This document discusses various barriers to effective communication. It identifies intrapersonal barriers that originate within individuals, such as selective perception and differing backgrounds. Interpersonal barriers that occur between individuals are also examined, including emotional outbursts and inappropriate use of verbal/non-verbal cues. Organizational barriers like rigid hierarchies and fear of superiors are then covered. Finally, the document provides tips for overcoming barriers and improving communication.

1. BUSINESS
COMMUNICATION
BARRIERS TO
COMMUNICATION

2. BARRIERS TO COMMUNICATION
Communication is one of the most
common and essential human activities.
Perfect communication takes place when
the receiver understands the message
exactly in the same way the sender
intends.

3. BARRIERS TO COMMUNICATION
Quite often miscommunication arises due
to one barrier or the other.
Barrier or problems can arise at any stage
of the communication.

4. BARRIERS TO COMMUNICATION
Problems/ barriers/breakdown may arise
at any of the following levels.
THE SENDER’S LEVEL IN—
Formulating/ organizing thought, ideas,
message.
Encoding the message

5. BARRIERS TO COMMUNICATION
THE RECEIVER’S LEVEL IN
Receiving the message.
Decoding the received message
Understanding/ interpreting the message

6. BARRIERS TO COMMUNICATION
TRANSMISSION LEVEL WHERE NOISE
OCCURS
THE FEEDBACK/ REACTION LEVEL THAT
IS NECESSARY CONDITION FOR THE
COMPLETION OF THE ENTIRE
PROCESS.

7. BARRIERS TO
COMMUNICATION
 How often you have said, “I meant to
say this and not that?
 Even with the best intentions,
communication barriers crop up and
our written and spoken messages are
misunderstood.

8. TYPES OF BARRIERS TO
COMMUNICATION
1. Intrapersonal Barrier
2. Interpersonal Barrier
3. Organizational Barrier
4. Semantic Barrier

9. INTRA-PERSONAL BARRIER
 Individuals are unique because of
their idiosyncrasies (habit).
 This is mainly because of differences
in experience, education, value and
personality.

10. INTRA-PERSONAL BARRIER
 Each of us interpret the same
information in different ways as our
thinking varies.

11. WRONG ASSUMPTIONS
 Many barriers stem from wrong
assumptions.
 For example- When a doctor tells his
patient that he has to take some medicine
only ‘SOS’ he is creating a barrier in their
communication.
 Here the doctor has made a wrong
assumption about his patient’s level of
knowledge.

12. WRONG ASSUMPTIONS
 Wrong assumptions are generally made
because the sender or the receiver does
not have adequate knowledge about each
other’s background.
 A skilled communicator keeps these
issues in mind to prevent them from
becoming barriers.

13. SELECTIVE PERCEPTION
 Selective perception means that the
receivers selectively see and hear
depending upon their needs, motivation,
background experience and other
personal characteristics.
 While decoding the message they project
their own interest and expectation in the
process of communication further leading
to a particular kind of feedback.

14. Differing Background
 People vary in terms of their education,
culture, language, environment, age, sex,
financial status etc.
 Our background plays significant role in
how we interpret the message.
 A computer company representative
would not make much sense to a group of
doctors if in his presentation he goes into
details of hardware.

15. Differing Background
 To enhance your communication skills, it
is necessary to know the background of
your audience.
 Use language understood by the receiver
to avoid ambiguity and reduce multiple
meanings in your communication.
 The multiple meanings of a word
increases the problem of communication
barriers.

16. WHEN WRITING OR SPEAKING
 Think of your audience. How well do they
understand the language?
 Select your words with care, specially
technical terms.
 Words must be suited to your audience’s
language skills.

17. WHEN WRITING OR SPEAKING
 If you have to use slightly difficult or
unfamiliar words, try to explain these as
part of your communication.
 Don’t fall into the trap, however of
oversimplifying your language, your
audience could get put off if you use
words that sound babyish/ kiddish.

18. WRONG INFERENCES
• Communication quite often breaks down
or becomes an embarrassing affair if we
keep acting an assumption without caring
to seek clarification.

19. WRONG INFERENCES
• For example—a customer writes to us that
he/ she would be visiting our office on a
particular day without caring to write/
telephone that he/ she would like to be
picked up assuming that we will do that as
a routine, it would be regarded as a case
of incomplete communication.
• It may lead to loss of goodwill.

20. WRONG INFERENCES
• For example—You have returned from a
business trip and you find that two of your
colleagues are absent. They do not turn
up for several days. Since there is a
recession on, you draw an inference that
they have been laid off. The fact is that
they have been promoted and sent to
another department.

21. WRONG INFERENCES
• This is an example of fact-inference
confusion.
• It has happened because you failed to
distinguish between what actually exists
and what you had assumed to exist.

