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> As the listener, before responding, it's a good habit to say "This is what I understand about your proposal" and proceed to summarize and give the original sp
by a_e_k 6y ago
> As the listener, before responding, it's a good habit to say "This is what I understand about your proposal" and proceed to summarize and give the original speaker an opportunity to correct you.
I find a practice like this is also helpful for following up after a meeting. For meetings that warrant my taking notes, I like to type them up immediately afterwards, send them out to the other attendees, and solicit corrections or confirmations while the meeting is still fresh on everyone's mind.
It was a bit scary when I first started doing that since I'd fear that I might have misunderstood something and would be revealing my ignorance. But to the contrary, I've found that it tends to encourage others to share their notes for comparison and elicit further discussion. (If there's something I've misunderstood from a meeting, usually someone else was confused too.)
- ivanovb 6y agoI've been doing the same for the past 10+ years. The problem that I found with it, is that a recurring receiver (let's say a client) will eventually start trusting your minutes so much that they don't even bother to read them and just answer with 'Looks good' and basically you lose the power of minutes. To counter this, recently I've been trying to insert one wrong bullet point from the beginning, making the receiver pay more attention down the line. I don't have yet enough data points to see if this approach works.
- jblarneyforward 6y agoThat last point is pretty hilarious! I find writing up the minutes during the meeting and distilling to “are these the most important points?” works to grab folks’ attention.
- Jon_Lowtek 6y agoI had managers -do-this- (repeat what they understood as the key element) in meetings and thought of it as a very annoying waste of time. With five people in the room, assuming you do, on average, two rounds per agenda item, there are nine repetitions.
- cutemonster 6y agoMany people -- everyone? -- repeat what was said? Not sure I follow
- Jon_Lowtek 6y agoYou are right, the extreme value where everyone everytime repeats what was said before, to ensure common understanding, is an unlikely example. My point is that repeating information already present lowers information density. The "good habit of repeating what you understood" can quickly become very annoying.
- cutemonster 6y agoOk. Maybe it's enough that the one who is "the most responsible" for getting the things done, repeats