BE 381: We've Barely Scratched the Surface with this Business Vocabulary
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This is the Business English Podcast, Episode 381. We've barely scratched the surface with this business vocabulary.

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.

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Hey there, Aubrey. How's it going today? Excellent. I want to let our listeners in a little peek behind the curtain that I think is so fun. Lindsay just accidentally said Allers English 381 instead of Business English 381. And then we realized like that would have been like 2015 Allers English way back when. I love it.

a long time ago. Yeah, we're here on business English. And I'm excited. This is a fun topic today. Yeah, this is gonna be great. So Aubrey, I do have a question for you right off the bat today. Are you ready? Yes. So what kind of conversationalist are you? Do you would you rather go deep into a few topics? I think we've talked about this before our style at a party? Or would you prefer to bounce around and just cover a lot of different things? Let's say when you catch up with a friend?

Yeah. And I think in theory, I would like to be the kind of conversationalist that gets deeper on fewer topics, but I do find myself jumping around as soon as I think of something interesting, I'll ask about that sometimes and not let the conversation be fleshed out enough. And then I'll even find myself like apologizing and bringing it back. Like, okay, sorry. I know I derailed us. Let's get back to this. It was still, there was still more to be said.

Yeah, so it's true. It's such a key skill to kind of hold someone's interest and build a relationship or rapport by acknowledging maybe that there's more to say, but you're not going to go into everything, right? Or just by just kind of tempering expectations a little bit for what's coming.

Yeah, this is a really important skill, right? If often I will have so much to say about something, but I can see someone's eyes kind of glazing over, I can see them losing interest. So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna be like, oh, you know, they're gonna say something to let them know, like, I could say more, but let's move on. Let me ask about you. Yeah.

Exactly. It's this concept that the tip of the iceberg is what we see, but 90% of the iceberg is below the water, but we don't need to give the whole iceberg to someone. Right. Nobody wants the whole iceberg. No, no, for sure not. So today's episode is inspired by

by a listener from Spain. And I'm gonna go ahead and read the question. This was on YouTube. You ready, Aubrey? - Okay, yes. - All right, so this is from a Languages Coach. "Thanks for a great episode. "Lindsay, my question is related to the phrase "that you used in this episode, "which is skimming the surface. "I quite often hear people say scratch or scrape the surface,

when they express their opinion on how much one can explore or sightsee in a place in a given period of time. Maybe that could be an interesting idiom for an episode. Greetings from Spain.

Yes, this is such a great question. We use all of these, scratch the surface, skim the surface. I use them all and about travel, that's a great example, but also about any time when I have more to say and don't, "Oh, I've barely scratched the surface." Yeah. And I listened to this podcast called ZOE. It's not a person's name. It stands for something. It's about nutrition, basically, how to eat better, talking about inflammation, good diets and that kind of thing.

And the challenge here is when you know a lot about something, it's very tempting to say everything. So what he does is he'll bring in scientists, like real heavy scientists that are doing heavy nutritional research.

research. And I was just listening to one yesterday about the discovery of the calorie. The guy went way too deep into how it was discovered and I don't know, the 1600s or whatever, and how the person discovered it and the whole context. And the host kept trying to bring the guy back, the scientist back to, okay, what does it mean for calorie counting now? It was so hard. So this is kind of weird. Oh, that's a really funny.

This is where this skill comes in handy, right? Yes. I was going to say it reminds me when we have guests on our podcast, we'll have them choose three main tips, like the three main takeaways for you listeners, because we know we're bringing on people who are experts in their fields. They have so much to say. So often that's a good way to try and narrow the focus to these three main takeaways.

Exactly. So we need a skill to be able to say that there is more to say. You know there's more to say. You're probably an expert in what you're saying. You need to acknowledge that. Maybe you could talk with people later, but you need to say something.

thing. Right? And so it's a great question from our listener scratch the surface. But what are some scenarios when you might need this tool, Aubrey? Yeah, at work, maybe, you know, you're presenting an idea to colleagues, and you're reading the room, you're searching for cues to know how brief you need to be, how busy are they? How interested are they, that is all going to determine how much detail you share.

Exactly. Or in a sales call. To be a good salesperson, you have to have really good social skills, the ability to listen well, sense what's behind the words. So maybe you want to get the point across, but you need to indicate there's more to it. There's more behind it, that your software actually does have more to offer. So it's kind of a sales technique too.

