Corporate Crisis Management — Ep 3: Mediating Toxic Executive Feuds | English C1-C2
Shadow this lesson: play a line, pause, and repeat it out loud — matching speed and intonation.
Conversation Script
Mediator
Frankly, if you two keep sniping at each other in meetings, the board will start questioning both your judgment.
Executive
With all due respect, it's hard to collaborate with someone who undermines me in front of clients.
Mediator
That's precisely the perception I need you to set aside for the next hour, at least hypothetically.
Executive
Fine, hypothetically, let's pretend I don't already know exactly how this conversation will end.
Mediator
Your sarcasm is noted, but it won't get us any closer to resolving the actual grievance.
Executive
The grievance, if you must call it that, is that she rewrote my proposal without even consulting me.
Mediator
And from her side, she'd argue your proposal was quietly sabotaging the merger timeline she'd already promised the board.
Executive
Oh, so now I'm the villain, is that the narrative we're settling on today?
Mediator
Nobody's assigning villains here, though I admit the two of you make it tempting.
Executive
Very funny, but tension aside, I genuinely doubt she'll ever apologize first.
Mediator
Then perhaps we skip the apology entirely and focus on a workable compromise instead.
Executive
A compromise assumes she's willing to concede even an inch, which frankly seems unlikely.
Mediator
She said the exact same thing about you ten minutes before you walked in, incidentally.
Executive
Well, isn't that ironic; maybe we're not quite as different as we'd both like to believe.