Giving and taking criticism

Le tête-à-tête is a French phrase that English borrowed and then made more interesting than it is. In English a « tête-à-tête » is a private and slightly charged conversation between two people; candlelight is never far away, and the word carries a faint air of the drawing room. In French it is two heads facing each other and nothing more, with no temperature at all. Le tête-à-tête in this list is the monthly one-to-one with a manager, and outside the office un déjeuner en tête-à-tête is lunch for two, which may be a date and may be a budget review. The adverb does the same plain work: ils ont discuté en tête-à-tête says only that nobody else was present. Two things go with it. The phrase is traditionally invariable in the plural, des tête-à-tête, the same three words; and it is not the only way to say this, since seul à seul, further down the list, is the neutral one of the pair. Announce a « tête-à-tête » with your line manager in English and you have said something you did not mean.