Barriers to Communication

A lot of elements influence an organization’s success

With efficient communication inside the workplace being critical. The emphasis on good communication is founded on the notion that people are an organization’s most valuable resource. A focus on such a workplace feature ensures that employees are always motivated to work towards the firm’s aims and objectives. Bad workplace communication undermines organizational dynamics such as quality of production and efficiency, both of which are required for success.

Communication is critical in developing a positive company culture

This usually plays an essential role in employee motivation. If a firm’s leadership cultivates an effective communication culture, it will be easier for employees to understand the organization’s vision and goals will, therefore, be met with minimal fuss. Consequently, it helps build an effective team at the workplace. Open communication enhances cohesion and employees will feel secure within their roles in the workplace. If the communication involves being reminded of the organization’s vision and achievements, it will lead to improvement of the employee’s work ethic. Communication also facilitates innovation at the workplace since employees can comfortably share new ideas. In the absence of effective communication, those ideas would drift to obscurity or will not be implemented to their full potential. A managerial task in an organization is coupled with increased tasks and challenges. One common challenge is dealing with employees on a daily basis. Effective communication by managers eases this challenge since managers can adequately inform staff of their responsibilities. In addition, managers can also build better relationships with employees, provide formative feedback, and even help them understand their employees’ plans regarding career development (Robles 2012, p. 455). Finally, communication plays a vital role in ensuring transparency in an organization. Regular communication between leaders and employees at the workplace helps build trust between both parties. The leadership will, therefore, be approachable in case of any operational faults and work with employees towards finding solutions.

Effective communication is a major influence on the achievement of the goals and objectives of an organization

However, a variety of barriers can negate the gains made by an organization in this respect. The major problem with barriers to effective communication is that the party relaying information is often under the illusion that the message has been relayed perfectly. As such, an incomplete or distorted message is passed on from one individual to another without any knowledge of its compromised. The following are among the major barriers that are experienced in an organizational setting: filtering, lack of source credibility, semantics, information overload, gossip at the workplace, and selective perception. Filtering involves the alteration of information with a view of managing the reaction of a person. This barrier is especially popular when it comes to relaying negative information. It is a problem from an organizational perspective since individuals in an organization cannot get a full understanding of a situation at hand. Credibility and familiarity are important aspects of any workplace communication. The lack of either act as a barrier to effective communication. Lack of familiarity, for example, could lead to the misinterpretation of a message. On the other hand, if a source is not trusted, the message will not be received as intended due to suspicion of the motivation of the sender. With regards to semantics, loaded technical terms may not be understood by the recipient thus significantly compromising the intended message. Receiving loads of messages from a variety of sources can also limit the effectiveness of communication greatly. This is because the capacity to process loads of information is limited. Grapevine communication, on the other hand, provides a great problem due to the unreliable nature of the information that is conveyed (Conrad 2014, p. 105). It can cause anxiety at the workplace and create distrust among members of staff. This is detrimental to the performance of the organization in general. Lastly is the unconscious process of selective perception where our biases and past experiences make us filter information to suit our needs. This causes misunderstanding among individuals in an organization.

The barriers discussed generally have a negative impact on the achievement of goals and objectives of an organization

A look at this from the organizational perspective exposes the destructive nature of the barriers which can even occur unconsciously. In this context, barriers to communication would impede the organization’s leaders from effectively relaying what they need employees to accomplish. The ultimate aim of any firm is to achieve sustainable profitability. As such, mission and vision statements are formulated to help an organization towards the ultimate goal. The former includes goals and objectives while the latter describes the position an organization desires to be in the foreseeable future. Organizational leaders are tasked with relaying the vision and mission of the organization to all employees. In addition, they should ensure that the employees are motivated enough to help the organization meet its goals and objectives. If the employees feel that they are part of the organization and that their role is valued, they will be an obvious asset to the organization. The only way this can be achieved is through effective communication of the mission and vision of the organization. Communication barriers play a major role in this process. As discussed earlier, a variety of factors can subdue the free flow of information. Weak language skills and related issues with semantics such as jargon could confuse the message. An emotional disconnect between the leadership and employees could also limit the effectiveness of communication when relaying the message about the goals and objectives of the organization. This happens when there are trust issues between the parties involved (Miller 2002, p. 573). In both cases, the employees will not comprehensively understand what the organization requires of them in order to work towards the set mission and vision. Their actions at the workplace will, therefore, not represent what the organization envisioned. In the case of an emotional disconnect between the leadership and employees, the latter may not be motivated to work for the former. They would be disinterested in the success of the organization because of ineffective communication. Consequently, rather than working to meet the set goals and objectives, they would be inclined to follow other career opportunities. As such, they would be disinterested in improving their skill sets to help the company work towards its vision (Deci and Ryan 2014, p. 17). The organization would suffer as a result since while the leadership purports to have successfully communicated the organization’s mission, the employees’ reaction is not appropriate.

