you know, we... we just kind of don’t enjoy life.
So let’s help each other understand how we can succeed.
I like the lesson today on page 17 because it’s talking about how to understand
what the boss wants.
I guess everybody has some kind of boss, maybe several bosses, isn’t that right?
That’s right.
It is.
When you’re a kid, you’ll say your parents are your boss.
You go to school and your teacher’s your boss.
And you go to work, you have a lot of bosses.
You get married, you have some more bosses, right?
But you know, a boss is really someone who is responsible for something.
Like a parent, they want you to be very good for their families so represent
that.
In a company, they want you to represent their company well.
So to succeed means that you do a good job for the ones you’re working for.
And that’s a good feeling, I think.
It is. It is.
So how do we understand what the boss wants? That’s what we’re gonna talk about
today, isn’t it, Winnie?
Yes, it is.
Well, we have a question on page 17.
It’s just a few lines.
But let’s read the question first so we know what we’re talking about.
To understand what the boss wants, understand the boss.
Question: My boss isn’t very clear in his expectations for me, so I often feel
like I’m falling short and not doing what I should be doing.
How can I make this better?
Well, the very first sentence is talking about your boss.
It would be good if all bosses were very clear and said I expect you to do this
and this and this.
Are all bosses that clear and letting you know what they want you to do, do you
think?
No, they’re not at all.
I like to think of this as... um, if you’re a student, you’re trying to figure
out what your teacher wants.
Mmhm.
Sometimes if you figure out what they want, then you have a lot more success in
the class.
Might get better grades too.
Yes, yes.
And you make your parents happy and everyone’s happy.
That’s true.
You say, ”What did they expect of me?”.
Sometimes you think you can’t quite do it, but first you have to know what it
is.
And expectations are what other people think you should do.
And sometimes that’s hard to do, isn’t it?
Yes, it is.
But what about falling short?
Now when we fall short of something, Winnie, what does that really mean?
Falling short is also an idiom, and it means not to meeting some kind of
expectation.
So when in a company, your boss might hire you to do a certain job.
And if you fall short, that means you did not do as they expected you to.
OK.
And that’s a very, very bad feeling because we want people to say, oh, that’s
just what I wanted.
But if you fall short, you didn’t quite do what they wanted you to do.
But then if they’re not very clear what it is, how can I make this better?
Do you think that’s a very good question?
That’s an excellent question because for you to succeed, you need to know what
you need to do.
Right.
What do you really want me to do?
What if I come up, you know, to Ryan because he’s kind of new here and say,
”Well, Ryan, you’re not doing a very good job,” but then you’ll say, ”What do
you mean?” ”Well, you’re falling short.”.
Well, what do you mean?
I mean, he doesn’t know.
I have to... you know, you have to let people know.
”Well, I’d like to do better. Tell me what you want me to do.” Right?
Explain to me. I’m not trying to do bad.
Right.
That’s good right there.
But you know, that’s a good question... is sometimes the bosses wanna be polite
and they don’t want to just say that like that, you know.
So they might say, ”Well, I don’t know if I can keep that guy. He’s not doing
very well.”.
But instead of that, they should say, ”Listen, I would like you to do that,” you
know.
So a boss also has a responsibility to be very clear and what they want you to
do.
Do you think so?
I definitely agree.
So all you bosses out there, remember this is for you too.
Make it clear.
But the answer to what we can do when we work for other people, let’s find the
answer.
Let’s read part of the answer on page 17 now in line 25.
Answer: Understanding and communication are the keys to improving your
situation, and it’s up to you to take the lead.
Start by reminding yourself that both you and your boss want you to be
successful at your job.
Then, focus on gaining a deeper understanding of what you need to be successful,
as well as insight into how his mind works.
Take a recent task that your boss assigned, using it as an example to analyze
your styles.
Think about what he told you, other information that would’ve helped you, the
frequency of progress checks and the clarity of that goal.
Consider how you each gave or received information.
Remember, this isn’t about one way being better or worse - it’s about gaining
understanding.
Build on your insights by creating a plan to be more effective in working with
your boss.
Try meeting with him to discuss your ideas for setting clear expectations.
(Music).
One thing I try to figure out what this person was writing about, and I thought
in this article the author is trying to tell us that it’s up to us to succeed.
I... I might blame other people and say, well, my boss wasn’t clear; my people
around me didn’t help me.
But remember this: It’s up to you.
Do you think that’s an important thing in this article?
Certainly.
I think what you say was on the spot because it’s easy to blame other people for
what we think our failures might be.
And so when we take initiative, it’s putting the choices and the power back into
our own hands.
So this is very important that we all want to be successful.
Your boss hired you. He’s paying you money. He wants you to be. You wanna be
because you wanna do the job well.
So everybody’s trying.
Then we need to... in line 30, it says, to focus on something.
