Behaving appropriately is not enough in itself. Competent communication must also be effective—it must help you meet your goals. This can be challenging because it’s not always easy to know what messages will work best—and you may have more than one goal (Canary, Cody, & Smith, 1994). For example, Travis and his fiancée, Leah, are arguing over whose family they will visit at Thanksgiving. Travis has conflicting goals: he wants to see his family for the holiday, but he also wants Leah to be happy.

If you have some knowledge of your communication partner’s expectations, you can more easily determine which messages will be more effective than others. If Travis knows that Leah would like to spend Thanksgiving with her family because she wants to see her elderly grandmother, he might suggest that they spend the four-day Thanksgiving weekend with his family but the longer Christmas–New Year holiday with hers. In addition, prioritizing your goals can help you construct effective messages. If Leah knows that her grandmother is ailing, she may decide that going home for Thanksgiving is a more important goal than pleasing Travis. She can then tell him that she’s sorry to let him down but that she absolutely must return home.

Communication behavior that is effective in one setting might not be appropriate in others. For example, many students feel that their best teachers are those who are organized and logical (Kramer & Pier, 1999). But if your roommate handed you a detailed schedule of what you should do every day in your apartment during the upcoming semester, you might find this behavior annoying.