In the Team Meeting: Changing the Agenda and Disagreeing Politely
Getting your topic onto the agenda, saying a timeline is too tight, and turning a disagreement with a colleague into a solution.
Meetings are where many people with good German still stay silent. Everyone speaks fast, the topics move, and by the time you have built your sentence the conversation has gone somewhere else.
The fix is not more vocabulary. It is having three ready-made moves: get your topic in, say what you think, and offer a way forward. Each is one sentence.
And these three moves are exactly what the FIDE speaking exam is testing — proposing, disagreeing, and finding a compromise.
Key phrases to know
- Das wichtigste Thema heute ist … – The most important topic today is …
- Können wir zuerst über … sprechen? – Can we talk about … first?
- Das war nicht vorgesehen, aber es ist wichtig. – That wasn't planned, but it's important.
- Wir haben aktuell zu wenig Leute. – We currently have too few people.