Barriers Of Effective Communication?

Barriers Of Effective Communication?

BARRIERS OF EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION

                                                  NOISE

Semantic Problems

Goal Conflicts

Poor Planning

Poor Listening

Poor Retention

Poor transmission

^Overloaded

Poor timing

Filtered

Wrong Assumption

Cultural Barriers

In Sufficient Time Period

Framed New Reference

Offensive

Emotion & Worry

Explanations

A message is successful only when both the sender and the receiver perceive it in the same way. This process leaves room for error, with messages often misinterpreted by one or more of the parties involved. This causes unnecessary confusion and counter productivity.

It is important to understand the causes of communication breakdown.

NOISE

Noise is the first and foremost barrier to communication. It means “interference that occurs in a signal and prevents you from hearing sounds properly.” In a factory, for example, the continuous noise made by machines makes oral communication difficult. In the same way some technical problem in a public address system or a static in a telephone or television cable will distort the sound signal and affect communication. Adverse weather conditions or some fault in the ultramodern telecommunication systems may also spoil the effect.

Noise does not mean only this. It also encompasses many other factors that may exist at the end of sender as well as that of the receiver. The sender may resort to ambiguous or confusing signals. The receiver may mess up the message owing to inattention or may spoil decoding because of wrong or unexpected interpretation. The receiver’s prejudices may also come in the way of his understanding the message in the right spirit. We must therefore keep in mind that communication is always likely to be spoilt by ‘noise’ that stands for so many things. Following areparts of noise.   

SEMANTIC PROBLEMS (same word different meaning same language)

                      

Semantics is the systematic study of meaning. That is why the problems arising from expression or transmission of meaning in communication are called semantic problems. Oral or written communication is based on words. And words, limited in number, may be used in unlimited ways. The meaning is in the mind of the sender and also in that of the receiver. But it is not always necessary for the meaning in the mind of the sender to be the same as in the mind of receiver. Much, therefore, depends on how the sender encodes This message.

The sender has to take care that the receiver does not misconstrue his message, and gets the intended meaning. Quite often it does not happen in this way. That leads to semantic problems. it can be ensured only if we aim at clarity, simplicity and brevity so that the receiver gets the intended meaning.

GOAL CONFLICTS

                                    

Very often clashes of the goals of various units and sub-units of an organisation lead to communication breakdowns. Communication should serve as a conflict-reduction exercise. But the goal conflicts act as communication reduction mechanisms. Different units internalise their own goals, and that leads to the splitting or bifurcation of interests in the organisation.

Poor Planning

Communication is not a casual affair. Unfortunately many people take it lightly. The result is that the message to be sent across may not be carefully planned. There are innumerable  examples of people who would give an ill-planned, long-winding lecture while a short presentation with tables or graphs would be sufficient. Such an event would turn into one of miscommunication. In the same way some people may not care to choose a suitable time and place that are so very necessary for effective communication.

Managers have to communicate individually with people at different levels — superiors, subordinates, peers, customers and public figures. The oral mode, of communication is easy, time saving, and of functionally helpful in resolving issues. But oral communication demands great control and communicative competence to be successful.

 POOR LISTENING  

HEARING IS WITH EAR BUT LISTENING IS WITH HEART

Poor listening may lead to serious communication problems. Too many people are interested in talking, and mostly talking about themselves. They are so much involved with themselves that they do not have patience to listen. The result is that they are not interested in the speaker whose words go waste. Everybody knows about the importance of listening, but very few actually practice patient, active and empathic listening. That I why. so many communication problems crop up. Poor listening accounts for incomplete information and also poor retention. One may simply not get the desired result if this keeps on happening.

POOR RETENTION

                          

As a corollary to the problem mentioned above, it is worth noting that people are also likely to forget messages reaching them. There from arises the necessity to repeat the message and use more than one medium to communicate the same message.

Poor Transmission

Communication often suffers or gets diluted when messages pass on from person to person in a series of transmissions. They get diluted on the way. Special care has to be taken that the intended message reaches the person concerned.

Pooor information over load.

Unchecked inflow of information, very often becomes another barrier to communication. It may stifle the senior executive or bore and frustrate him. When people are bogged down with too much information they are likely to make errors, They may also delay processing or responding to information/message at least for sometime.

And delay may become a habit, causing serious communication problems. People may also become selective in their response, and selectivity is not communication-friendly. On the other hand, it is a communication problem.

Poor Timing - A last moment communication with deadline may put too much pressure on the receiver and may result in resentment.

