Barriers to effective Communication

Physical barriers

Internal structure of the organization and layout of office machines and equipment creates physical barriers in communication

• Distance: Communication is found obstructed in long distance. Like communication between America and Nepal.

• Noise: It is from external sources and affects the communication process. Noise negatively affects the accuracy

• Physical arrangement: The physical arrangement of organizational sources like men, money, material and machine obstruct the communication process.

Semantic barriers

The use of difficult and multiple use of languages, words, figures, symbols create semantic barriers.

• Language: We can find some words having different meaning. As meaning sent by the sender can be quite different from the meaning understood by the receiver. Long and complex sentences creates problem in communication process.

• Jargons: Technical or unfamiliar language creates barriers to communication that may be drawn from the literature. So message should be simple and condensed as far as possible so that no confusion creation will be there to the receiver.

Organizational barriers

It is raised from the organizational goals, regulations, structure and culture.

• Poor planning: It refers to the designing, encoding, channel selection and conflicting signals in the organization.

• Structure complexities: difficult organizational structure barrier for free flow of information. Appropriate communication process must be used.

• Status differences: It creates barrier for communication. Superior provides information to the subordinate about plans and policies. Different information is provided by different subordinates who create barrier in communication.

• Organizational distance: Distance between sender and receiver also creates barriers to effective communication.

• Information overload: If superior provides too much information to the subordinate in short period receiver suffers from information overload which creates barriers to effective communication.

• Timing: Communication can be obstructed if not done on time. If the information is not provided in time it creates barriers to effective communication.

Psychological barriers

It is the barriers to effective communication created from the lack of interest of the people from whom the communication is meant. People do not pay attention to the communication which are not interesting to them and which do not fulfill their want.

• Perception: It is the process of accepting and interpreting the information by the receiver. People receive things differently for a various number of reasons.

• Filtering: Communication some time filters the negative information to make it more favorable to the receiver. In this process, knowingly or unknowingly some valuable information may be disposed.

• Distrust: Superior provides information or message to the subordinates to their own view, ideas and opinion which create obstruction in communication.

• Emotions: Emotion also creates barriers to effective communication like anger, hate, mistrust, jealousy etc.

• Viewpoint: It also creates barriers to effective communication. It the receiver doesn’t clear the message and ignore without hearing, the message may create obstructions.

• Defensiveness: If the receiver receives the message as threat and interprets that message in the same way, it creates barriers to effective communication.