Human communication is one thing that most evolutionists believe sets us apart from other mammals — why we surf for content on the Internet, for example, and bison don’t.

Because our communication is the fabric of how we relate and interact with each other, many people directly or indirectly learn news ways to make those interactions more successful. However, success is a subjective measure. What happens when someone defines success solely by personal gain? In the communication arena, this can mean using a skill for the sole purpose of manipulating others for personal benefit.

Take the example of Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), a tool used to help a person build rapport with others. If someone were to apply NLP approaches to feign a relationship in order to gather information or make someone else feel less confident in the conversation, he or she is manipulating the other person for personal gain or ill-will.

Tip: Be certain of your intentions
Learning and mastering new approaches and tools takes practice, and it's easy to make mistakes or exceed proper boundaries. However, your intentions are never mistakes.

Before trying out a new tool or refreshing an old one, check in with your intentions to discover how you’re using your knowledge, and to what benefit. This is not to say that you cannot benefit from its use. Rather, if that benefit is at a cost to someone else, you could be straddling the line of ethics.

The next time you use a communication tool, whether an expression such as, "What I hear you saying is…" or an approach such as Appreciative Inquiry, ask yourself why you’re using the tool and how genuine you are about generating mutually beneficial results. A good starting point is, "Am I being of service to both this person(s) and myself?" Continue this self-analysis for at least one month. At the end of the month, you will have started a mental pattern that will become second nature as time goes on.

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