- Sometimes. - Absolutely. Yeah, this reminds me, my husband is in sales and often the salesperson that generated the lead will want him to give all this information. - Right. - And he'll be the one that's like, "Okay, we need to be smart about how much we share." - Interesting. - And then if there's time, we could share these other things because you rarely have time to share everything. - It's a real skill. And so it's a whole skill set of learning what's within your content area, but then it's also putting the right words around it.

to show that you've only scratched the surface. And let's get into a couple of vocabulary words, Aubrey, for our listeners. So what would be the first one? We said it. These are ways to indicate that there is more to either discuss or do or see. That first one is we've only scratched the surface.

And we say this a lot. It's really strange. I wonder where that comes from, scratching this or like someone being buried alive, maybe. I don't know. I'm very curious where that comes from. Wow. I never thought about that. That's really interesting. Or maybe just like when you're digging a hole, that makes more sense. And you've just barely scratched the surface when you have to dig a hole. Yeah. So that definitely to answer our listeners question directly. Yes, that is a phrase. Now, scrape the surface. Aubrey, do you use that one too?

I don't use that or hear that as much. I would know what someone meant if they said that, but I do hear scratch the surface more. Okay. Got it. What about skimmed the surface? You hear that as I know you use that. Skimmed the surface. I would know what someone meant if they said that as well. Right? We're just taking the top layer off the surface. Like skim milk. They take the fat off the layer of milk, off the milk right off the top. That's skim the surface. Yeah. You could say skim the surface too, I think. Okay.

Then the term to do a deep dive would be the opposite of this, right? We're not going to do a deep dive today. We're only going to scratch the surface. We could say that.

Exactly right. If you do, if you say, okay, we are going to do a deep dive here. That means we're getting into all the nitty gritty, all of the details we're going to spend some time here. So you can say, you know, we're not going to do a deep dive. We're staying surface level. Or we might say we've only just begun and maybe we need to move on to another subtopic, but we've only just begun when it comes to this topic.

Right? Yeah. And that's a great way to imply there's a lot more to get into here at another time. Exactly. What else could we say, Aubrey, when we want to convey that we just want to keep it simple, right? It's kind of the same idea, right? These two categories are the same idea. Yes. How would we say that? The first is just to say that let's keep it simple, right? You can also say, I think, let's keep it surface level. I'll say that sometimes, meaning, right, we're just scratching the surface. We're not going to get really deep.

But that leads me into a good question, Aubrey. Would you say let's keep it superficial? Oh, I would not. No. Because superficial has a negative connotation of things that are less important. So if you're saying someone is just sharing the superficial details, they might be offended. Like, well, why am I sharing them at all then if they're not important? Yeah. And I think our listeners need to be careful here because I have a feeling in certain romance languages, superficial is translated a little bit differently.

Because I've actually heard a false friend being used here. I've heard someone using the word superficial when it does indeed have a bit of a value judgment to it. I agree with you. I wouldn't use it there. So if you're just meaning simple, we're not going to get into depth. Yeah. Avoid superficial. And this is great. Let's keep it simple. We can also say, let's be brief or I'll be brief, meaning I'm going to keep it simple. I'm not going to take a lot of time.

Exactly. And for our last one for today, I really love high level summary or let's keep it high level or super high level. I hear this a lot when I'm on calls. I was just on a call with our podcast network on Wednesday, three guys and myself and diving right into the call. They said, just super high level. Tell us about your show. Right? So very broad. We're not, they don't want to know all the details about everything we've ever done on All Ears English.

Exactly, right? But they want the summary. Yeah, this happens a lot where you're going to need to give the most important details, whatever context is most important to the vendor or company you're working with. You'll need to know which are the details they need to hear. That's the high-level summary. Yeah, so you're going to hear this a lot. I think this term is kind of in style right now in the business world, the corporate world. So just keep an eye out for that, guys. All right? Good.

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Okay, Aubrey, shall we dive into a role play here? Yes, let's do it. All right, let's see what we're doing here now. What are we getting into today? So I just started working at a payroll software company. And Aubrey, you are showing me the company intranet program. So you're kind of like in charge of the technology. Yeah, you're IT. Yeah, I've always wanted to be better with IT. So I love to be IT today. Congratulations. Awesome. All right, I'll start us.

