“The most important thing in communication is to hear what isn’t being said”
– Peter Drucker
What does this wonderful sentence mean to you?
People often talk about also listening to what is behind what is being said. These sentences arguably mean the same thing.
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What can we say when we do not understand what is being said? Maybe a person is speaking incoherently, maybe there is a problem with technology, we need information or we are involved in a conference call.
Lets look at situations a bit more closely and consider what we can say.
Note that to be polite in English we often say ‘sorry’ to introduce what we are going to say.
There is a poor connection
(Sorry), the screen has frozen.
I cannot hear you very well.
There is a problem with sound.
The sound cut.
On a busy conference call
On a conference call people can speak very quickly and/or there can be many people saying things at different times. Attendees can sometimes be concerned about interrupting the conference or being embarrassed.
Tips
It can be useful to take notes. This can enable us to maintain focus on the call rather than focus on what already has been said and missing the rest.
Maybe it sometimes would be better to wait until then end of the call.
Try to be confident when speaking; if we sound confident, we sound credible.
Sometimes we still don’t understand after someone has repeated something which is difficult, unless it is extremely urgent it may be better to move on.
what can we say if we don’t understand?
Depending on how many people are on the call.. we could begin by saying this is (name)..
Sorry, did you say….’####’?
Would you be able to repeat that please?
Sorry, I did not catch that.
It may be necessary to say:
Could you say that more slowly please?
I am struggling to understand.
I am really sorry, could you say that gain please (maybe because it is a repeated request)
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A good tip is that it can sound better to ask in different ways for people to repeat things.