It’s a challenge to delimit communication to something specific.

But it often seems that the focus of communication is words. There is also a problem associated with communication. It is misunderstandings, or something else happening than expected.

Therefore, the main effort people will focus on is to find the best or most appropriate words. They hope that it will help them achieve effective communication.

What can get lost in the process, is that the words used need to represent an intention. Something that can get lost when the words have been shared, is that these words may not have been enough, may have been too many, or have been words that were not associated with the desired intent.

When something gets lost in the process, it often becomes visible through the choice of words as they now focus on a secondary intent. It’s what the person choosing the words wants to avoid and is anxious about. It’s a process in which the secondary intent takes over and hides the original intent.

When something has been lost in the process, it is the process of the follow-up communication that becomes revealing. It becomes communication itself and visible in the way uncertainty is dealt with. Will people check what they understood, will they assume they understood, will they verify what has been understood, or do they prefer to leave it unsaid are all hypotheses people will find themselves thinking about.

Reviewing these questions is also part of communication. That’s because the more questions the individual listening has, the better the fluidity in the relationship. A contrast to this is the presence of one dominating question. It will hint at the story the person tells themselves about the other or themselves.