The bird carries the wings, but the wings carry the bird.

Chinese saying

Sustained communication between individuals tends to lead to the formation of some sort of relation between them. Conversely, the better the relation between two people the more communication – in all its width, depth and height – becomes possible between them. This is another fundamental principle.

The key ingredient here is trust. Trust between people is a confident reliance on or belief in the integrity, veracity, justice, power or protection of a person or thing.

The Old Norse word traust from which we derive trust is also related to tryggr, true. As it suggests, truth and trust are inseparably linked in the business of creating and maintaining close human relations.

If you consistently do not speak the truth, then you will do irreparable damage to any relationship between you and another person or persons. That in turn renders communication at first ever more problematic and then eventually impossible. Why should they ever listen to you again? ‘Trust being lost,’ wrote the Roman historian Livy, ‘all human intercourse comes to naught.’

In summary: if you want to have good communication at work, as in your private life, you must build relationships. And you cannot do that without truth-orientated, two-way communication: listening as well as talking. The key ingredient in any human story is to breed trust or mutual confidence. And that is the by-product of both parties having the willingness and courage to be truthful.