BE 363: Shall We? How to Talk About Leaving in Business English
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This is the Business English Podcast episode 363. Shall we? How to talk about leaving in business English.

Welcome to the Business English podcast from All Ears English. Get the English skills you need to achieve your dreams in global business. For a presentation, a meeting, or your office party, this is Real Business English with your favorite American hosts, Lindsay and Aubrey, coming to you from Arizona and Colorado, USA. Welcome to the Business English podcast from All Ears English.

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Hey Aubrey, how you doing today? I'm great, Lindsay. Are you going anywhere fun today? Oh, actually, yes. I have a different answer. I'm actually going out this afternoon slash evening for drinks with my friends to do like a little Christmas drink. Should be fun. Oh, that's fun. What time do you need to leave by? Oh, we have to leave here by four so that we can be...

there by 4.30 because it's very hard to get into this particular place. Okay. So you got to hit the road by about four. You got it. I asked you what time you had to leave because we got this great question about the idiom hit the road and we're sharing it and some other ways we say we need to leave both in daily conversations, but also in business. There are lots of situations where you need to say like, let's go or I need to go. And there are a lot of interesting ways to say this.

- You got it. I am excited to get into this, but first I wanna let our listeners know how important it is to hit that follow button. If you're not following Business English, you're missing great content for your career English. Yeah? - Absolutely. Wherever you're listening, open that search bar and hit follow so that you don't miss any of these great episodes.

All right. So I'm going to go ahead and read the listener question from Moeka, Moeko from Japan. Are you ready? Yeah, let's do it. All right. Hello. I'm Moeko from Japan. I always enjoy watching videos on YouTube. Thank you for giving me such great episodes. I have a question. When I watched one movie, one character said to another character, hit the road. What does that mean? Could you explain it? Thank you. Moeko Tomita. Love it.

Oh, such a good question. And I could imagine this being really confusing. Like it's idiomatic. There's no way to understand what they're saying from the actual words, right? Exactly. And we do use this two different ways in English too, which is tricky. In that movie, they were saying like, get out of here, like leave and not in a very nice way. It means like, I want you to leave right now. Yeah. Sometimes you see that, right? What that just made me think of is the scene in Home Alone.

He didn't say it, but he said even more colorful. Remember when he set up the trap for the pizza guy? Oh, yes. And he puts the TV, the movie on. It makes it sound like there's like a shootout going on inside the house. Like the gangsters are like yelling at each other. Yes. He used different colorful language rather than him. You have to build the animal. Yeah, you have to build the animal.

It's so good. Oh my God, it's great. If you guys haven't watched Home Alone, you need to check it out. It's a great film. So funny. But yeah, we also use it a lot more politely, right? That's not polite to say to somebody, hit the road, meaning like leave right now. I want you gone. But we will say it to me like, let's go. We need to leave. Like I said to you, you need to hit the road by four. It just means like you need to leave by four. Yeah, there's a lot we can do. We've said before on the show, when we implement slang, sometimes we're trying to be less direct

instead of you need to go hey let's hit the road right it's more fun it's more friendly just more friendly exactly yeah yes right and this happens all the time at work if you are late for something or you need to go you do need more friendly ways to see because it can be awkward to be like we need to leave right now yes there are so many more friendly ways to say that where you can build the connection instead of maybe hurting it

And that's what we're going to dive into today. So Aubrey, what would be the first context? The first example? Yeah. So this first one we're teaching is let's hit the road. You might say at work, you know, okay, let's hit the road. We need to meet the client in 20 minutes. Yeah. And this is so much more friendly than we need to leave now. Yeah. And even though it is a business scenario, it's totally, it's totally fine. It's okay. Yes. Let's do a role play. Okay. Let's do a little role play here to show how this would look.

Are you coming to happy hour? Yes. Planning on it. Want to ride? Oh, that'd be great. Thanks. Awesome. Let's hit the road. All right. Nice. Yeah. Very friendly. Even though you're at work, right? It's,

often you're having these more informal conversations where we do use idioms or you can say let's hit the road right it just means let's leave yeah and we know for our listeners a lot of what they want to improve is kind of the white space moments around the big things at work leaving giving someone a ride having a business lunch with someone i don't know hanging out in the break room these are really important times to build business relationships but if we don't know what to say

we're stuck right exactly right so we're going to give you a few more great options the next one is let's head out which also just means let's go let's leave so you might say we're supposed to be there at 1pm so let's head out super common by the way super common and also more friendly than saying let's leave yeah let's leave right now right don't say that yeah here we go are you leaving now i think the event doesn't start until four

Yeah, I was planning to be there early to help set up. Oh, good idea. I'll come help too. Awesome. Let's head out. Yeah. Okay. And again, because you're saying let's go, like another good reason not to say let's leave.

Because you're kind of pulling me out the door a little bit. Right. Exactly. Right. So let's head out is like more like, are you ready to go now? We can go. There's sort of more implied here. Let's leave. Let's go right now is not giving any space for your schedule. If I say, let's head out, you could say, oh, you know, I've got just a couple of things to finish up. No problem. Exactly. Love that.

