Active listening: responding to motivate

Right.
OK. Yes, I see.
Thank you.

Active listening: reformulating to clarify

In other words, …
So you think that…
You mean that…

Moving off the point

Could I digress for a minute?
It’s not on the agenda but…

Keeping to the agenda

I think we are digressing. Can we come back to the main question?
I think we’re getting sidetracked. The main question is…
I’m not sure that is strictly relevant. Can we turn to…
That is outside the scope of this meeting. Can we stick to the agenda, please?

Referring forward

We’ll come to that later.
We’ll be dealing with that in a moment.
Can we get to that later?

Referring back

As we said earlier, …
We have already discussed this.

Postponing

Shall we skip this item?
I think we can forget point four. We’ve already discussed it.
I suggest that we deal with this at another meeting.

Length of meeting

We’re pretty short of time.
Can we move on?
That’s fifteen minutes on this. We agreed ten minutes per item. Let’s move on.

Confirming a decision

OK. So we have decided to…
Does everyone agree with that?
Is that clear?

Closing and moving on

I think that’s everything on that.
Can we leave this point now and move on to the next item?
The next item on the agenda is…
Now, we come to the question of…

Match the sentences with similar meanings

1. I don’t think that is really relevant.     a.  I assume all of you understand it.
2. Let’s skip that question for now.       b. I don’t want to talk about it this time.
3. I hope it’s clear for everyone.          c. I need you to clarify that for me.
4. We’re getting sidetracked.               d. It’s not important.
5. I’m not sure what you mean.           e. The focus of the meeting is being lost.