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1. BARRIERS TO
COMMUNICATION
By: Meenakshi Aggarwal August 18, 2011

2. What is a barrier to communication?
 Anything that prevents a message from being
conveyed.
 Synonymous in many ways with noise
 A barrier is usually of human rather than
technological origin
 Human barriers are less visible but more
consequential

3. Common barriers to communication:
Apparent ‘cause’ Practical Example
Socio- cultural Message from organisation misinterpreted by members of a
particular group
Psychological Message from external stakeholder ignored due to ‘groupthink’
Organizational Message coming down from the organization are at times
given too much interpretation
Physiological Message in an internal report not received due to blindness
Economic Message not available to a public sector organisation due to
lack of resources
Technological Message not delivered due to technical failure

4. SOCIO- CULTURAL BARRIERS
 An individual can be a carrier of culture but one
person cannot create culture
 By participating in a culture we are confirming
to social norms, whether implicitly or implicitly
 Similarly, there are norms in communication
too, e.g.- gestures, the meaning of a color, tone
of speech and meaning of symbols
 These norms can also be barriers to
communication

5. Iceberg metaphor for culture

6. Key socio- cultural elements
 Group think- Social phenomenon which occurs
when group behavior dominates and stifles the
decision making process.
Characterized by-
 Similarity and hidden differences
 Reliance on shared rationalizations
 Collective patterns of defensive avoidance
 Lack of vigilance
 Suppression of worrisome defects
 Unwarranted optimism

7.  Conflicting values and beliefs
 Stereotyping and ethnocentrism
 Language and jargon

8. PSYCHOLOGICAL BARRIERS
 Those barriers relating to the individual and the
individual’s mental and emotional state
 Key psychological barriers-
 Filtering
 Perceptions
 Faulty memory
 Poor listening skills
 Emotional interference

9.  Perception

11. Human memory process

12. ORGANIZATIONAL BARRIERS
 Such kind of barriers relate to the organization’s
structure, culture, patterns of work and
communication flows

13.  Most common organizational barriers-
 Information overload
 Message competition
 Information distortion
 Message filtering
 Conflicting messages
 Communications climate
 Status differences
 Structural problems

14. Overcoming Bias in Language
Example Unacceptable Preferable
Gender bias Salesman Salesperson;
Sales representative
Manpower Workforce; Workers
Man-made Artificial; Manufactured
Ethnic bias Jim Wong is an
unusually tall Asian
Jim Wong is very tall
Disability
bias
Crippled workers
face many barriers
on the job
Workers with physical
disabilities face many
barriers on the job

15. Overcoming the barriers
 Taking the receiver more seriously
 Thinking more clearly about the
message
 Delivering messages skilfully
 Focusing on the receiver
 Using multiple channels and
encoding
 Securing appropriate feedback

16. QUESTIONS