22. WRONG INFERENCES
• When presenting any inference in the
course of your work, you could use
qualifiers such as ‘evidence suggest’ or ‘in
my opinion’ to remind yourself and the
receiver that this is not yet established as
fact.

23. CLOSED MIND
• The expression ‘closed mind’ refers to
thinking tendency of the people that they
know everything about the issue and
therefore refuse to accept any further
information on that topic.
• People who feel that they know it all are
called Pansophists.

24. CLOSED MIND
• This type of thinking can pose a major
barrier, leading to failure in
communication.
• In such instances, the receivers refuse
information because of their ‘know it all
attitude’.

25. CLOSED MIND
• The clue to detect this barrier is the use of
words like—all, always, everybody,
everything, every time and their opposites
like none, never, nobody and nothing.
• To avoid this barrier use phrases like ‘it
appears to me’ or ‘the evidence indicates’.

26. CLOSED MIND
• If your data is insufficient, it is better to
admit that you are unaware of the rest of
the information rather than stone walling.
(obstruct with evasive/ ambiguous
answers)

27. IMPERVIOUS CATEGORIES
(not responsive or resistant)
• We react positively to information only if it
is in consonance with our views and
attitudes.
• Conversely, when we receive information
that does not conform to our personal
views, habits and attitudes or appears
unfavorable to us, we tend to react
negatively or even disbelieve.

28. IMPERVIOUS CATEGORIES
• People who are very rigid in their opinions
may face problems in communicating
effectively.
• For example– one of your fellow students
may think that only students of sc. are
good at reasoning, such people fall into
impervious categories because they may
not be able to accept any deviation from
their points of view.

29. INTER-PERSONAL BARRIERS
• Intrapersonal barriers stem from
an individual’s attitude or habits
whereas Inter-personal barriers
occur due to inappropriate
transaction of words between two
or more people.

30. LIMITED VOCABULARY
• During your speech, if you are at loss of
words, your communication will be very
ineffective and you will leave a very poor
impression on your audience.
• If you have a varied and substantial
vocabulary, you can create an indelible
impression on your listeners.

31. INCONGRUITY OF VERBAL AND
NON-VERBAL MESSAGES
• Ignoring non-verbal cues or
misinterpreting them can result in the
message being completely
misunderstood.
• For example– In a small speech CEO
conveys the message that he is very
delighted to have a new manager
appointed in his office. However the
expression on his face shows just the
opposite of what he is saying.

32. INCONGRUITY OF VERBAL AND
NON-VERBAL MESSAGES
• The stark difference between the verbal
and non-verbal aspects of his
communication leaves his listeners feel
confused and puzzled.
• Your non-verbal cues should consistently
match with your verbal message, adding
to their effectiveness and enhancing your
image as a competent and interesting
communicator.

33. EMOTIONAL OUTBURST
• Encoding and decoding of messages
depend to quite some extent on one’s
emotional state at a particular time.
• Extreme emotions like jubilation or
depression are likely to hinder effective
communication.
• A message received when one is angry is
likely to be interpreted in a very different
manner than one is calm and composed.

34. EMOTIONAL OUTBURST
• Extreme anger can create such an
emotionally charged environment that
rational discussion is just not possible.
• Positive emotions like happiness and
excitement also interfere in
communication but to lesser extent than
negative feelings.

35. COMMUNICATION SELECTIVITY/ FILTERING
• If you are a receiver in communication
process, and you pay attention only to a
part of the message, you are imposing a
barrier known as communication
selectivity.
• In such a situation the sender is not at
fault.

36. COMMUNICATION SELECTIVITY/ FILTERING
• For Ex– In a meeting, held by the
Chairman of a company he called all his
executives from various divisionsProduction, Marketing, Finance etc.
• During the meeting he discusses various
topics but he will not be able to get across
the entire message to each one of the
participants, unless he gets their individual
attention.

37. COMMUNICATION SELECTIVITY/ FILTERING
• If the Production Manager and the
Marketing Manager pay attention only to
matters related to their respective areas,
they may not be able to get the total
perspective of what the chairman is
conveying.

38. COMMUNICATION SELECTIVITY/ FILTERING
• Communication selectivity may act as a
barrier in written forms of communication
as well.
• When you read a story, if you read only
certain parts and omit others, you are
posing this barrier.

39. CULTURAL VARIATION
• In International environment, cultural
differences often cause communication
problems.
• The same category of words, phrases,
symbols, actions, colors mean different
things to people of different countries/
cultural background.

40. CULTURAL VARIATION
• For ex– In western countries black color is
associated with death and mourning while
in the east white is the color of mourning.
• Your success whether as a student or as a
professional, lies in knowing the business
practices, social customs and etiquette of
a particular country.

41. POOR LISTENING SKILLS
• Misunderstanding and conflicts can be
mitigated if people listen to the message
with full attention.
• In order to become a good listener we
have to learn to rise above our egos, keep
our eyes and ears open and empathize
with others.

