Disagreements

What do you do when there's a disagreement at work?

I don't mind it too much when people disagree. I think it can be really healthy, and especially if everyone feels able to disagree in a kind of calm way. When people get angry, that's when it gets a bit a bit stressful.

I don't enjoy confrontation anyway. Having said that, I do think it's important to listen to different perspectives.

Today on Office English, we'll talk about agreeing, disagreeing, and compromising.

Hello and welcome to Office English from BBC Learning English. I'm Phil.

And I'm Pippa. This is your podcast guide to the world of work. And you can find subtitles and a transcript to read along with this podcast on our website

So, Pippa, we've just heard some of our Learning English colleagues talking about keeping people happy at work. We often call this being diplomatic.

Yes, being diplomatic means acting in a way that doesn't upset or offend someone.

Yes, it can be difficult to keep everyone happy all the time at work, but there are some steps that you can take to make sure you're not being rude and to help disagreements be resolved more easily.

And it's important to note that it will depend on your company culture and the country that you work in, how diplomatic people are. There are some workplaces where people will just say what they think. They won't kind of try to, um, not offend people with their opinion. But it's very common in UK workplaces and in lots of international companies that you need to be diplomatic. So in this episode, we'll talk about understanding disagreements, taking a side and compromising.

OK, so let's imagine you're at work and there's a disagreement. Two colleagues have different ideas about how to do a task and want your opinion. What should you do, Pippa?

Well, you need to understand the disagreement before you wade in, and wade in just means to get involved quite quickly. Um, so you need to ask about, kind of, what the context is of the thing that you're being asked to give an opinion on.

Yeah. A nice expression to do this could be, 'could you fill me in on what the problem is?' And fill me in means give me the details.

Mhm. Yeah. And you can sort of explain why you want to know this. 'I want to be sure I understand both sides' would be a nice expression. It's just showing respect to both perspectives and making sure that you don't make a very quick decision if this is quite a big disagreement.

Yeah. And then another question that could be important to ask is, is my opinion going to be helpful? Is it something you can actually help with, or is it just going to make things even more complicated if you wade in with your opinion?

OK, so now we understand the disagreement, we need to decide which idea is best. How do we do this diplomatically without upsetting anyone, Phil?

It is good to show that you understand both sides, both perspectives. So maybe start off by saying something like, 'I can see why you want to do it this way. But in this case I agree with...' the other side.

Another way you could approach this is if there's maybe a complex problem where actually both options might work, there's not a particular right or wrong, you can say that. You can say, 'I'm not sure there are any right answers, but I'm going to go with this option because...' and then state your reasons. So you're just acknowledging that it's not actually that the other person is wrong.

Yeah. Sometimes you just need to make a decision. So you might say 'in this instance I'm siding with...' this person. 'But it's not that I don't respect your opinion'. Um, so you're showing that you are thinking about what the other person has said, and you're not just, it's not just you don't like them or something like that.

Mhm. Yeah. You don't want it to be personal really. So you want to show that in the way that you're talking to people.

OK. So we've covered how to disagree politely. But another option is to reach a compromise. And this is where both people change their opinion or demands in order to agree. So how can we talk about compromise at work?

Well we have lots of really nice expressions for this in English. So we could ask, 'can you meet me halfway?' And that just means can you compromise with me?

Yes. You might want to try and find common ground. And common ground are the things that you agree on.

Mhm. A similar expression is a happy medium. And this just means to reach a point where everybody is happy. So you have a solution that makes both sides happy, that's in the middle. It's a happy medium.

Now in order to reach a compromise it's often good to use slightly more indirect language or softer language. So things like possibly or maybe, could you, would you, modal verbs like that, which, they just make it a bit less confrontational.

That's it for this episode of Office English. Find more business English

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Until next week, goodbye.

Bye.