welcome

Today is going to present a presentation on barriers of communication.

BARRIERS OF COMMUNICATION

WHAT ARE

 ANYTHING THAT INTERFERES WITH A SIGNAL SENT TO A RECEIVER IS A BARRIER OF COMMUNICATION. BARRIERS OR PROBLEMS CAN ARISE AT ANY STAGE OF THE COMMUNICATION PROCESS.

THERE ARE DIFFERENT TYPES OF BARRIERS TO COMMUNICATIONS. WHICH ARE AS FOLLOWS : WRONG CHOICE OF MEDIUM PHYSICAL BARRIERS SEMANTIC BARRIERS DIFFERENT COMPREHENSION TO REALITY SOCIO-PHYCHOLOGICAL BARRIER ORGANISATIONAL BARRIERS SOCIAL BARRIERS CULTURAL BARRIERS ETHICAL BARRIERS PHYSIOLOGICAL BARRIER

PERSONAL BARRIERS STATUS BARRIERS PREMATURE EVALUATION EMOTIONAL BARRIERS RESISTANCE TO CHANGE BARRIERS DUE TO LACK OF MUTUAL TRUST INTERPERSONAL BARRIERS PERCEPTUAL BARRIERS LANGUAGE BARRIERS GENDER BARRIERS OTHER BARRIERS

WRONG CHOICE OF MEDIUM

THE VARIOUS MEDIUM OF COMMUNICATION ARE ORAL WRITTEN VISUAL AUDIO-VISUAL COMPUTER-BASED e.t.c.

An unstable medium may act as a barrier to effective communication. For example- A manager want to compliment an employee for a distinguishable performance. Shall he send a peon? Here the manager select a medium that transits his compliment with a personal touch. So, he needs to select the right kind of medium of communication.

PHYSICAL BARRIERS
PHYSICAL BARRIERS ARE NOISE- Noise is quiet often a barrier to communication. In factories, oral communication is rendered difficult by the loud noise of machine

 TIME AND DISTANCEIf telecom and network facilities are not available. It takes a lots of time to send message to people who are at a far distance from the sender.

SEMANTIC BARRIERS Semantic is the science of meaning. Word seldom mean the same thing to two persons. Symbols and words usually have variety of meanings. The sender and receiver have to choose one meaning among many. If both of them choose the same meaning the communication will be perfect.

The semantic barrier may occure if there is problem in -

Interpretation of words Bypassed instructions Denotation and connotation

INTERPRETATION OF WORDS
Words are capable of communicating a variety of meaning. It is quiet possible that the receiver of the message does not assign the same meaning to the word as the transmitter has intended. This may lead to Miscommunication.

BYPASSED INSTRUCTION
The transmitter and receiver assign different meaning to the same words for the same meaning. Example. - An office manager handed to a new assistant one letter with the instruction take it to our stockroom and burn it. In the office managers mind the word burn meant to make a copy on a company machine which operated by a heat process. As the letter was extremely important, she wants an extra copy. However ,the puzzled new employee ,afraid to ask questions, burn the letter with a lighted match and destroyed the only existing copy .

DENOTATION AND CONNOTATION

Words have two types of meaning DENOTATION AND CONNOTATION DENOTATION- Literary meaning of a word Example- books, accounts e.t.c.

CONNOTATION- Meaning arouse qualitative, judgment and personal reaction. Example- honest, competent, cheap e.t.c.

DIFFERENT COMPREHENSION OF REALITY

No two persons perceive reality in identical manner. On account of different abstractions, inference and evaluations, they comprehend reality in a different way. This may sometimes leads to miscommunication. They are Abstracting Slanting Inferring

ABSTRACTING
Abstracting may be defined as the process of focusing attention on some details and omitting others. We know only a part and are ignorant of the rest, but we think that we know the whole. Abstracting poses a grave barrier to communication, for detail which look pertinent to one report may look insignificant or trivial to another.

SLANTING
Slanting is giving a particular bias or slant to the reality . We are aware of the existence of other aspects, but we deliberately select a few and make them representative of the whole . Unfortunately , the aspect that we select are usually unfavourable. Eg. If a man is accustomed to heavy drinking , we dub him as a drunkard and tend to forget that he might be a good friend, a loyal employee and a kind hearted man.