Welcome to pay.com. We are all excited to have you here. Well, thank you. I'm excited to get started.

Let's take a seat and I'll give you a high-level summary of how we communicate as a remote company. Would you like a coffee? Oh, no thank you. I know I have a meeting with my direct reports in 30 minutes. Yes, I'll be brief here. So when you log into your inbox, you'll see a link to set up your employee profile. We can do a deep dive into this another day, but for now, just fill out the basic details so that your colleagues recognize you online. Okay, great. And do we use Teams for remote meetings here?

Yes, mostly Teams. And for scheduling, we use Google Calendar. Oh, it's almost 11. I better get to my next meeting. Of course. We've only scratched the surface on the tech side of things. So I'll check in with you on Friday. Yes. It's like you're like, I want to tell you more about technology. And there's so many things I want to tell you. I'm excited. A new person.

That's hilarious. I love it. Yeah. So this is a really important, this is one of those skills we might overlook sometimes. We might not think about it, but it is really important to convey. We have, there's much more to learn. There's much more to do, but I recognize that.

that you're busy, you have to meet with your direct reports, it's maybe your first day, right? I don't want to hold you back. I want to respect your time. And you can sound really robotic if you only have one way to say this. If you have to convey this, but say over and over, I have more information to tell you, but I have more information to tell you. Whereas if you use all of these phrases to switch it up, then if you need to convey that a few times, you won't sound repetitive like that.

Yeah, you know what just came to mind when you gave that example? I have more information. Alexa, she's like that. She's like that. She just goes off and just repeats something. It's very tone deaf sometimes, right? It's so true. Or she'll miss here and say something. They're like, what?

She'll start saying the weather. I don't know. That's not what I asked about. Right. And that's not how we build. She's never going to build business relationships, right? This is not how we build relationships. We recognize what the person in front of us needs. We respond to it. And yes, there's more we want to talk about, but we'll do it another day. All right. We need to convey that. So let's just go through some of the vocab here, Aubrey. Okay.

I first said, you know, let's take a seat and I'll give you a high level summary of how we communicate. So I'm recognizing I don't have a ton of time. I'm going to give you the most important information here. Yeah, perfect. And then I said, Oh, I, you know, clearly my urgency around time became clear. I know I have a meeting with my direct reports in 30 minutes. It's probably the first time I'm meeting my direct reports. It's a big deal. I want to be late. Right? So you said I'll be brief here, right?

Exactly. Just letting them know, I won't take a ton of your time. And then I said, we can do a deep dive later. So I'm letting them know I have a lot of information I need to get across to you. Like we eventually will need to do this deep dive, which would be a lot more time, a lot more information. Yes. But you have to convey that. Right. And then I said, oh, it's almost 11. I have to get to my meeting. And then you said, oh, of course, we've only scratched the surface. Again, reemphasizing that there's more to do. All right.

- All right. - Exactly. And you could say we've only skimmed the surface. These are pretty interchangeable. It's a great way instead of saying, I have more information to tell you. It's a much more, yeah, idiomatic, fun, native way to say that. - I love it. There is a really good cross-reference episode for our listeners. What is that one? Similar, but not the same.

Yes. 350 here on Business English was how to ask for brevity in English. This was fantastic. A little different how to ask someone to be brief if you need to go. So sort of your side of this role play a little bit. Exactly. It's the other side. So go and check that one out as a companion episode, guys. Good stuff. What's our takeaway, Aubrey? I think we said it.

Yeah, right. It's an art to know when to do the deep dive and when to stay surface level, right? When you're onboarding a new employee or meeting a new person, you don't want to immediately try to give all the information. Right. It's also a good, even in the dating world, you don't want to dive into who you are, every detail of who you are right away. You kind of need to create a little bit of mystery and you don't want to reveal everything about yourself initially either.

So this is kind of common sense about human relationships and respecting people and their time. I love that. But also on dates, you want to give the, you want to imply that there's more to learn, that there's a lot to do. You're an interesting person so that you get to date three, four, five. Yeah, you got it. All right. Good stuff, Aubrey. Great topic today. We'll see you back on the show very soon. All right. Awesome. See you next time. Bye. Bye.

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