This happens to me in engineering meetings and it happened last week at a hospital appointment. I ask once, I get the same explanation again slightly louder and slightly faster, and then I nod and leave with nothing. I don't think the problem is the specialists — I think I'm asking badly. What sentence do you actually use?
Three sentences I keep in my back pocket. 'What's the one-sentence version?' forces a summary rather than a re-run. 'What would go wrong if that weren't true?' gets you the purpose, which is usually the bit you were missing. And 'which part of this does a new starter always get wrong?' is the best one, because everyone loves answering it and the answer is invariably the thing confusing you.
Mild disagreement with all the clever framing: I think the polite scaffolding costs more than it saves. 'I don't know what a load balancer is' gets me a better answer in less time than any diplomatic version, because it tells them exactly where to start. In eleven years I've had maybe two people be snotty about it, and both times that told me something useful about working with them. The nodding is the expensive habit here, not the phrasing.
Agreed on the nodding. It's a bluff you have to keep paying for, because now they've calibrated the rest of the meeting to a level you never had.
I nodded through three appointments in a row and then had to book a fourth to ask the questions I should have asked in the first one, which wasted about two months. Now I write the questions on paper beforehand and physically hold the list, which stops me from being swept along, and I ask to take notes. Nobody has ever objected, and one consultant looked visibly relieved.
Say it back wrong on purpose. They'll correct the specific sentence. That's the whole technique.
@adjunct_ora · 5mo ago · 2 replies
Stop asking them to repeat and start telling them what you think you heard. 'Let me say it back to you and you tell me where I've got it wrong' changes the whole interaction, because now they're correcting a specific sentence instead of guessing which part of their explanation failed. Deliberately make your version a bit too simple — people are far more willing to correct a wrong statement than to answer a vague request for clarity. It works in meetings, it works in shops, and it works spectacularly well with doctors.
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@deadline_dee · 5mo ago
That's essentially the teach-back method, which is standard practice in a lot of clinical communication training for exactly this reason. If you use it at an appointment you may well find the person on the other side relaxes, because you've just handed them the thing they were taught to ask for.
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