Leading a team

What's in the lesson

1. 1Warm-up
2. 2In this lesson
3. 3Guess the words (1)Vocabulary exercise
4. 4Guess the words (2)Vocabulary exercise
5. 5Check the wordsVocabulary
6. 6Check your understandingReading comprehension
7. 7Listen: Lena's first big decisionListening comprehension
8. 8Use the new wordsVocabulary exercise
9. 9What does it do?Grammar exercise
10. 10Notice: Lena's updateGrammar exercise
11. 11Relative clauses: which one, or extra information?Grammar rule
12. 12Choose the right wordGrammar exercise
13. 13Lena's notesGrammar exercise
14. 14About your workSpeaking practice
15. 15Say it naturallySpeaking practice
16. 16Role-play: delegate the weekSpeaking practice
17. 17Let's discussDiscussion
18. 18Wrap-up

Homework

1. 1Homework: closest meaningVocabulary exercise
2. 2Homework: your sentencesVocabulary exercise
3. 3Homework: find the mistakeGrammar exercise
4. 4Homework: an email to your teamDiscussion

Words

• delegate/ˈdelɪɡeɪt/

  to give part of your work or your decisions to someone else (delegate a task to someone)

• give credit/ˌɡɪv ˈkredɪt/

  to say that someone did good work, especially in front of others (give someone credit for something)

• expertise/ˌekspɜːrˈtiːz/

  special knowledge or skill in a particular area

• seniority/ˌsiːniˈɔːrəti/

  a higher position at work, often because you have worked somewhere for a long time

• decisive/dɪˈsaɪsɪv/

  able to make decisions quickly and firmly

• excel/ɪkˈsel/

  to be very good at something (excel at / in something)

• time-sensitive/ˌtaɪm ˈsensətɪv/

  that must be done or decided quickly, before it is too late

• micromanage/ˌmaɪkroʊˈmænɪdʒ/

  to control every small detail of other people's work

• morale/məˈræl/

  how confident and positive a group of people feel about their work

• one-on-one/ˌwʌn ɑːn ˈwʌn/

  a private meeting between a manager and one person on the team (also written 1:1)

Two slides from the lesson

Warm-up

Let's talk about leading people.

1. What is one thing a manager did that made you work harder, or made you want to leave?
2. Have you ever had to lead a group, at work, in school or in a club? How did it go?
3. In meetings where you work or study, who usually talks the most: the leader or the team?

Grammar rule

Relative clauses: which one, or extra information?

	Defining: which one? (no commas)	Non-defining: extra information (commas)
People	the recruiter who (or that) called me	Our founder, who started the company in a garage, …
Things	the laptop that (or which) IT gave me	The new warehouse, which opens in August, …
Possession	a supplier whose prices went up	Our auditor, whose office is in Chicago, …
Places	the café where we had the interview	Phoenix, where our call center is, …

• Non-defining clauses have commas and never use that: not Our founder, that started the company…. You can never leave the pronoun out of them.

• In defining clauses, you can leave out who / that / which when it is the object: the laptop (that) IT gave me (IT gave me the laptop). Not when it is the subject: the recruiter who called me, not the recruiter called me in that meaning.

• which after a comma can refer to a whole idea: The server went down twice, which cost us a day. (not what cost us a day)

• In American English, that is more common than which in defining clauses about things, but both are correct.

• whose = his, her, its or their. who's = who is or who has.

• where = in or at that place. When you would say it, not there, use which or that: the café (that) we tried last week (we tried it).

In speech, a non-defining clause sounds like an aside: a short pause at each comma, and a slightly lower, faster voice in between.