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Barriers to Communication

Volume 14, Number 1 Article by Asha Kaul March, 2002

Barriers to Communication :

The simplest model of communication suggests that there is a sender, a receiver, a message, a medium and feedback. The sender encodes the message and transmits it to the receiver through a medium. The subsequent feedback from the receiver attests to appropriate reception of the message. When the message is not understood in its true intent, it leads to misunderstanding or disagreements.

Barriers to communication can be either sender oriented or receiver oriented. Sender oriented barriers could be the result of a badly expressed message in which the sender does not pay heed to the encoding process. This could manifest itself in excess or minimal information leading to the listener either tuning off or groping for the correct meaning. A common example in the corporate world leading to miscommunication is the use of ?please discuss/speak?, ?at the earliest? or ?as soon as possible?. Inability to comprehend on the part of the receiver leads to development of prejudices in the mind of the sender. Similarly, the most common barriers in the mind of the receiver are lack of interest, hence inattentive listening, coupled with a tendency to evaluate either the content or the sender.

Listening should be a composite of reception of ideas and other signals that are being emitted by either the sender or the receiver. Communication should be a happy amalgam of ?I? and ?you?. ?Let?s discuss it?, ?Let?s thrash it out? - which indicates involvement yet respect for the viewpoints of the other - is the best approach. Feedback, either confirmatory or corrective, should be both solicited and given.

Analysing the barriers to communication and looking for appropriate solutions would involve assessing: What situations lead to ineffective communication? How should these situations be assessed? What kind of responses can be generated to counter these situations? How are unhealthy, negative responses provoked? What strategies could be adopted to tackle behavioural patterns leading to negative/aggressive communication skills?

As Asha Kaul, a Communications Consultant, analyses how the everyday act of communication could go wrong, her graduate students Gaurav Singh, Shilpa Sinha and Lalitha Urs of the Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, identify situations in which there was miscommunication at various levels.

Reprint No 02105