The Rules For Effective Communication

Expressing one’s ideas effectively is hard, but by following some rules we can dramatically improve how useful each message we send is.

Every Message Is Actionable, Asks A Question, Or Informs, And Has Context

From the perennial “let’s go for a tea/coffee” to the famous water cooler brainstorming session, in-person communication is riddled with traditions. We use these traditions to simplify complex collaboration.

We’re still figuring out the best habits to help us communicate online, but some great rules to follow is to make every message we send actionable, a question, or informative, and to include its context.

Now, let’s break down the rules.

Actionable Messages

With actionable messages, there’s something to be done. A ticket can be created, a solution provided, or a discussion had.

Compare a non-actionable message with little context:

“I clicked the subscribe button and a modal showed up.”

With an actionable one:

“On the products page, I clicked the ‘Subscribe’ button and a modal opened. But I should’ve been redirected to the subscribe page instead. Are we aware of it?”

In this case, either the behavior is wrong, or the specification is out of date and there’s a clear action: A ticket can be created or the documentation updated.

Your Message Asks A Question

A good question explains the why behind the question and provides context. The trick is to maximize the chances of someone understanding your problem right away by explaining it as clearly as possible. If you’re asking for help with a problem, highlight what you’ve tried so far and If you haven’t tried to solve it yet, try first.

Compare an unclear question with no context, reason, or attempts:

“Does anyone know how to render a modal with React Router?”

With a clear one:

“I need to show a modal with our newsletter when a button is clicked, but I’m not managing to do it with React Router. I tried using a <Link to="/modal" /> but it redirects to a page instead of opening the modal in-place. Can someone help?”

Informative Messages

A good informative message is self-contained. You don’t need a lot of prior knowledge to understand it and its value.

Here’s an informative but unclear message:

“We reached an all-time high of users today!”

And here’s a self-contained one that has context:

“We reached 10k concurrent users today on the site, an all-time high! That’s a 25% increase from last month.”

Add Context To Your Message

If you noticed, all rules mentioned context. Adding a message’s context has an anchoring effect, helping the reader better understand the rest of the information.

Here are the same messages as above but with context struckthrough. Notice how much better they are if they contain it:

“On the products page, I clicked the ‘Subscribe’ button, and a modal opened. But I should’ve been redirected to the subscribe page instead. Are we aware of it?”

“I need to show a modal with our newsletter when a button is clicked, but I’m not managing to do it with React Router. I tried using a <Link to="/modal" /> but it redirects to a page instead of opening the modal in-place. Can someone help?”

“We reached 10k concurrent users today on the site, an all-time high! That’s a 25% increase from last month”.

Alors, si dire aux gens ce qu’ils doivent faire ne fonctionne pas, que faire ? Plutôt que d’essayer de les convaincre, il est souvent plus efficace de les amener à se persuader eux-mêmes. Voici trois façons d’y parvenir.

1. Mettez les écarts existants en lumière

Vous pouvez accroître le sentiment de liberté et de contrôle des individus en mettant en lumière le décalage qui existe entre leurs pensées et leurs actions, ou entre ce qu’ils pourraient recommander aux autres et ce qu’ils font eux-mêmes.