Controlling a discussion

Active listening: responding to motivate

• Right.
• OK. Yes, I see.
• Thank you for bringing this up.
• Absolutely.
• I can imagine.

Active listening: reformulating to clarify

• In other words, …
• So, you think that …
• You mean that …
• So you're telling me that …
• So what you're saying is that …
• Are you saying that .?
• Am I correct in assuming that …
• Let me just make sure - your point is that …
• If I have understood you correctly, your point is that …

Moving off the point

• Could I digress for a minute?
• I know 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 side-tracked. The main question is …
• I’m not sure that is strictly relevant. Can we return to …
• That is outside the scope of this discussion. Can we stick to the topic, please?
• Can we move on?

Referring forward

• We’ll come to that later.
• We’ll be dealing with that in a moment.
• Can we talk about this later?

Referring back

• As we discussed a couple of minutes ago, …
• We have already talked about this. Can we move on?

Postponing

• Shall we skip this item?
• I think we can forget this idea. We’ve already discussed it.
• I suggest that we deal with this topic another time.
• We’re rather short of time so we should move on to …

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 subject now and move on to the next topic?
• The topic we agreed to discuss is …
• Now we come to the question of …