INFERRING
what we directly see, hear or smell or can immediately verify and confirm constitute a fact . But the statement beyond the facts and conclusion based on facts are called inferences. Eg. When we say that the Chennai mail leave the station at 8:30 am ,we assume that it is running on the time.

SOCIO-PHYCHOLOGICAL BARRIERS
Altitudes and opinion Emotions Closed mind Status-consciousness The source of communication Inattentiveness Poor retention

ATTITUDE AND OPINION

Attitudes and opinion: Personal, attitude and opinion often act as barriers to effective communication. If an information agrees with our opinions and attitudes, we tend to receive it comfortably. It fits comfortably in the filter of our mind. But if an information disagrees with our views or tends to run contrary to our accepted beliefs; we do not react favorably. If a change in the policy of an organization proves advantageous to an employee/ he welcome it as good; if it affects him adversely, he rejects it as the whim of the Director.

EMOTIONS
Emotions. Emotional states of mind play an important role in the act of communication. If the sender is perplexed, worried, excited, afraid, nervous, his thinking will be blurred and he will not be able to organize his message properly. The state of his mind is sure to be reflected in his message. It is a matter of common observation that people caught in a moment of fury succeed only in violent gesticulation. If they try to speak, they falter and keep on repeating the same words. In the same way, the emotions of the receiver also affect the communication process. If he is angry, he will not take the message in proper light.

CLOSED MIND
Closed mind. A person with a closed mind is very difficult to communicate with. He is a man with deeply ingrained prejudices. And he is not prepared to reconsider his opinions. He is the kind of man who will 'say, "Look, my mind is made up. I know what I know. And I do not want to know anything else. So just don/t bother me." You approach such a man with a new proposal to improve his business and he will immediately retort, "Look here gentleman, do you presume that you know my business better than I know? I have been in this line for the last twenty years. What can you teach me?" Such a person is not open to conviction and persuasion. And in all likelihood, he has not learnt anything in the twenty years he has been in business.

STATUS-CONSCIOUSNESS
Status-consciousness. Status consciousness exists in every organization and is one of the major barriers to effective communication. Subordinates are afraid of communicating upward any unpleasant information. They are either too conscious of their inferior status or too afraid of being snubbed. Status-conscios superiors think that consulting their juniors would be compromising their dignity. Status-consciousness proves to be a very serious barrier to face-to-face communication.

THE SOURCE OF COMMUNICATION

The source of communication. If the receiver has a suspicion about or prejudice against the source of communication, there is likely to be a barrier to communication. People often tend to react more according to their attitude to the source of facts than to the facts themselves. Think of an executive in the habit of finding fault with his employees. If once in a while he begins with a compliment, the employees immediately become suspicious and start attributing motives to the compliment. If a statement emanates from the grapevine, the manager will not give credence to it, but the same statement coming from a trusted supervisor will immediately be believed.

INATTENTIVENESS
Inattentiveness. People often become inattentive while receiving a message in particular, if message contains a new idea. The human mind usually resists-change, for change makes things uncertain. It also threatens security and stability. So the moment a new idea is presented to them, they unconsciously become inattentive.

POOR RETENTION
Poor retention. Poor retention of communication also acts as a barrier. Studies show that employees retain only about 50 per cent of the information communicated to them. The rest is lost. Thus if information is communicated through three or four stages, very little reaches the destination, and of that very little also only a fraction is likely to be retained. Poor retention may lead to imperfect responses, which may further hamper the communication process.

ORGANIZATIONAL BARRIERS
Effective communication largely depends upon sound organizational structure. If the structure is complex involving several layers of management, the breakdown or distortion in communication will arise. It is an established fact that every layer cuts off a bit of information

SOCIAL BARRIERS
Social barriers to communication include the social psychological phenomenon of conformity; a process in which the norms, values and behaviours of an individual begin to follow those of the wider group.

CULTURAL BARRIERS
When we join a group and wish to remain in it, sooner or later we need to adopt the behavior patterns of the group. These are the behaviors that the group accept as signs of belonging. The group rewards such behavior through acts of recognition, approval and inclusion. In groups which are happy to accept you, and where you are happy to conform, there is a mutuality of interest and a high level of win-win contact.

Where, however, there are barriers to your membership of a group, a high level of game-playing replaces good communication.

