26 IMPORTANT Business English Idioms + QUIZ

0:00 Hello!

0:00 Today I want to teach you twenty-six

0:03 fantastic English idioms that you need to know.

0:07 I'm going to share them with you through a story about my friend Jacq's new job.

0:13 So all of these idioms are related to business English

0:17 and are useful to use at work or in professional conversations.

0:22 The best news about today's lesson is that we've created an awesome

0:27 quiz to help you test what you learn during this video and make

0:32 sure that these idioms stick in your mind so that you can

0:37 remember them and you can even use start using them naturally yourself.

0:42 Completing the quiz is going to give you some

0:44 confidence about which idioms you know and you can

0:48 start using confidently when you speak and which ones

0:51 you need to learn a little bit more about.

0:54 But before you do the quiz,

0:56 let's get to the story and learn about these common English idioms together.

1:02 This is my mate Jacq.

1:03 She recently started working as the creative

1:06 director of a well-known marketing agency.

1:09 She was thrilled to get the position.

1:12 Not only does it pay well but the company

1:14 has a great reputation across the industry.

1:17 Jacq is the type of person who likes to put her best foot forward.

1:22 She takes great pride in her work and in her performance.

1:26 She assumed that as an established company,

1:30 there would be robust systems in place to allow her to hit

1:34 the ground running and work hand in glove with her new team.

1:39 Jacq likes to put her best foot forward.

1:43 This means that she tries hard to make a good impression.

1:47 If you're meeting someone for the first time or if

1:50 you're having a job interview or starting a new job,

1:54 these are all moments where we try to put

1:57 our best foot forward and make a good impression.

2:01 Jacq was expecting to hit the ground running,

2:05 meaning that she expected to begin her new role and her work with lots

2:10 of energy and enthusiasm and make lots

2:13 of progress from the moment that she started.

2:16 And if a person or a team works hand in glove with someone else,

2:21 or another team, then they work very closely and very effectively with them.

2:27 But unfortunately for Jacq, she was thrown in the deep end on day one.

2:32 She quickly realised that the real talent

2:35 in the team had jumped ship after her predecessor quit.

2:39 So she'd been left with a team of juniors,

2:42 many of whom were still learning the ropes themselves.

2:46 You might have heard this one before.

2:48 If someone is thrown in the deep end,

2:51 they're placed in a challenging situation without preparation.

2:55 So this often happens when we start a new job

2:59 or a new role and we don't have much support

3:03 or guidance from anyone else with more experience so we

3:07 need to figure out how to do things on our own.

3:11 The talented and experienced team members jumped ship,

3:16 meaning they left the company but it's not quite as simple as that.

3:21 Often when we use this idiom, it's because the people who remain feel abandoned.

3:28 In this case, Jacq felt abandoned by the more experienced team members who left.

3:34 It would have been much easier for her if

3:37 she was starting her new role with their support.

3:40 And the junior team who remained were not very experienced at all.

3:45 They were still learning the ropes, learning how to do their jobs well.

3:50 This idiom can be used by anyone, not just juniors.

3:55 Anyone at any level, when they're starting a new job,

3:59 when they've got to learn the systems or the procedures

4:02 that a new company uses to operate smoothly.

4:07 So we can all be learning the ropes when we start a new role.

4:13 The first thing she did was ask her team

4:15 to brief her on the status of their current projects.

4:19 To her dismay, she learned that the team had

4:22 been in a holding pattern for the last few weeks, waiting for her to start.

4:27 Three of the six deadlines had blown out,

4:30 three of their biggest clients were complaining

4:32 and things were getting out of hand.

4:35 The team had been cutting corners to try and get

4:38 work done and this really rubbed her up the wrong way.

4:42 A holding pattern is the route followed by a plane

4:46 above an airport while it's waiting to land,

4:49 while it's circling around and it's waiting for permission to land.

4:52 This is called a holding pattern and we use it to talk about human

4:58 behaviour when we're waiting for something to happen

5:02 before we do something new or different.

5:04 So Jacq's team were waiting until she started

5:08 her new role before taking any new or different action.

5:12 They were waiting for her and things were getting out of hand

5:18 meaning that they were out of control or impossible to manage.

5:24 So the situation was out of control.

5:28 The team were cutting corners, meaning that they weren't doing the best job.

5:35 They were trying to do their job in the easiest,

5:38 the fastest or it can also mean the cheapest way

5:42 and usually by ignoring the rules or leaving something out,

5:46 not doing it quite as good as they should.

5:50 And if someone rubs you up the wrong way, they annoy you.

5:56 Can you think of anyone at your workplace who rubs you up the wrong way?

6:02 Tell me about it down in the comments.

6:03 I want to see you practising this idiom.

6:06 Alright, use it in a sentence.

6:08 But, best not to use their actual name.

6:13 Anyone who has worked with Jacq knows she runs a tight ship.

6:17 Now that she had her foot in the door at this agency,

6:20 she could see that nobody else was going to turn this ship around.

6:24 So she rolled up her sleeves and got to work.

6:28 Jacq runs a tight ship.

6:34 This means she runs her team in a very

6:37 strict and efficient way and in a professional context,

6:41 this is usually a good thing,

6:43 to be very organised and to be very efficient but if you

6:48 are working for or under someone who runs a very tight ship,

6:54 it might feel a little bit restrictive or controlling at times.

7:00 Oh and Jacq has her foot in the door.

7:04 That means that she's taken the first step with a new opportunity, her job.

7:11 And we often use this idiom when you

7:14 start something new but your intentions are bigger so

7:18 you hope that this first job or this first

7:22 step will lead to more opportunities in the future.

7:25 And I'll give you an example.