And to focus means we have to find out what it is we need, and what are we
focusing on?
We’re focusing on whatever is expected of you, whatever will make you more
successful in your job.
OK.
So what you need to be successful and also insights into how your boss’s mind
works.
Now everybody is different, and you might do the same job for different
companies, and your boss might have you do it in different ways.
That’s... that’s pretty interesting, isn’t it?
Exactly, especially um, being in America, or being in Taiwan - very different
culture, very different style of communication.
Mmhm.
And you have to learn whatever the new expectations are.
That’s true.
And you know, not only your boss but there are usually other people in the
company.
And I think we also need to find out what your coworker’s like, how you can work
with them - your boss and those you work with - because it makes your
environment better if you all know what you are.
I mean, you like to talk about it or you don’t like to talk about it.
I think I need to know how my coworkers feel too, do you, Winnie?
Yes, it’s very important.
I think when you go to a new job, one of the first things you need to do is to
be a good listener,
because you need to be able to learn and listen to see how other people work or
how they like to do certain things.
OK. So I think the point here then is for each one of us... is it’s up to us to
figure out how to work in that company that we’re working at.
Now it goes up here in the second column on page 17 to say that take a recent
task that your job assigned you - depending on what it is, what kind of company
you work for.
But use that as an example to analyze your style.
Let’s say your boss says, I want you to go out and get orders, um, in Hong Kong
or Singapore or something.
Well, how does he want me to do it?
Does he want me to go there or write a good ad or something?
What does he want me to do?
I have to analyze my style.
How do I do that?
Now first I have to communicate and understand what he wants.
Then I have to think of now: How would I do that?
And that’s analyzing my style.
How would I do it?
Do you think that’s important to think about that sometimes, to analyze our
style?
What do you think about when you say, what does he tell me?
What does it say here up here in line 3?
Think about what he told you, right?
Analyzing your style, I think it’s a part of knowing yourself and how you work.
And if you don’t know yourself, then it would make it hard for you to try to
meet other people’s needs.
Yeah, basically, it’s kind of the boss gives you something to do, and how you
accomplish your goal is up to you.
Right.
Do it in the most efficient way possible.
Right.
And be sure that you don’t spend a lot of time on these time-eaters because if
you are spending a lot of time on things that don’t have anything to do with
your job, you won’t be successful.
We learned that yesterday, didn’t we?
Yes, we did.
Yeah.
And then it talks about here that you also have to think about other things
like, how much do I need to report to the boss?
Do I tell them every day, ”I did this, I did this,” and he might say, ”Well,
don’t keep telling me that when you finish a job.”.
Otherwise, if you don’t report anything, he might say, ”Well, are you getting it
done or not?”.
So you have to find out: How many reports does he want?
He has to have a progress check, right?
Yes, a progress check is taking little steps to make sure your boss knows what
you are doing.
And also the clarity of the goal. Are you sure you’ve the goal right?
You might get it wrong.
So you have to check a little bit.
And then consider how you got the information and so forth.
So you have to gain an understanding.
Probably this takes a lot of communication at the beginning.
Do you think so?
Yes, a lot.
Mmhm.
Chinese would say (Chinese).
You have to communicate.
And people who don’t like to communicate are not what we call team players.
You need to communicate with the other people you’re working with, with your
boss, and that’s good.
And I think these are some things that we don’t realize.
We think: Well, he didn’t tell me. I’ll wait till he tells me.
But no, it’s up to you, isn’t that right?
Well, then it says in the last part of that we just read on the second column of
line 17.
Build on your insights by creating a plan to be more effective.
What does that actually mean to build on your insights?
Does anybody know?
On your insight is kind of what you’ve learned an understanding of it and then
applying it.
I know this, but how can I use that?
Why does that matter?
Right.
Use the information you’ve learned.
And then you can say: Oh, OK, he likes to have more reports. I’m gonna do this.
And then he wants me to ask questions. I’ll do that.
So you have to build on the things that you have learned.
Your insights are the things that you yourself have learned.
So you have to do a lot of it yourself.
It seems like it’s up to you, doesn’t it?
It is up to you.
Yeah.
Well, that’s hard. I thought it was gonna be everybody else, not me.
But it’s up to you.
So success is a lot of it is in your hands.
Maybe not all of it, but a good part, isn’t it?
There are some things you can’t control, but a lot of it, really you can’t blame
other people.
It’s you.
You can change things around by a little communication.
Definitely.
Sometimes people don’t like to communicate because they think they might be
misunderstood, so they just don’t say anything.
But those people don’t usually succeed very well.
Do you think that’s true?
People don’t communicate.
Do they succed very well?
I think some of the best people I’ve worked for and worked with are the ones who
do communicate.
So it’s very important.
I think so too.
Right.
Well, we... we have another whole section to do.
So let’s finish reading today’s article by starting on line 27 ofthe second
column.