The quickest way to screw things up is believing your message is fully understood, or that you understand an incoming message perfectly.
If your belief is nothing more than an assumption the well known and overused truism “Assume makes an ass of U and Me” takes effect. Simply put, the risk of a negative impact, if your assumption is incorrect, is large than you think.
Validate
Avoiding this risk is pretty simple. Check the meaning. This is not like check the meaning at the door but rather confirmation what you are thinking is what others are thinking.
Words regardless of the language used only to have the meaning we assign to them. Technically each word has well defined common meanings that everyone understands.
The way the words are strung together (i.e., sentences) also have rules that ensure common usage and interpretation. That of course depends on whether you are familiar with the rules.
Reality
The concept of using language, coupled with actions to express meaning in a way that is subject to common interpretation is of course logical, but is it a reality?
With individual perceptions and bias along with the physical constraints such as hearing and eyesight limitations, our interpersonal communications are open to being misconstrued more often than not.
Paraphrase
One very simple verification technique is to replay the message with different words and sentence structure while retaining the meaning.
This will often expose those quirks we are all subject to when sending and receiving information from others. Taken to an extreme don’t just paraphrase but act it out as well.
Did you get my meaning of this post? (This is the weakest form of validation of all, i.e., asking the direct question to which almost always the answer is Yes, regardless. )
