Generating a common understanding can be a really powerful way to avoid misunderstandings. Have you ever had a meeting at work where everyone seems to agree on some course of action, only for everyone to leave the meeting with slightly different ideas in their heads resulting in an uncoordinated mess later? Ensuring a common understanding prevents this problem.

The simplest technique I've found for generating a common understanding is sharing / projecting my screen and then taking live meeting notes that everyone in the meeting can see. So when someone is talking they can immediately spot if I've misunderstood something and correct it. If they don't correct my notes the implication is that what I wrote down is an accurate reflection of what they meant. Because everyone else in the meeting sees the correction (or lack of correction) they too now share in this common understanding.

It is now impossible for us to walk out of the meeting with different ideas in our heads, and also prevents people from later dishonestly claiming that they meant something different from what was written down in my live meeting notes.