Episode 17: How to manage unrealistic expectations at work

Manage unrealistic expectations Business English (Photo by Vera Cho on Unsplash)

Welcome to the Smart Startup English Podcast!

Our goal is to help startup professionals take their English from intermediate to advanced in just 10 minutes at a time. In each episode, we’ll talk about a topic related to the startup world, and we’ll learn some vocabulary that you can use to sound more natural in your day-to-day business interactions in English.

In this episode, we’re talking about what you should do when your manager has unrealistic expectations. If you’re a freelancer, you may be dealing with unrealistic expectations from clients.

But first, let me ask you this:

What do you think this phrase means: unrealistic expectations?

Expectation refers to something that someone believes or hopes will happen in the future. If someone has unrealistic expectations of you, that means they want you to accomplish something that’s hard or impossible to accomplish.

A manager might have unrealistic expectations about deadlines or about the workload – the amount of work that an employee can do.

In episode 17, we talk about three strategies that will help you manage this problem at work.

We’ll also teach you 10 Business English terms you need to know to talk about prioritizing important tasks.

Here are a few expressions we use in this lesson:

to speak up
to be on the same page
to put something on the back burner

Here’s the episode audio.

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If you want to keep practicing the words you’ve learned in this lesson, sign up below to get the episode transcript for free. We’ll also let you know when we release new episodes, and we’ll give you access to ten free Business English audio lessons and worksheets.