Inappropriate Channel - Poor choice of channel of communication can also be contributory to them is understanding of the message.

Network Breakdown - Sometime staff may forget to forward a letter or there may be professional  jealousy resulting in closed channel.

                        

SOCIO-PSYCHOLOGICAL BARRIERS (SAME LEVEL PERSON)

The attitudes and opinions, pace in society and status-consciousness arising from one’s position in the hierarchical structure of the organization, one’s relations with peers, seniors, juniors and family background -all these deeply affect one’s ability to communicate both as a sender and receiver. Status consciousness is widely known to be a serious communication barrier in organisations. It eas t psychological distancing which further leads to breakdown of communication or miscommunication. Often it is seen that a man high up in an organisation builds up a wall around himself. This restricts participation of the less powerful in decision making. In the same way ones family background formulates one’s attitude and communication skills.

FRAME OF REFERENCE

                    

 Frame of reference is another barriers  in  communication. Every individual has a unique frame of reference formed by a consequences of his experiences, education, culture, attitude and many other elements, resulting in biases and different experiences in a communication situation.

WRONG ASSUMPTIONS .

Quite often we act on assumptions, without caring to seek clarification for them. We should make all possible efforts to maintain our goodwill and not act impulsively on assumptions. If, for example, a customer writes to us that he would like to visit our office or factory without telling us that he would like to be picked up and we assume that he will manage to come on his own it may lead to loss

of goodwill. So it is necessary to be circumspect in such matters

Selective perception.

                            

Perception provides each of us with a unique view of the world — a view some times related to, but not necessarily identical with that held by others. Selective perception means that the receivers selectively see and hear depending upon their needs, background, motivations, experience and other personal characteristics.

While decoding the messages, most protect their own interests and expectations into process of communication leading to a particular kind of feedback that may become a communication problem.

Filtering (MANIPULATIVE)

Filtering means that the sender of a message manipulates information in such a way that it will be seen more favourably by the receiver. A manager, for example, likes to tell his boss what he feels his boss wants to hear. In this process he is filtering information. The net result is that the man at the top never gets objective information. In the same way, the people at the lower levels condense and synthesise information so as to get maximum benefits for themselves. They hold back or ignore some important part of information. The more vertical levels in the organisation, the more chances there are for filtering. This is a very frequently occurring communication problem.

Threat

CULTURAL BARRIERS

We live in a culturally diverse world ,and so could encounter individuals from different races, religions, and nationalities . There is often anxiety surrounding unfamiliar cultures. What manners are acceptable? What will offend a person from a very different background? It can be paralyzing to deal with other people if we do not know what to expect Cultural differences often come up as communication barriers. We have to be specially careful in this regard as now we have to operate in international environment. The same category of words, phrases, symbols, actions, colours mean different things to people of different countries or different cultural backgrounds. For example, in the United States people love to be called by their first names while in Britain, and to a large extent also in India, people like to be addressed by their last name. In the North American States a sign of ‘0’ made with the forefinger and thumb stands for ‘OK’ while in the Southern States it is construed as obscenity.

The desire to communicate is the first step in being effective. The desire to connect with another human being is the bond that will express itself clearly. A genuine effort to understand another person goes a long way in the path to communication. Knowing about other cultures and being proactive will help to develop these skills.

Insufficient period for adjustment. 

(MAN NEED SILENCE IN TENSION AND WIFE FORCES TO SPEAK THEN AND THERE)

It is a fact well known to all that people respond to change in different ways. They take their own time to adjust to any news or proposal for change. While the purpose of communication is to effect change, it should be kept in mind that the employees whose duties, shifts etc., are going to be changed should be given sufficient time. Only then the communication will be effective.

OFFENSIVE STYLE OF COMMUNICATION

It is quite obvious that offensive style of communication leads to communication breakdown. It is a rather sensitive point, If a manager sends a message in such a way that the workers/juniors become defensive their relations get strained and communication suffers. Hence it is absolutely necessary for the management to adopt a persuasive style of communication.

 FEAR.

EMOTIONS

              FEAR                                                                                   EMOTIONS

Emotions play a very important role in our life. Both encoding and decoding of messages are influenced by our emotions. A message received when we are emotionally worked up will have a different meaning for us than when we are calm and composed. Anger is the worst emotion and enemy of communication.

WORRIED

           Written communication

           Planning Business Messages

   Bird eye view of Business Message

   Written communication

            Planning Business Messages