The effect of communication barriers goes beyond the organizational level

Individuals also have their goals and objectives as do teams. Barriers also prevent these entities from successfully achieving what they had planned. Effective interpersonal communication is important to the organization since it helps to develop lasting relationships at the workplace and eases the team-building process. The trust and cooperation developed at this level help the organization since employees feel collectively accountable for helping the organization meet its goals and objectives. In an organizational setting, individual employees have roles and responsibilities which guide their daily activities. These are associated with relevant goals which contribute to the eventual success of an organization. Individual employees may also be part of teams in the workplace. Such teams are tasked with specific roles such as improving operational activities, training, and evaluation. It is necessary that employees have defined roles so that they know what is expected of them in the team dynamic (Meredith 2012, p. 30). Communication is of great importance at this level since individuals and teams essentially contribute to the general goals and objectives of the organization. As such, communication barriers at this level have an adverse effect on virtually all aspects of the organization. In this context, effective communication could be compromised by barriers such as filtering and grapevine communication. Intentionally altering information can lead to miscommunications in the workplace. If an individual does not understand their role in the organization, the quality and direction of their work would be greatly compromised. In a team dynamic, filtering would prevent corrective action and potentially undermine the team’s effectiveness. At the individual and team level, grapevine communication is popular due to the high level of familiarity between individuals. It could act as a barrier if information traveling around is inaccurate. Individuals and teams would act according to this distorted information thus walking away from their goals and objectives.

The effect of communication barriers can be mitigated through a variety of strategies

These would help an organization ensure that all employee activities are geared towards the organization’s mission. The language skills of leaders are an identified barrier to effective communication at the organizational level. A relevant strategy is minimizing jargon when communicating general goals and objectives of the organization to employees from different departments. Leaders should clarify ideas before communication and mold their presentation according to the employees’ needs. Awareness of the tone and content of the message is also important in this case. This would ensure that employees understand what is expected of them and are motivated to contribute to the cause. Another important strategy is cultivating a culture of open communication in the organization. This would breed trust and teamwork which would make it easier to relay the mission of the organization with minimal complications. This strategy would effectively deal with the barrier of filtering information. The power of grapevine communication in the workplace is undeniable, and it can limit the effectiveness of communication regarding organizational goals. Therefore, managers should relay official messages accurately and with immediacy to prevent the spread of distorted information. Another strategy that would overcome communication barriers is the use of constructive feedback to steer employees towards organizational goals and objectives. It would lead to effective communication between leaders and their subordinates thus reducing the chances of miscommunication. Lastly, organizations should consider simplifying the organizational structure to reduce the chances of miscommunication. If a structure is simple, information is more likely to pass through to the employees without being distorted in some way.

References

Conrad, D., 2014. Workplace communication problems: Inquiries by employees and applicable solutions, Journal of Business Studies Quarterly, vol. 5, no. 4, p. 105.

Deci, E.L., and Ryan, R.M., 2014. The importance of universal psychological needs for understanding motivation in the workplace. The Oxford Handbook of Work Engagement, Motivation, and Self-Determination Theory, pp. 13-32.

Meredith B.R., 2011. Management teams: Why they succeed or fail. Human Resource Management International Digest, vol. 19, no. 3, pp. 25-39.

Miller, K., 2002. The experience of emotion in the workplace: Professing in the midst of tragedy, Management Communication Quarterly, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 571-600.

Robles, M.M., 2012. Executive perceptions of the top 10 soft skills needed in today’s workplace, Business Communication Quarterly, vol. 75, no. 4, pp. 453-465.