42. POOR LISTENING SKILLS
• One can be a good listener by paying
proper attention to the speaker through
non-verbal responses and asking
questions at the appropriate moment.
• Do not jump to conclusions hastily but
maintain your composure and allow the
speaker to finish before interpreting his
message.

43. NOISE
• Noise can be defined as any unplanned
interference in the communication
environment, which causes hindrance in
the transmission of message.
• Noise occurs primarily at the transmission
level which distorts interpretation or the
decoding part of the communication
process.

44. NOISE
• Noise can be classified as channel and
semantic.
• In written communication, illegible hand
writing can be termed as channel noise.

45. CHANNEL NOISE
• Channel noise is any interference in the
mechanics of the medium used to send a
message.
• For ex- Channel noise is distortion due to
faulty background, noise in telephone
lines, or too high a volume from a loud
speaker.
• Channel noise develops externally.

46. SEMANTIC BARRIERS
• Semantic barriers arise due to problems in
language.
• Language is the most important tool of
communication but its careless use can be
dangerous.

47. SEMANTIC NOISE
• Semantic noise is generally internal,
resulting from errors in the message itself.
• For ex– on the sender’s part encoding
may be faulty because of the use of
confusing or ambiguous sentence
structure.

48. SEMANTIC NOISE
• At receiver’s level reception may be
inaccurate because of inattention.
• Semantic noise are faulty grammar, misspellings and incorrect punctuation.
• One must aim at simplicity, clarity and
brevity so as to minimize the chances of
different interpretations.

49. ORGANIZATIONAL BARRIERS
 Rigid hierarchical structure usually restricts
the flow of communication.
 This is because there are numerous transfer
points and each of these points has the
potential to distort, delay or lose the message.
 To obviate (prevent/avert) this, there should
be a direct contact between sender and
receiver with minimum transfer stations.

50. TOO MANY TARNSFER STATIONS
• When messages pass on from one person
to another in a series of transmission they
are likely to become less and less
accurate.
• The message gets distorted at each level
because of poor listening or lack of
concentration.

51. TOO MANY TARNSFER STATIONS
• Some employees may filter out a part of
the message which they consider
unimportant.

52. FEAR OF SUPERIORS
 In rigidly structured organization, fear or
awe of the superiors prevents subordinates from speaking frankly.
 To avoid speaking directly to their boss,
some employees may either shun all
communication with their superiors or they
may present all the information that they
have.

53. FEAR OF SUPERIORS
 Sometimes out of fear employees do not
communicate available information.
 It may result in sending partial information.
 Fear of full disclosure or non-disclosure
misleads a superior.
 In written communication this results in
bulky reports, where essential information
is clubbed with important details.

54. USE OF INAPPROPRIATE MEDIA
• Some of the common media used in
organizations are graphs, charts,
telephones, fax machines, computer
presentations, e-mails, slides,
teleconferencing and video-conferencing.
• While choosing the media you should
therefore keep in mind the advantages,
disadvantages and potential barriers to
communication.

55. USE OF INAPPROPRIATE MEDIA
• Telephone, for instance would be an ideal
medium for conveying a confidential
information.
• Typed letters which provide permanence
are preferable for information which
requires to be stored for future reference.

56. USE OF INAPPROPRIATE MEDIA
• Usually a mix of media is best for effective
communication.
• For ex- a telephone call to book an order
to be followed by a confirmatory letter
ensures that there is no possible
misunderstanding of the message.

57. INFORMATION OVERLOAD
 One of the major problems faced by
organization today is the availability of
huge amount of data which the receiver is
unable to handle.
 Receiver should receive only that amount
of facts and figures at one time that he/
she can absorb.

58. INFORMATION OVERLOAD
 The usual results of information overload
are fatigue, boredom and disinterest.
 People respond to this kind of information
in many ways.
 Firstly, they may disregard certain
information.

59. INFORMATION OVERLOAD
 Secondly, they are likely to make errors
when they become overwhelmed with too
much information.
 Thirdly, they may delay responding to
information at least for the time being.
 Fourthly, they may become highly
selective in their response.

60. INFORMATION OVERLOAD
 Very often, vital information gets mixed up
with too many irrelevant details and
therefore goes ignored by the receiver.
 To reduce information overload in an
organization, screening of information is
mandatory.

61. INFORMATION OVERLOAD
 Major points should be highlighted,
leaving out all irrelevant things.
 This kind of reducing can reduce the
problem of information overload to a great
extent.

62. TIPS FOR EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION
1. Create an open communication
environment.
2. Always keep the receiver in mind.
3. Avoid having too many transfer stations.
4. Do not communicate when emotionally
disturbed.
5. Be aware of diversity in culture, language
etc.

63. TIPS FOR EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION
1. Use appropriate non-verbal cues.
2. Select the most suitable medium.
3. Analyze the feedback.