Four Sides of a Message Posted on Dec 15, 2013 by Corinna in Facilitation & Soft Skills |

The Four-sides model (“Hamburger Modell”) by Friedemann Schulz von Thun is in every German textbook on communication. It states that every message has 4 levels:

Factual information

Facts and data

Facts and data Appeal

What the sender (speaker) wants to happen

What the sender (speaker) wants to happen Self revelation

What the sender reveals about themselves – motives, values, emotions

What the sender reveals about themselves – motives, values, emotions Relationship

How sender and receiver (listener) get along; what the sender thinks of the receiver

With these levels in mind we can have more constructive discussions.

Find the original article by Corinna Baldauf here. The diagram is adapted from this one in Wikipedia.

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