Effective Behavior

The relational context usually determines how much information you are willing to share (or self-disclose) with another individual. In Chapter 7, you’ll learn more about why it’s competent to avoid telling your manager about the fight you had with your significant other but why it might enhance intimacy to share such information with your close friend or sibling.

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 over the July 4th long weekend. 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 the holiday with her family because she wants to see her elderly grandmother, he might suggest that they spend the four-day weekend with his family but their weeklong August vacation with her family. 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 July 4th 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 suitable 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 strange and annoying.