UNIT 8

8.4 BUSINESS
L E A D I N G B U S I N E S S
SKILL page 84
LEAD - IN
Exercise 1. Discuss which statement (a or b) in each pair you
most agree with.

• facilitator (n) /fəˈsɪlɪteɪtə(r)/: a person who helps somebody do

something more easily by discussing problems, giving advice, etc.
rather than telling them what to do
• external (adj) /ɪkˈstɜːrnl/: connected with or located on the outside of
something/somebody
• interruption (n) /ˌɪntəˈrʌpʃn/: something that temporarily stops an
activity or a situation; a time when an activity is stopped
8.5 WRITING
Informing of a decision
page 86
Lead in
Exercise 1. Proofread the email and find eight spelling
mistakes.
This is to inform you of the decisions reached at the meeting yesterday about
the future leedership and management structure of this organisation.

As I am retiring at the end of the year, I am pleased to announce that my

succesor has been apointed. The Board has decided that the new CEO will be
Franco Sorrento, currently CEO of our Italian subsidary.

Secondly, it was decided that all directors serving on the bored should have
hands-on experiense within the company as there seems to have been a
disconnect between them and the management team recently. The debate about
the disconnect was lively, but finaly we reached a consensus that directors will
visit each departement over the next month and hold question and answer
sessions.

The final decision of the meeting was to overturn the decision taken last year
to reduce the number of current managers. It was agreed that with the ongoing
increase in export sales, this was no longer necessary.
Lead in
Exercise 1. Proofread the email and find eight spelling
mistakes.
1. leedership – leadership
2. succesor – successor
3. apointed – appointed
4. subsidary – subsidiary
5. bored – board
6. experiense – experience
7. finaly – finally
8. departement – department
 Fuctional language

Formal Semi formal

1. inform
2. announce 7. tell
3. consensus 8. know
4. agreed 9. couldn’t
5. reach
6. came
 More practice.
Match the sentence halves.

a. best to tell everyone immediately.

1. This is to inform ______
2. We all agreed that ______
3. We thought it was ______
4. We reached ______
5. The final decision was ______
6. Let me tell you ______
7. We came ______
8. Just to let you ______
b. know why the decision was made.
c. a consensus to recall the product.
d. we needed another member of staff.
e. you of changes to our payment plan.
f. to a decision to change the company logo.
g. to ask staff for their ideas for advertising.
h. what we decided at the meeting.
1-e (This is to inform you of changes to our
payment plan)
2-d (We all agreed that we needed another
member of staff)
3-a (We thought it was best to tell everyone
immediately)
4-c (We reached a consensus to recall the
product)
5-g (The final decision was to ask staff for
their ideas for advertising)
6-h (Let me tell you what we decided at the
meeting)
7-f (We came to a decision to change the
company logo)
8-b (Just to let you know why the decision was
made)
Exercise 3A. Rewrite the email to make it more
formal.

Dear José,
As you missed this morning's sales department meeting, here
is a summary of the decisions made.
Firstly, it was decided that Sylvie du Martin would be the
best person to chair the International Sales Mangers' meeting
next month.
Unfortunately, with regard to improving communication
between Production and Sales, we were unable to reach a
consensus, so it appears that the same problems with
Greater Trust In Leadership
Production will continue for now.
Finally, a social event has been arranged on Friday evening
Improved
next week in order to try and resolve Creativity informally.
the situation

A Stronger Bottom Line

Exercise 3B. Look at the meeting notes and write a
formal email of about 180 words to inform staff of the
decisions made.
 Sample answer
Dear Team,
This is to inform you of the decisions made at Monday's sales meeting.
Firstly, regarding the point about customer feedback on the new product range, it was agreed
that all customers will be asked to do an online survey as soon as possible. It was also thought that
we could encourage them to participate by offering some kind of incentive.
With regard to the replacement team leader for national sales, we are very happy to announce
that we decided that John Hedges should take on that role. He has been a regional team leader
with us for two years and we are sure he will do an excellent job.
The lack of staff training for new staff was also discussed and we reached an agreement about
giving more training to new team members. We agreed that we would contact the training
company immediately to arrange this.
Unfortunately, we were unable to come to an agreement on conference dates for this year, so they
are still to be confirmed. However, we agreed on two potential venues for the conference.