Communication, in any kind of relationship, is the most important element. It’s also easy to mess up. Because relaying what you want the other person or party to know, in a way that they’ll accurately understand and accept, is complicated.

Our signals to one another aren’t clear, because that’s what they are—signals that need to be decoded by an imperfect decoder (the other party). Our words, tone of voice, actions and body language are the crude instruments we use to communicate our messages. Those are the instruments we have to work with, so we should learn to use them as effectively as possible.