DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

A client of mine recently told me the following story.

During an important business presentation, she explained the financial offer her company was making in order to buy a marketing licence from a potential partner. All went well. The body language of the other people was positive, the questions were answered clearly… in short, it seemed like mission accomplished. The partners had understood the offer and seemed to agree with it too.

Unfortunately, something then went wrong.

During the following meeting, the partners spoke about terms of the financial offer in a way which implied that, in fact, they had misunderstood some of the crucial terms. This then led to a number of phone conversations, emails being sent and internal meetings being organised – not to mention the extra work and stress generated – in order to produce a new offer that would be easier to understand and implement.

I’m sure that many of you have been in a similar situation. You’ve just explained something – phone, conf-call, face to face meeting – and your correspondent is all smiles… but in fact, the message was not understood and more time is lost dealing with the consequences.

This can be so frustrating… so is there a solution?

It can be very tempting to say “Do you understand?” or “Is that clear?”, especially when you can tell from their body language that your correspondent has not grasped the finer details. But in general, few people will say “I don’t understand” because they are embarrassed to appear stupid and could be afraid of losing face or credibility in front of their colleagues or boss.

Another approach could be to ask your correspondent to reformulate what he/she has understood, which you can then validate (or not!). I often use this technique when I am coaching and use a question such as “so what exactly have you understood?”

While this can work in a training room, it may appear slightly aggressive in an international/intercultural business setting.

So after a lot of thought, in order to make sure that everything is clear and no time will be lost due to a misunderstanding, my advice is say something like… “I’ve been speaking for a long time about some rather complex issues. And maybe I wasn’t clear enough. Which points would you like me to go over again…?”

There are a number of advantages to using this approach:

• you are effectively defusing the situation by saying “if you don’t understand, it’s my fault, not yours”.
• you are demonstrating that it is important to you that your correspondent understands. In short, you are treating him/her as a VIP… and nobody will complain about that.
• it provides the opportunity for going over the little details that could give rise to major misunderstandings if not examined thoroughly.

Once your correspondent has validated these keys points you have effectively reduced the risk of being misunderstood or misinterpreted. In the long run, you should be able to avoid having to organise supplementary “problem-solving” meetings, and it should lay down the foundations for a business collaboration based on mutual trust and respect…

… and there’s not much wrong with that!