Communication Principles.md

1. Listen. Try to focus on the speaker’s words, rather than formulating your response to those words.
2. Prepare before you communicate. Spend the time to understand the problem before you meet with others.
3. Someone should facilitate the activity. Every communication meeting should have a leader (a facilitator):
   1. to keep the conversation moving in a productive direction.
   2. to mediate any conflict that does occur.
   3. to ensure than other principles are followed.
4. Face-to-face communication is best. But it usually works better when some other representation of the relevant information is present.
5. Take notes and document decisions. Someone participating in the communication should serve as a “recorder” and write down all important points and decisions.
6. Strive for collaboration. Collaboration and consensus occur when the collective knowledge of members of the team is combined.
7. Stay focused, modularize your discussion. The more people involved in any communication, the more likely that discussion will bounce from one topic to the next.
8. If something is unclear, draw a picture.
9. MOVE ON!
   1. Once you agree to something, move on
   2. If you can’t agree to something, move on
   3. If a feature or function is unclear and cannot be clarified at the moment, move on.
10. Negotiation is not a contest or a game. It works best when both parties win