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Okay, Aubrey. So number three is another alternative way to say this. What is it? Yeah, we say get going. I should get going or we should get going, which is I think using the present continuous like this just makes it a little more informal, a little more friendly instead of we should leave. We need to leave. Yeah, just don't just stay away from that one. Here's an example. My meeting starts at three and it's downtown. I should get going.

Get going. Very common, very natural. Yes. All of these sound so much more native and natural than the alternatives, the more formal verbs. So even if you're in a more formal situation, you still would probably opt for these even at work because it's a little more harsh to say, I have to leave. The actual verb is just a little more abrasive. Exactly. Here's a role play for this one.

Do you often hit traffic on your way home? If I leave right at five, it's not too bad. Any later and I'm in for it. It's five now. Oh, wow. Time got away from me. I should get going.

Yeah. Nice. Really good. And there's a couple of bonus phrases here. I love this. Any later and I'm in for it. I'm in for it. It means like I'm in trouble. I'm going to hit traffic. Yeah. It sounds like something someone would say in LA or something, right? How's the traffic in the Phoenix area, Aubrey? It's not too bad. In downtown Phoenix, there's a stack, like exchange freeways that are stacked and that can really get blocked up. So sometimes they're

traffic jams or especially if there's an accident, then traffic will be bad. But it's nothing like California where no matter where you're going, it's going to take you forever. Yeah. I don't know why it's so bad there, but it's bad news. Yeah. A lot more people too, probably. Right. There are just a lot of people crammed in there. Yeah. But it's also interesting just this verb that we often say, do you hit traffic? We hit traffic. Right. This is kind of the verb we collocate with that, which just seems a strange verb to say hit. Right. Like

But we would say that instead of like, are you going to come across any traffic? Yeah, it's a weird word to use when you're talking about traffic, but basically it come across or encounter, but you wouldn't say encounter traffic. It is hit traffic. This is a chunk. Yeah, yeah. I love it. And I'm in for it. Yeah, there's some good stuff in that role play there. But there is a fourth that we want to make sure our listeners know about, Aubrey. What is that one?

Yeah, this is shall we? And you can also combine these. You could say, shall we get going? Shall we head out? And we don't hear shall as often in the English language. It sounds a little bit formal, but with this chunk, we do hear it quite a bit to say like,

you know, should we leave? We'll just say, shall we? Yeah, for sure. I feel like I've been using this a lot in my business emails for some reason. Like, shall we set up a meeting? Right. I mean, sometimes it actually works well, you know, when you're writing to maybe partners or vendors that you work with or someone you want to do like a guest episode recording with. Shall we set up a time in January?

Absolutely. It's friendly, but elevated a little bit, a little more professional. Right. So, yes, we use it a ton in emails, a ton at work. And we use this chunk just to mean, should we go? Shall we leave? Is it time to go? Yeah, it's kind of like a combination of should and will, isn't it? Yeah, that's true. So, for example, you might say we need to be there in 15 minutes, shall we?

And that shall we means should we go? Shall we leave now? Right. And again, just to be totally clear, you could also say, shall we go? Yes. But when you say, shall we alone? It specifically means should we leave?

Exactly. And the intonation is a little different. I'm going up on we, shall we? Right? It would be strange to be like, shall we? I don't know if it went down. They'd be like, what do you mean? Shall we what? Yeah, right. You need the right intonation there. You go up, shall we? Yep. And it's just about, it's like you're kind of gesturing to the person about that you're going to go out the door together, right? There's a lot in there. It's a very specific context for that one. But putting shall in front of other things also works well, as I said in my examples. Yes, absolutely. Or inviting someone to meet or something. Yeah. Let's do an example.

All right. Okay. Are you headed to the conference? Yes. I'll be there all day today. Oh, me too. Want to ride together? Sure. Shall we? All right. So that means right away we're getting in the car. Probably holding your coat like you're ready to go. So it's like, shall we means, it doesn't mean like, should we leave in an hour? It means, shall we go right now? No, that'd be weird if you meant, shall we leave in an hour? No, it's right now. We're walking out the door immediately. Yes. Okay.

I wanted to share another episode that we just did very recently. You could scroll up and see this one, 359. Should you call a business colleague a piece of work? And that's because I was thinking about this.

You'll find out in that episode. Don't call anyone a piece of work. But it's interesting how these little minor things could really break the connection, right? If you just are a little more harsh and say, I need to leave now or let's leave now. It's crazy how that can really come across. People might judge you as like...

someone who doesn't read social cues maybe, right? You definitely need these options that are a little more friendly. 100% agree with you, Aubrey. For me, the visual picture of someone saying, let's leave now or I need to leave now is someone with their arms crossed.

Absolutely. And demanding that. I need to leave now. That's not the vibe that we want to let off. So we need to know these alternatives and use them at the right moments. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. So let's see. We talked about the other episode and any other takeaway, Apre, that we should know? I mean, that's really the point of it. That's the main point we want to get across today. Anything else? Yeah.

I think, yeah, there are so many options for something like this. If you just need to say, I need to go or let's go. There are lots of options. These four that we're teaching today are the most native, natural, friendly. So avoid saying, you know, let's leave. I need to leave and use one of these instead. All right. Sounds good. We'll see you in the next episode, Aubrey. Take care. Awesome. See you next time. Bye. Bye.

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