Discuss the personal barriers to Effective Communication?

The major barriers to effective communication falling in the category of personal barriers are:

(i) Listening:
Listening is the most neglected aspect of communication. While the formal education teaches us how to read, write and speak listening is always neglected. Ineffective listening takes place when we hear only with our ears and not with our mind. A manager who over comes the barriers to listening succeeds in generating an atmosphere which promotes the upward flow of communication. Listening can be made more effective by following some of these methods: (i) Finding an area of interest, how communication can be useful for the listener. (ii) Listen to content not delivery. (iii) Allow the speaker to finish before starting to speak. Listen to the central idea and listen with an open mind. Taking notes or making an outline can also increase the effectiveness of listening.

(ii) Vocabulary deficiency:
The range of word available is so great that the vocabulary of a source may include a large number of words that are not recognized by the listener. The problem is further magnified as multiple meanings to a single word can be assigned. For example there are more than 600, 000 words in English but an average users is familiar with 20,000 to 40,000 words and only uses around 10,000 words of these. A large number of misunderstandings can be avoided if we try to enhance the effectiveness of communication by increasing a work vocabulary.

(iii) Selective attention:
As our eyes can handle more than 5 million bits of data per second, our brain can only handle 500 bits of this data. Similar disparities exist in each of our other senses. Thus a communicator should control his gesture, facial expressions and body movements in such a way that the non-verbal cues reinforce the verbal cues. It is important to realize that maintenance of attention is a hard but essential work.

(iv). Word-thought-thing relation:
Even if the sender and the receiver are familiar with the dictionary meaning of the words use in communication the difference in perception and individual experiences may lead them to have different meanings of the same word. This may prevent the sender from accurately expressing his thoughts through verbal and non-verbal language symbols. The meaning of these may even the lost during the process of coding and decoding. A lot of misunderstanding can be avoided if the receiver takes a moment to consider that his reaction may be a result of some experiences over which the sender has no control and he has no knowledge of these experiences.

(v) Failure to react to feed-back
There are two types of failures in reacting to feed back. These could be either over looking or over reacting. When a source over looks the verbal or non-verbal message signals the whole process of communication is threatened. It can result in bored, confused or angry listeners. In contrast there are some who over react to feed back irrespective or the fact that it is positive or a negative feed back. While a small nod by one of the listener is taken as the overwhelming acceptance of his views by the speaker or a yawn by one of the listeners is taken as a sign of boredom by the listener. Such over reaction to feed back should be avoided by a good speaker.

(vi). Bipolar thinking:
Bipolar thinking frequently interferes with effective communication. We have a natural tendency to reduce a complex, COM phenomenon to simple either good or bad conceptualization. We fail to realize the world is north as simple so as to allow such a reduction to the two values systems. We must recognized that the refusal to accept and out right rejection are to different situations. Sometime employees are afraid of questioning a policy least their move is viewed as a total rejection of it. Good managers should encourage feed back, even negative feed back if it is conceptive in nature.

(vii) Tendency to evaluate:
The tendency to evaluate is also a major barrier in effective communication. It is our natural tendency to evaluate or to approve or disapprove the statement of the other person from our point of view. Such an evaluation does not happen in isolation. One negative response builds upon another and the stage comes when finally even the positive statement are interpreted negatively. Such a frame of references results in our misunderstanding of the whole situation.

(viii) Status and power of the source
The status and power of the source can also act as the barrier ineffective communication. We tend to reserve our comments and do not offer them fearing the other party may take affront of it. It is important for managers to create such an atmosphere where this fear complex is not present and a free flow of upward communication is allowed.