What are the barriers or hindrances to Good Effective Communication?

May 24th, 2009 Comments off
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In an organization, we understand that the flow of communications can be upward, downward, sideway,etc. Management definitely understand the importance of good communication re: the process of passing information and understanding from one person to another to bring commonness of interest, purpose and efforts. Basically, without good effective communication, company goals or objectives cannot be met as the people are not clear of what management wants from them.

So, it is important to at least understand some of the following important barriers that can obstruct clear and understand and caused breakdown in communication:


1) Distance: The physical distance between the supervisor and his subordinate results in less face to face communication leading to misunderstanding or lack of understanding of the message

2) Distortion: This occurs when individual fails to distinguish factual data from his own views, feelings emotion etc and the tendency to make value judgements on the statement of others.

3) Semantics: this deals with language aspect of communication. Grady states that the structure of our language to misrepresentation of the nature of events.

4) Lack of leveling: There is a difference on the level of knowledge and expertise of supervisor and subordinate. If the supervisor communicates with his subordinate at his own level then communication breaks down.

5) Time pressures: managers are often subject to time pressure because decisions must be made within specified deadlines. Formal channels get short-circuited in the process of expediting matters which leaves the transmitted communication incomplete rendering communication ineffective.

6) Personal incompatibility: Often the personalities of supervisor and subordinate clash creating communication blocks and issues becoming personalized.

7) Selective perception: In case the receiver resort to selective perception i.e. selectively hearing based on his needs and desires, backgrounds and other person characteristics, it may lead to perpetual distortion when distressing barrier to effective communication

8) Emotions: How the receiver feels at the time of receipt of communication of the message influences how he interprets it. Extreme emotions or ubitation or depression are quite likely to hinder the effectiveness of a communication.

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