Confirming and rescheduling meetings Booking a business centre for a meeting

1. IEN 312 ENGLISH FOR
BUSINESS MEETINGS
A.Warisa Suksomboon
Week 3

2. • Five frogs are sitting on the log. Four decide to jump off.
How many are left? Five, because deciding is different
than doing”. Fred Kofman, Executive Coach
• Decisions are worthless unless your turn them into
commitments.

3. • Have you been in meetings where lots of decisions are
made but nothing gets done and nobody is held
accountable?
• Unless you finish the meeting with commitments about
“who will do what by when,” you’ve just built 90% of a
bridge.
• Commitment conversations begin with a request like:
• Can you bring the financials to the meeting?
• Please ship the order to my new address?

4. Making a clear request
• It would be great if…
• Someone should…
• Do we all agree to…?
• Can you try to…?
• In order to get …(A)…,
• Can you commit to that?

5. Time to Commit
• A well-formed request demands a clear response. There
are only three possible answers:
• Yes, I commit.
• No, I decline.
• I can’t commit yet because,
• I need clarification.
• I need to check; I promise to respond by…
• I want to propose an alternative.
• I can make it only if I get …A… by ….B…..

6. A weasel promise?
• Here are some interesting ways by which people often
say, “No, I don’t commit.”
• Yes, I’ll try.
• Ok, let me see what I can do.
• Seems doable.
• Let me check into it.
• Someone will take care of it.

7. Not ready to say “yes” or “no”, you may…
• Ask for clarification
• What kind of help do you need?
• When do you need my help?
• Promise to respond by a certain time
• Let me check if I have the information available.
• I’ll get back to you in an hour.
• Counteroffer
• I am not available today. Could we meet tomorrow? Or if it’s
urgent, we could speak by phone.
• Commit conditionally
• If I ask you deliver a rush order, you can commit to do it only if I
authorize overtime.

8. Keywords
• Annual (adj): happening once a year
• Feedback (n): comments about how well or how badly
someone is doing something
• Franchise (n): an agreement to sell a company’s products,
using the company’s name
• Generate (v): to create
• Appointment (n): an arrangement ot see someone at a
particular time
• Leave (n): a period of time away from your job
• Schedule (n): a timetable, plan of activities and when they will
happen
• Schedule (v): to plan something to happen at a particular time

9. Keywords
• Correspondence (n): the process of writing and receiving
letters or emails
• Look forward to (phrase): to feel happy about something that is
going to happen
• Negotiate (v): to try to reach an agreement by discussing
something in a formal way
• Request (n): the act of asking in a polite or formal way
• Confirm (v): to say something is definitely true
• Diary (n): a book with pages for each day where you can write
things that you have to do
• Notice (n): information or a warning about something that is
going to happen
• Revamp (v): to improve something by making major changes

10. Confirming meetings and rescheduling
meetings
• Exercises 1 – 4
• Exercise 5: Read emails A and B and then answer these
questions.
• Why can’t the engineer lead the training course?
• Who is going to change the Delta International website?

11. Confirming arrangements
• So we’re meeting on Thursday at nine. Is that right?
• Let me make a note of the date and the time.
• Can I check the details of the meeting with you again?
• So I’ll see you on Wednesday at four o’clock in your
office, OK?
• So we’ve decided to meet on the 7th of May then?
• I’m looking forward to seeing you on the 5th at 10am.

12. Rescheduling and cancelling meetings
• I’m afraid I’m going to have ask you if we can reschedule
our meeting.
• Have you got another date in mind?
• I’m afraid that I’m going to have to postpone our meeting
till later in the month.
• The problem has now been solved, so we have cancelled
the meeting.
• Something has come up and I can’t get out of it
• Is there any chance of postponing the meeting until the
following week?
• Could we go for the same day and the same time?

13. Booking a business centre for a meeting
• Have you had meetings in the following places?
• In a hotel meeting room?
• In a hotel reception
• In your office
• In a special meeting room at your office
• In a restaurant
• In a café/pub
• In a business centre
• What is the most unusual place you have eve held a
meeting in?
• Are there any places that you think are definitely NOT
appropriate for meeting? Why?

14. Booking a business centre for a meeting
• I’m calling about booking the centre for management
training course.
• Can I check your availability before I go into detail about
facilities?
• What date did you have in mind?
• Well, ideally, we are looking at June 13th.
• Can you just go through what you could offer us?
• Well, we’ve got four main seminar rooms. The floor plan is
on our website.

15. Talking about facilities
• We have multimedia projectors, interactive whiteboards,
wireless internet, TV, video, DVD and laptops.
• How are the rooms laid out? – You can have whatever
layout you like.
• What arrangements are there for refreshments?
• We can serve refreshments in the training rooms or in the
restaurant.
• And car parking? – We have free car parking for up to 70
cars.

16. Booking a meeting room at a business
centre
• Exercise 14: Work with your friend
• Case Study: page 88

17. Practice
• Write one of the following emails:
• An email to cancel a brainstorming meeting about the company
logo
• An email to postpone a meeting to discuss the new company
marketing brochure
• Use the new language you have learned and make sure
that you give a good reason for cancelling or postponing