Four Sides of a Message

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
• Appeal
  What the sender (speaker) wants to happen
• Self revelation
  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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