Barriers to communication

Barriers of communication

 

A barrier to communication is like an obstacle in a workplace that prevents exchanging ideas and thoughts from one another. Anything that prevents or breaks down a message between people is categorized as a barrier of communication.

 

A barrier can

 

·         Prevent a message from being heard

·         Prevent a message from being understood

·         Result in some  kind of distortion in the message

 

General communication – diverse audience

With general communication there can be barriers within the workplace or in everyday life.  In a workplace, there will more often than not be some cultural differences throughout. This requires members of staff to be aware of the diversity and try to overcome this barrier. This barrier would include when one member of staff is of a different culture and would find it difficult communicating with another member of staff. Another difference would be a difference in age. Each member of staff would need to be aware of this and be aware of the way they would speak depending on someones age. With a client that may be an elderly person, the staff member would need to talk more formal as the elderly person may be more used to that. A Diverse in ability may be a barrier as when talking with either staff members or clients, they might not be able to understand the information as well as others and this will need to be sorted. Someone that is able to understand needs to be aware of this and not ramble on about it if the other person doesn't understand.

 

Written communication

 

Written communication is very important in everyday business and generally it is easy to understand and convey messages but it does have its own barriers. Spelling and grammar errors is a very common barrier and this would possibly confuse some readers and then that will result in them possibly performing the wrong tasks. Spelling and grammar errors can also tarnish the reputation and respectability of the company and it can affect the communication within the company between employees. With Written communication, feedback is not immediate so if there is an error and the other person does not understand the message, there is an extended amount of time to wait before the person knows there is an error. This can have a massive effect especially if the message was needed to be done sooner rather than later.

 

Interpersonal Communication

 

One barrier that comes with interpersonal communication is background noise. This is a barrier because when speaking to someone noise can build up in the background and this can compromise the interpretation of the message that is being delivered because the noise could affect the message as it is a distraction. Something like even a telephone ringing can distract people whem working and people talking too loudly within the workplace. It can distrupt people when they are working as they are not able to concentrate in their work and this with reduce the efficiency of the business as less work will be done.