Barriers of Communication
L33T Index
General Barriers
Cultural differences can cause a barrier in effective communication. Culture can refer to about anything, whether they be a societal culture of a race or simply the work culture of a company, can hinder developed communication if two different cultures clash. It is important to not discriminate and to try and find common ground dependent on who you’re talking to. Simply you and whomever you’re talking to want to get a result from what you’re doing, so you need to respect their culture and they need to respect yours respectively.
Physical barriers are another thing that needs to be considered, doors that are closed, walls that are erected, and distance between people all work against the goal of effective communication. Many professionals who work in industries that thrive on collaborative communication, such as architecture, purposefully design their work spaces around an “open office” plan. This layout eschews cubicles in favor of desks grouped around a central meeting space. While each individual has their own dedicated work space, there are no visible barriers to prevent collaboration with their co-workers.
Interpersonal Barriers
These kinds of barriers can occur when through several different way, where some people may be confident and able when talking face to face, others may be shyer, or have a poor self-image which can affect their communication. Interpersonal communication isn’t a one-way street and takes both participants cooperation in order to get results.
Some people may have emotional attachment to a particular topic, and may not be able to effectively respond to certain things. Also somebody may just be in a particular mood which means they don’t retain information that is being given to them, likely that they are too angry, sad, excited, etc. The person that you are talking to you may dislike or they may dislike you, which may mean that neither of you truly ‘hear’ each other.
There can be physical barriers that can come from conversation such as the recipient not giving eye-contact, or they could be fidgeting or playing with something which means that their full attention isn’t being given, which may affect the results of the communication.
Written Barriers
Writing is very different for different people, their age, education and ethnicity can all affect somebodies interpretation of language.
One of the most obvious barriers can occur from a person’s language. Some readers may not be able to read in English, and even with a translator it can’t be 100% all the time, therefore theirs a huge language barrier between people due to where they are born from and what their native language is. Also a person’s education level could affect written skills as somebody may not be able to understand what is written down as it may contain complicated jargon or they might suffer from dyslexia which may affect their interpretation.
Relevancy is something that should always be thought of during written communication, people may not understand a piece of literature if the topics switch to frequently. This can confuse some readers as they’re unsure on what the text as a whole is about. If you intend to lead onto a new or drastically different topic you need to prepare the source first.