Psychological, semantic, and environmental barriers can hinder effective communication. Psychological barriers include unjust assumptions, a "know-it-all" attitude, snap reactions, indifference, an unwillingness to learn, defensiveness, and fear. Semantic barriers involve word connotations, fluency differences, jargon, and vocabulary level differences. Environmental barriers include issues with time, space, place, and communication medium. Organizations are social entities designed to achieve goals through coordinated activities linked to their external environment. They have formal goals and informal aims as well as formal and informal organizational structures.

1. Communication Skills
Week 3
Barriers of effective communication
Physical
Semantic
Psychological
What is an organization?
Goals and kinds of organization
BY WARDAH AZHAR

2. Psychological Barriers
• Every person has his/her own way to look at
the world, at people, at events and situations.
A way of thinking of a person many times
takes a shape of strong base of
communication. No two persons possess
accurately similar frames of reference.
Following are the psychological barriers –

3. Cont…
• (a) Unjust Assumptions: It creates a lot of
misunderstanding. A manager, for example, incorrectly
assumes that the subordinates understand the
technical terms he adopts to give the instructions.
• (b) Barrier of Knowing it All: Certain people think that
they know everything about a subject. Usually they are
not prepared to accept that they could be mistaken.
Many make the generalized statements like women can
not become superior to men or insincerity is the base
of business. An attitude of “know it all” is an outcome
of biased approach.

4. Cont…
• (c) Snap Reactions: Some listeners tend to pass remarks or
criticize the communicator even though his communication
is not completed. Hurried interpretations are not needed.
Audience needs to be patient enough to let the
communicator finish his speech.
(d) Apathetic Listener: One who is psychologically dead and
indifferent to speaker. Receiver’s apathy is an intolerable
condition, when the communicator tries to carry out
effective communication.
(e) Sophisticated Role: The receiver is not willing to learn
from the communicator. That means he/she is
un-teachable. In such situations the communicator should
try to create right impact.

5. Cont…
• (f) Defensiveness: Humans always tries to justify
themselves. they think that admitting the mistake
means a loss of face. Therefore, they tends to
rationalize the mistake that they commit. This
type of attitude of the communicator is a great
hindrance in the effective communication.
(g) Fear: A fear gives rise to slow and narrow
thinking. It is clearly destructive to
communication. So the primary objective must
be to eliminate fear.

6. Semantic Barriers:
• Connotation: meanings of words – Choose the
correct and precise word depending on
context and the receiver’s felicity in the use of
language.
• Fluency: Communicating with someone
whose native language is not the same as
yours may present barriers in the form of
inappropriate or incorrect word choice

7. Cont…
• Jargon or Slang: Professionals often use industry
jargon to communicate, and that jargon is all but
foreign to those outside the industry.
• High- or Low-Level Vocabulary: Even when
people share a native language, vocabulary
differences can be vast. Someone with a large
vocabulary may choose to say, "He is certainly
loquacious" rather than "He talks a lot." People
who don't know the word's meaning may feel left
out or ignorant and cease communication
altogether

8. Environmental and Physical barriers:
• (a) Time – adopt appropriate fast channels of
communication
• (b) Space – maintain the distance in the
communication exercise as determined by the
situation
• (c) Place – Avoid overcrowded incommodious
and ill-lit, ill- ventilated places to achieve effective
communication
• (d) Medium – Choose the appropriate medium
oral / written (sign (audio/visual) medium

9. WHAT IS AN ORGANIZATION?
Definition:
• Social entity
• Goal directed
• Designed as deliberately structured and
coordinated activity systems
• Linked to the external environment.

10. Organization
• A social unit of people,
systematically structured and managed to meet
a need or to pursue collective goals on
a continuing basis. All organizations have
a management structure that
determines relationships between functions and
positions, and subdivides and delegates roles,
responsibilities, and authority to carry out
defined tasks. Organizations are open systems in
that they affect and are affected by
the environment beyond their boundaries.

12. GOALS OF ORGANIZATION
Those ends that an organization seeks to achieve by its existence and
operation.
Goals are predetermined and describe future results toward which present
efforts are directed.
FORMAL GOALS INFORMAL GOALS
• reflect the actual intention • are the general aims of an
of an organization. They organization as expressed in
describe the concrete steps the corporate charter,
to be taken to achieve the annual reports, public
organization's purpose. statements and mission
They often don't statements. Their purpose is
correspond with official to give the organization a
goals. favorable public image,
provide legitimacy, and
justify its activities.

13. Kinds of organization
Organizations are basically classified on the basis of
relationships.
Formal organization Informal organization
• Formal Organization - This is one • It refers to a network of personal
which refers to a structure of well and social relationships which
defined jobs each bearing a spontaneously originates within the
measure of authority and formal set up. Informal
responsibility. It is a conscious organizations develop relationships
determination by which people which are built on likes, dislikes,
accomplish goals by adhering to feelings and emotions. Therefore,
the norms laid down by the the network of social groups based
structure. This kind of on friendships can be called as
organization is an arbitrary set up informal organizations. There is no
conscious effort made to have
in which each person is informal organization. It emerges
responsible for his performance. from the formal organization and it
Formal organization has a formal is not based on any rules and
set up to achieve pre- determined regulations as in case of formal
goals. organization.