Communication is the act of conveying a message from the sender to the recipient.  Effective communication is when the message received is the message that was sent, without any misinterpretation.  Andall effective communication has one thing in common – shared experiences.

I’m not talking about shared experiences as in an experience that you went through together, although that certainly qualifies… I’m talking about experiences that you both went through, like both going through school, both having watched the same movie, or even both having learned the same slang and/or dialect.  It can even be as broad as both sharing the same language, but without the rest, sharing the same language (which won’t be precisely the same without sharing slang) is less effective.

Essentially, the more shared experiences you have, the more effective your communication becomes.  This becomes particularly apparent in families, especially between a husband and wife… you share so many experiences that you can sometimes convey five minutes worth of conversation with someone else in one sentence with your spouse.

This, of course, is not limited to families.  If you meet someone (a stranger) who you find out grew up in the same general area as you, you will immediately have more effective communication with that person than with a stranger who grew up far away.  If you find out that someone you work with has watched many of the same movies as you, or listens to the same music, or reads the same books, your communication with that person becomes more effective because of the shared experiences.

This is easily apparent in reverse, as well… less shared experiences causes communication to be more difficult and frustrating.  This is especially apparent in the area of slang and dialect… it can be very difficult to speak to someone who speaks the same language, but with a heavy (to you) accent (this is dialect), or with very different slang (think lower-class American English vs lower-class British English).

So how does this affect you?  How can you use this knowledge to become a more effective communicator?

Always look for things that you have in common with the person with whom you are communicating.  This can even be done by adopting similar body language, oddly enough, but it’s more effective to simply listen to what they say and how they say it, looking for something familiar and then focusing a bit more on that shared experience.  As you find more and more areas in common, your communication with that person will become more effective.

As if effective communication weren’t enough incentive on its own, though, there’s an additional bonus… the more shared experiences you find, the more that person will like you, almost without fail.  Shared experiences yield common ground to talk about other things, which leads to getting to know each other better, which leads to more shared experiences… you get the picture.  This is also the reason why relationships where the couple does not spend enough time together tend to become less close… there are less shared experiences, and so less effective communication, and so knowing each other less… it’s a vicious cycle which takes conscious effort to break.

So… if you want to become a more effective communicator, look for shared experiences… and watch all your relationships improve, too, as you apply the same techniques to them.

PS – This post was inspired by Adrienne.