How to overcome barriers to communication?

Communication is essential in a business or company as without communication, people cannot understand each other and confusion is created.

There are 3 barriers of communication that I have identified:

·         Background noise

·         Lack of concentration

·         Distraction

Distraction

Distraction can be found anywhere from a home to a business. It can be as simple as spilling coffee on a table or a mobile phone going off inside a meeting. These trivial things can disrupt the flow of communication that is going inside the room and people can start not listening to you because of this distraction. It can also be that you sound nervous if you are publically speaking and people get bored from hearing you.

You can overcome this by asking people to turn off mobile phones when they are inside the meeting or to pay more attention when doing trivial tasks that can be easy but with a bit of distraction, can prove to go wrong. When speaking to people for example during presentation, you can practice your speech more time so you are prepared. You can also try and adjust your tone of voice as it needs to be clear and precise.

Lack of concentration

Lack of concentration can be found when someone is publically speaking even if it’s a presentation or a speech. People can only take up so much information in one go and if the person speaking drags on for hours, people will not pay attention and they will get bored.

A solution to this problem is to keep it simple and short. People will retain more information if it’s given in short bursts instead of long time. Also, the person doing the presentation can try to include maybe puns or jokes so people pay more attention. The presenter needs to keep a calm and precise voice so people can understand everything that is being said and keep tuned.

Background Noise 

Background noise is found everywhere. In the office, at home, outside etc. Even the slightest sound can be distraction and break the flow on concentration in an office space.

A good way to prevent background noise is to close all windows and a door so no noise from outside is distracting. Also, asking employers to keep the music or even sound to a low can increase attention levels. Offices can also include cubicles for the employers to work as they can have their little space and are not distracted by anyone outside.   

Barriers to Effective Communication

A communication barrier is everything that interferes with effective agreement between the sender and the recipient of the message. May result both from the mistakes made by one or other party in communication.

·         Disability- the main barrier to effective communication is disability. If someone is deaf, visually impaired of mute we might have serious problems to communicate with him.

·         Background noise- obstacles that appear in our immediate vicinity we can include the external barriers. These can be for example, loud music, loud conversation next to us (for example in open plan offices) or street buzz. Such barriers are fairly easy to remove would support a change of conversation or music off.

·         Cultural differences- lack of knowing the culture, customs, traditions and even the language of our partner in communication affects the process of communication.

·         Lack of decentring skills - most people can not empathize with the speaker's situation. For the communication to be effective it is necessary to adopt the perspective of the speaker. Sometimes it makes us bad listeners.

·         Stereotypes- this barrier arises due to the fact that we evaluate our partners in communication because of their status. More attention and respect we show to people of high status than those with low. We are inclined to agree with their views to be polite to them. Conversely, we behave in relation to the interlocutor, which is characterized by low social status.

·         Selectivity of attention - the distortion is the result of not focusing on the whole expression of our interlocutor only a single fact. The listener does not see all the topics covered by the sender.

Barriers that are the result of our emotions, problems with trust, or interference in decoding verbal and nonverbal messages:

·         Judging- is the result of imposing our own opinions to the other people and also proposing effective solutions (that would be good for other people), not including the problems of the person concerned. Person that creates this type of disruption of communication uses in conversation statements such us: criticizing, insulting, rules, praised in order to later manipulate or evaluate.

·         Language barrier- we are not able to communicate with the person who speaks in another language which is unknown to us. What is more we can have difficulties in communication with someone because of: the meddling of speech phrases in foreign languages, the use of codes or ciphers prearranged and known only to a selected person in the group, using profanity not accepted by us.

·         Deciding for others- this barrier is a result of trying to decide in certain situations for other people. This causes the rise in our interlocutor submission. The result of such actions is limited by the interlocutor of our openness and honesty of expression. Creating this barrier is usually through: commanded, forbidding, threatening, moralizing, and throwing questions.