7:27 You might take a job as a secretary at a law

7:31 firm hoping that one day when you finish your studies,

7:35 you'll be offered a better job opportunity and that's

7:39 because you've got your foot in the door.

7:42 Your foot is part way into a new opportunity.

7:46 Jacq is going to turn the ship around and that means she's going to make

7:52 a significant change or improve a failing situation

7:57 and it usually takes quite a bit of effort.

8:01 And I said that Jacq was going to roll up her sleeves.

8:07 Why?

8:09 This is an extremely common idiom that is

8:13 used to motivate and to prepare for hard work.

8:17 Like if you were going to go out

8:19 into the garden or you were going to do the dishes,

8:22 you would roll up your sleeves and get them out of the way

8:26 to make it easier to do your work and that's where this idiom comes from.

8:32 On her second day, she called a meeting

8:34 with the general manager and cut to the chase.

8:37 If they wanted her to stay in this role,

8:40 she was going to implement drastic changes to get

8:44 the team and the company back on track.

8:47 And she wanted to feel confident that he had her back.

8:52 And Jacq cut to the chase, meaning that when she spoke to the general manager,

8:58 she was direct and her meaning was very clear.

9:02 She wanted to get her team back on track,

9:05 working as they should be, working on the right things and making progress.

9:11 That's on track and it's because at this moment,

9:15 Jacq believed that her team was off track, not doing the right things.

9:21 So you can use on track or off track to explain if

9:27 something is progressing in the way that you want it to or not.

9:33 Jacq wanted to know that the general manager had

9:36 her back and that simply means that she had his support.

9:42 She wanted to feel confident that he would support her and that he would

9:47 protect her if there were any problems

9:50 or disagreements about this issue in the future.

9:54 She made it clear that the existing culture of eighty hour work weeks

9:59 was unacceptable and that continuing in this way would land them in hot water.

10:05 Although she didn't want to rock the boat,

10:07 she could see that her team was exhausted and something had to give.

10:12 Oh no, you do not want to be in hot water.

10:18 This means that you're in trouble or you're in a difficult

10:22 situation and often it's because you've broken the rules,

10:27 you've done something wrong.

10:29 Have you ever been in hot water?

10:32 Jacq did not want to rock the boat.

10:35 She didn't want to cause trouble or disrupt the way that the team was operating.

10:41 That was not her original intention but because Jacq is planning

10:46 on making some major changes to the way that the team operates,

10:51 she probably will rock the boat.

10:55 She might make a few people annoyed

10:57 or disgruntled because she's going to change the situation.

11:02 Hopefully, it's just for the short term until they see that it's for the best.

11:08 Something has to give is an idiom that we use

11:11 to say that a situation can't continue how it is.

11:16 Something needs to change and if it doesn't,

11:19 there's going to be a negative outcome.

11:22 But it's important to note that we are

11:24 not being specific about what needs to change, we're just saying something.

11:30 There's lots of different things going on, something needs to change.

11:35 We're not saying exactly what it is that needs to change.

11:40 The general manager told her they were doing everything by the book,

11:44 that no one was asked to work overtime

11:46 and he didn't realise there was a problem.

11:49 But it was clear to Jacq that the behaviour

11:51 was being normalised from the top down.

11:55 If someone does something by the book,

11:58 it means they follow the rules or the instructions strictly.

12:03 The general manager was trying to explain

12:05 that they were not doing anything wrong, they weren't doing anything illegal.

12:10 They were following the rules of employment law.

12:14 Now he could have also said another idiom that means something similar.

12:19 He could have said that what they were doing was above board,

12:24 meaning it was legal, there was nothing dodgy or shady going on, above board.

12:31 Long story short, Jacq really had her work cut out for her.

12:36 She spent the first few weeks running around,

12:38 putting out fires and trying to win over her new team.

12:42 But I've got to hand it to her, she could have easily thrown in the towel

12:46 but she stuck with it and has earned the unwavering support of her team.

12:51 and the board.

12:53 Long story short is such a useful idiom to learn.

12:57 You can use it to summarise or shorten a story to quickly get to the main point.

13:03 So I'll give you an example.

13:05 I was late to the airport because my car broke down and then I

13:09 had to wait for a tow truck and it took ages to arrive and anyway,

13:14 long story short, I've had a long night.

13:17 You heard that Jacq spent the first two or three weeks,

13:21 a few weeks of her job putting out fires.

13:26 Now these aren't literal fires,

13:30 the office isn't burning but we use this idiom to explain that someone is

13:35 dealing with urgent problems and we use fires in the plural form because there

13:41 are usually several problems happening at the same time and it's quite frantic

13:46 or it's quite difficult to try and get

13:49 all of these different fires under control.

13:53 And when I said I've got to hand it to her, I've got to hand it to Jacq,

13:59 I was using this idiom in admiration because I can see

14:05 the effort that she's put in to get this situation under control.

14:10 And our last idiom is one of my favourites because for me,

14:14 it always creates such a vivid visual.

14:20 To throw in the towel means to give up,

14:25 to admit defeat often not because you want

14:29 to but because you're very frustrated about the situation.

14:33 You throw in the towel.

14:36 So you just learned twenty-six business English idioms in context.

14:42 But the real question is, can you remember them?

14:46 Can you use them accurately yourself?

14:49 Let's find out!

14:50 Click the link down in the description

14:52 to complete the quiz that we've made for you.

14:54 It's completely free and when you finish,

14:57 we'll send you a report card with some tips to help you remember

15:01 and practise using these idioms yourself so

15:05 that they stick in your mind forever.

15:07 I hope that you enjoyed this video.

15:09 Make sure you let me know down in the comments if you

15:12 did and tell me what was your favourite idiom that you learned today.

15:18 Try and use it in a sentence yourself to make sure that you know how to use it.

15:22 Thank you for being here and I will see you in the next video!