Understanding vs Agreement
Whether you are presenting ideas, discussing plans, or negotiating with others, it is crucial to ensure that you can make your listeners clearly understand.
However, gaining understanding is just the first step. To achieve your goals, you also need to gain agreement from your audience.
- Understanding means that others comprehend the exact meaning of your message.
- Agreement means that they think what you are saying is good, right and true.
Understanding should come before agreement.
Therefore, the first thing to do is to make yourself clearly understood.
Followed by gaining their agreement.
It may be the case that they understand what you are saying, but they disagree.
That is just a fact of life.
Not everyone will agree with what you say. But we should strive for universal understanding.
You should be able to make yourself always understood, even if they do not agree.
Ideally, you would like to gain both their understanding and agreement.
How to Make People Understand
To make people understand you need to:
- use specific language
- give definitions
- use illustrative examples
- use numbers to express exact times, places, and quantities
- speak slowly enough to allow people to keep up with your presentation.
How to Gain Agreement
We gain their agreement by giving sufficient reasons to believe that what we are saying is true, right, good, practical, and fair.
The clearer your message, the easier it is to gain both understanding and agreement.
Remember that understanding comes from using clear language, and agreement comes from giving sufficient reasons to believe.
It is important not to invert the correct order and put agreement before understanding.
Coming to agreements before we have gained mutual understanding, leads to conflicts.
What happens when we sign agreements based upon misunderstanding? There is conflict.
Summary
As a professional person, your goal is to communicate effectively and achieve your objectives.
To do this, you must gain both understanding and agreement.
By following the right order and using clear and specific language, you can communicate your ideas effectively and achieve your goals.
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Understanding Before Agreement Principle
In business talk, you must first make sure people fully grasp what you mean before you ask them to agree. Use clear words, check for real understanding, keep the order of steps, and cut the chance of later conflict or waste.
CG4D Definition
Context: Business communication
Genus: Principle
- Relies on simple, exact words and clear examples
- Insists listeners show they grasp the full meaning
- Sets a fixed order: understanding must come first
- Prevents conflict, errors and wasted effort later
Article Summary
Strong communication skills begin with clear words that build shared understanding; once people know what you mean, solid reasons win their agreement and stop costly conflict.