I've been giving this "Poor Communication" thing a lot of thought. You can have poor communication with your best friend, kids, spouse, lover or boss. The bottom line is that it can ruin a great relationship/bond/career. But lately, I'm wondering just how many people truly are good communicators. It seems the more work/study I do on it, the more I see others are awful at it.

Top Signs of a Poor Communicator:

1. Avoids talking to you about a particular subject. Ex. Shuts the phone off, Leaves the room, leaves the city, leaves the country.

2. Makes plans around you if sensing you'll bring up a topic. Ex. "I'd love to talk to you about your new work-from-home-plan, but I have a board meeting. Can it wait?" Or, "I'd love to talk about our relationship, but I'm really busy at work right now. Can we talk about it later?" (But, guess what? "later" never comes).

3. Gets hostile and brings up your weaknesses when you DO try for openly communicate assertively. Ex. "I see what you're saying, but you always ________."

4. Doesn't answer your phone/e-mail/page/memo until much later. Then when quizzed about this, responds, "I was busy."

5. Changes the subject when at all possible (also known as non-sequitor) or reverts to number #2. Ex. "I know you would like a raise, but have you seen the material Quality Control has put out lately?" OR, YOU: "So where do you see our relationship going these days?" HIM: "Clint Eastwood has a Clint-fest on at AMC."

6. Uses defensiveness to thwart any discussion at all. Ex. "Can't you see I have a migrane now? I absolutely cannot talk." or "My job is VERY important and/or dangerous (or substitute "and has a big merger"), so you KNOW I CANNOT talk right now." Or finally, "If you KNEW how many calls we were getting in Customer Service, you wouldn't be asking such questions right now."

7. Uses everybody's favorite "Get out of hot water" line of all time: "I'd like to get into that, but I'm REALLY BUSY these days.

It's great, isn't it? Got any to add?