You cannot not communicate. The silence after a difficult remark communicates. The speed at which you reply to a message communicates. Whether you look up when someone enters the room communicates. Long before you choose your words, a great deal has already been said.
Most people, most of the time, are not in charge of this. They are reacting — and their reaction is being read by everyone around them with far more accuracy than they realise.
Taking charge of your communication starts with a distinction that sounds obvious and is not: the difference between what you intended and what landed. You are the only person in the world with access to your intention. Everyone else has only the landing.
When someone tells you that your feedback felt like an attack, there are two available responses. The first is to explain your intention, which is what most of us do and which almost never helps. The second is to become curious about the landing, which is uncomfortable and which is where all the useful information lives.
The second thing is pace. Nearly every conversation that goes badly went too fast. A pause of three seconds before responding to something that has stung you is the single highest-return habit I know of, and almost nobody does it, because three seconds of silence feels like thirty.
The third is asking rather than assuming. We construct an entire narrative about another person's motive within a second or two of their behaviour, and then respond to the narrative rather than the person. Asking a genuine question — not a rhetorical one dressed as a question — interrupts that.
None of this is about becoming eloquent. Some of the most effective communicators I have coached are not remotely articulate. They are simply accurate: they know what they want to say, they check what arrived, and they slow down when it matters.
You are communicating all day whether you attend to it or not. The only choice is whether you are driving.