6 Rules of Communication

Today, I had a phone conversation with a good friend of mine, and we got on the subject of how much name-calling and hatred is happening on social media as well as in real life (IRL for you acronym junkies).

I’ve always said that social media is like the worst bar you’ve ever been to, and politics and the pandemic have really taken the online circus and real-life communication to new levels.

During our conversation, my friend shared that he had been pondering if the arguing and fighting isn’t simply a battle over who was wrong and who was right but a symptom of not understanding one another.

I believe he’s probably right about this. If we all set our egos aside and took the time to understand the human with whom we’re communicating, it would eliminate much of the problem.

Let’s think about a time when you had a heated debate with your significant other. (If you have never had a significant other, think of someone with whom you have a close relationship.)

Was the focus of your communication with your significant other on convincing them that you were right, or was your focus on fully understanding their view and coming to an amicable solution? (Hint: Option 2 is the better way to go.)

When I work with humans to help them overcome a challenge in their life, I need to have a clear representation of what they are experiencing. To put it another way, I can’t help them if I don’t have the complete story.

Here are 6 rules that I follow to make sure I have the most accurate representation of what other humans are communicating.

To effectively use the rules that I am about to give you, you must have a genuine empathy for others.

When you learn and apply these 6 rules, you will have less misunderstandings and better conversations.

1. What you are being told is actually coherent.

This is the easiest of the 6 rules and something you rarely have to give any thought. Essentially, do you understand the words that are coming out of your conversation partner’s mouth? If you do not, then the remaining rules are useless.


2. What you are being told is the whole story… not the CliffsNotes. (Yes, that’s how you spell CliffsNotes.)

As experiences are encoded into your mind, the information goes through several mental filters. One of these filters is deletion. Deletion is the process of removing portions of the original experience. This can be literal. For example, when a group of humans witness a car crash, every individual questioned will have a different story. This is partially due to the fact that they have each deleted what their mind did not think was relevant.

Deletion can also enter a conversation when someone leaves details out. An example of this would be, “I have a couple of stops to make before I get home.”

The deleted information in that sentence is the specifics of the stops. In order to make sense out of that sentence, you would have to add your own meaning to “a couple of stops”. Your meaning may be different than your conversation partner’s. You may be thinking that he had to stop at the bank and grocery, but what he really meant was dinner with friends and a drink at the bar next door.

This sounds like semantics, because it is; and it’s important when you want to have a clear understanding of what you are being told.

If someone tells you that they “support a political party because of what they believe in”, they have deleted a lot of information from that sentence… specifically, what do they mean by “support” and exactly what the party believes in.

You must fill in the blanks by asking for more clarification, such as, “What specifically do they believe in that you support?”

Do not assume that you know what your conversation partner means by “what the party believes in”. Your conversation partner may or may not know the parties beliefs or only know one or two.

You should also explore what “support” looks like for your conversation partner. That may mean cheering them on to donating their life savings to the cause.

3. What you are being told is free of nominalizations. (It’s a weird word, but stick with me.)

A nominalization is created when you turn a verb, adverb, or adjective into a noun. In other words, it’s a movie turned into a still picture.

For example, I have humans who reach out to me and tell me they have “depression” (a noun). What they have done is take the process of thinking certain images, sounds, and feelings and squeezed them into a single word.

When I hear this, I know one thing right away… they feel stuck and unable to change their situation. I know this because they’ve frozen a multifaceted thought process into a thing.

My first order of business is to turn it back into a process by asking something like, “How do you know you’re depressed?” This elicits an answer such as, “Well, I feel sad all the time and have no energy.” This turns “depression” back to what it should be, a process.

If you want a shortcut to help you determine if a noun is a nominalization or not, ask yourself, “Can I put _____ into a wagon?” If you can’t, then you are dealing with a nominalization. For example, “Can I put depression into a wagon?”

If you hear a noun that cannot be put into a wagon, be sure to get clarification.

Think President Clinton and his “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.” You can’t put “sexual relations” (a noun) into a wagon. That means you should turn the noun back into a process by asking, “Will you explain to me what you mean by sexual relations?” (I believe Clinton has a different meaning than most of us.)

4. What you are being told contains everyone and everything involved. (This is about nouns.)

A referential index is any unspecified noun where the who or what is unclear.

A simple example of this is a teenager who says, “I need these shoes because everyone has them.” The word “everyone” is lacking a referential index. In other words, we don’t know who “everyone” is. This can be clarified with a single question, “Who is everyone?”

There are many times in your life that you have unknowingly fallen victim to this. Like, every time you hear “4 out of 5 dentists agree”. Who are these dentists who agree and who was the one that didn’t? Four of them could have been last in their class while the one who disagreed has been an expert in his field for years.

When you hear a word or phrase like “he”, “she”, “they”, “them”, “everyone”, “no one”, “those people”, “Democrats”, “Republicans”, “Christians”, et cetera; make sure to get clarification if you do not know specifically who or what is being referred to.

5. What you are being told contains everything that happened. (This is about verbs.)

A verb that is vague leaves the listener having to fill in the meaning of the verb, and there is a risk of the listener being incorrect.

Example, “This pandemic is screwing up my life.”

Without further explanation, the listener does not know what “screwing up” really means. Of course, they could assume, but I advise against that.

When you hear a verb that could mean different things to different humans, get clarification. It’s simple… Just ask, “What do you mean by screwing up?”

6. What you are being told could make an ass out of you and me.

A presupposition is another word for an assumption.

When someone says, “We spent the weekend on our boat.”, one of the assumptions that you have to make is that your conversation partner has a boat.

Fairly simple, huh?

What about this one?… “Does it bother you that the candidate dodged the Vietnam draft?”

The average human would answer “yes” or “no”; however, in order to answer this question you must assume that the candidate did indeed dodge the Vietnam draft. This may or may not be true. The presupposition that you must accept to answer this question is that the candidate dodged the Vietnam draft.

This is one way that thoughts and beliefs can be installed in your mind without your knowledge. As soon as you answer this question, you now have the belief that the candidate did dodge the Vietnam draft.

Listen for presuppositions, things that you have to assume, during your conversations. When you hear one, ask for more information. The more clarification you can get the better you will understand your conversation partner.

By following these communication rules, caring about the relationship you have or are developing with your conversation partner, and having a genuine interest in humans you will find that you begin to understand other humans at a much deeper level.

Instead of name-calling, hating, and wanting to be right, we should all be in this together.