ETHICAL BARRIERS
Ethical barriers to communication; these occur when individuals working in an organisation find it difficult to voice dissent, even though their organisation is acting in ways they consider to be unethical.

PHYSIOLOGICAL BARRIERS
Physiological barriers to communication are those that result from the performance characteristics and limitations of the human body and the human mind.

PERSONAL BARRIERS
Personal factors like difference in judgment, social values, inferiority complex, bias, attitude, pressure of time, inability to communicate, etc. widen the psychological distance between the communicator and the communicatee. Credibility gap, i.e., inconsistency between what one says and what one does, also acts as a barrier to communication.

STATUS BARRIERS
Status or position in the hierarchy of an organization is one of the fundamental barriers that obstructs free flow of information. A superior may give only selected information to his subordinates so as to maintain status differences. Subordinates, usually, tend to convey only those things which the superiors would appreciate. This creates distortion in upward communication. Such selective communication is also known as filtering.

PREMATURE BARRIERS
Some people have the tendency to form a judgment before listening to the entire message. This is known as premature evaluation. This distorts understanding and acts as a barrier to effective communication.

EMOTIONAL BARRIERS
One of the chief barriers to open and free communications is the emotional barrier. It is comprised mainly of fear, mistrust and suspicion. The roots of our emotional mistrust of others lie in our childhood and infancy when we were taught to be careful what we said to others.

"Mind your P's and Q's"; "Don't speak until you're spoken to"; "Children should be seen and not heard". As a result many people hold back from communicating their thoughts and feelings to others.
They feel vulnerable. While some caution may be wise in certain relationships, excessive fear of what others might think of us can stunt our development as effective communicators and our ability to form meaningful relationships.

RESISTANCE TO CHANGE
It is a general tendency of human beings to stick to old and customary patterns of life. They may resist change to maintain status quo. Thus, when new ideas are being communicated to introduce a change, it is likely to be overlooked or even opposed. This resistance to change creates an important obstacle to effective communication

BARRIERS DUE TO LACK OF MUTUAL TRUST

Communication means sharing of ideas in common. "When we communicate, we are trying to establish a commonness." Thus, one will freely transfer information and understanding with another only when there is mutual trust between the two. When there is a lack of mutual trust between the communicator and the communicate, the message is not followed. Credibility gaps, i.e., inconsistency in saying and doing, also causes lack of mutual trust which acts as a basic obstacle to effective communication.

INTERPERSONAL BARRIERS
There are six levels at which people can distance themselves from one another: Withdrawal is an absence of interpersonal contact. It is both refusal to be in touch and time alone.

Rituals are meaningless, repetitive routines devoid of real contact.

Pastimes fill up time with others in social but superficial activities. Working activities are those tasks which follow the rules and procedures of contact but no more. Games are subtle, manipulative interactions which are about winning and losing. They include "rackets" and "stamps".

PERCEPTUAL BARRIERS
The problem with communicating with others is that we all see the world differently. If we didn't, we would have no need to communicate: something like extrasensory perception would take its place. The following anecdote is a reminder of how our thoughts, assumptions and perceptions shape our own realities

LANGUAGE BARRIERS
Language that describes what we want to say in our terms may present barriers to others who are not familiar with our expressions, buzzwords and jargon. When we couch our communication in such language, it is a way of excluding others. In a global market place the greatest compliment we can pay another person is to talk in their language. One of the more chilling memories of the Cold War was the threat by the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev saying to the Americans at the United Nations: "We will bury you!" This was taken to mean a threat of nuclear annihilation.

GENDER BARRIERS
There are distinct differences between the speech patterns in a man and those in a woman. A woman speaks between 22,000 and 25,000 words a day whereas a man speaks between 7,000 and 10,000. In childhood, girls speak earlier than boys and at the age of three, have a vocabulary twice that of boys. This means that a man talks in a linear, logical and compartmentalized way, features of left-brain thinking; whereas a woman talks more freely mixing logic and emotion, features of both sides of the brain. It also explains why women talk for much longer than men each day

OTHER BARRIERS
There may be many other barriers, such as unclarified assumptions, lack of ability to communicate, mirage of too much knowledge or closed minds, communication overload, shortage of time, etc., which cause distortion or obstruction in the free flow of communication and thus make it ineffective. Failure to retain or store information for future use becomes a barrier to communication when the information is needed in future.