The 13 Rules of Communication

Improve your life with communication competence

RULES ARE MEANT TO BE FOLLOWED. Image Copyright 2016, C. A. Schmidt, the author

From my last article on May 15, you now understand that communication is a transaction between two parties. You have also learned that communication–the message, specifically–is a package that uses two codes: verbal and nonverbal.

Hopefully, you spent the time graphing out some conversations.

These articles are not meant for just reading and nodding — you need this information and practice to become a competent communicator. So, you’ll need a little science.

Communication theorists have established 13 rules, or axioms, that communication follows. Understanding those rules can widen your perspective and give you insight into why communication is successful or not. Here they are, in no particular order of importance:

COMMUNICATION IS A TRANSACTION

We explored this rule in the last article. You can review it here. In summary, the sender encodes a message and sends it across a channel to the receiver, who decodes the message. The receiver then encodes another message, called feedback, and returns it to the original sender. The sender becomes the receiver of that message and decodes it. Voila!

COMMUNICATION IS A PACKAGE