8. Barriers to Communication
Gender
National
Culture Emotional
Language Interpersonal Information
Communication Overload
Defensiveness Stereotyping
Bias
9. Overcoming the Barriers to Effective
Interpersonal Communications
• Use Feedback
• Simplify Language
• Listen Actively
• Constrain Emotions
• Watch Nonverbal Cues
ActivityDuration: 15 MinutesMaterial: None Process: The facilitator whispers a story/sentence into one of the participant's ears. The participant repeats it quietly to the person next to him/her. This continues until everyone in the room has heard the story/sentence. The last person tells the group what he/she heard. The facilitator reads or says the original story or sentence. In a large group, you may want to divide the participants into two groups.Debrief: How close was the final version to the original one?How often does this happen in your organization?What can be done to make sure that everyone hears the same thing?
Psychological:Ex: *Stereotyping ''generalizations''Are generalizations about a group of people whereby we attribute a defined set of characteristics to this group.*Hallo effect:The hallo effect refers to a cognitive biaswhereby the perception of a particular trait is influenced by the perception of the former traits in a sequence of interpretations. The term is commonly used in human resources recruitment. It refers to the risk of an interviewer noticing a positive trait in an interviewee and as a result, paying less attention to their negative traits (or vice versa).*Ethnocentrism:is the tendency to believe that one's ethnic or cultural group is centrally important, and that all other groups are measured in relation to one's own. The ethnocentric individual will judge other groups relative to their own particular ethnic group or culture, especially with concern to language, behavior, customs, and religion. These ethnic distinctions and sub-divisions serve to define each ethnicity's unique cultural identity.[1]Physical:-When having a meeting with your boss & he's being interrupted with phone calls& drop visitors-Being in a far place relative to the other places you need to communicate with (being in a separate department in a separate building from the rest of the company)-Body Language Linguistic:Jargon (Specialized terms used by a group of people that are only understood by them & not understood by the rest of population) like the new way the youth communicate (2a7mad, 3ein, 5amis,7‘amis,3‘aba,…) , or words that have different meanings to different people (burn this document (write on CD), cookies not real cookies internet cookies,…..)
Types of Barriers:Physical:One of the most important factors in building cohesive teams is proximity. Recent researches show that Nearness can help people to communicate better in a healthy way. Examples of Physical barriers which obstruct communication between coworkers or colleagues are the closed office doors & separate work areas for different statuses.Emotional:It is a chief barrier to open & free communication. It’s mainly comprised of fear, mistrust & suspicion. The roots of these fears lie in our childhood when we were told to be cautious about what we say to others, especially strangers. As a result, so many people are being held back from communicating their thoughts & feelings to others. Cultural:Each Culture is loaded with so many different concepts that seem contradictory to any other cultures. So when they start to contact, clashes arise. Examples of different cultural concepts:The word "donkey" in AmericaThe Western salutation in Eastern countriesLanguage:This is the most fatal element that can destroy any communication between two parties. This happens for different reasons:The usage of 2 different languages, and the insufficient knowledge of bothA direct result of using wrong expressions within the same languageGender:There are two distinct differences between speech patterns in a man & those in a woman:Woman can speak up to 25,000 words per dayMen can speak up to 10,000 words per dayIn childhood, girls speak earlier than boys, at the age of 3, they have a vocabulary twice that of boysAttitudinal:As a result of problems that happen within a group or staff, due to:Poor managementDissatisfactionLack of motivation, insufficient training to perform a jobLack of consultationThese things result in people delaying or even refusing to communicateDefensiveness:When people feel threatened, they tend to react in a manner that reduces their ability to achieve a mutual understanding & trust.Information Overload:When people are confronted with a quantity of too much information that exceeds that individual’s capacity to process, they tend to automatically disregard or skip some parts of the message which might be extremely important.Bias:It is to favor something or someone over the other depending on feelings, political views or religious beliefs.
Brief: Tell them now it’s time for each individual to create their personal "Communication Profile" to let other people get to some of their communication properties to enhance communication cycle within the class. Feel free to add more questions if needed.Process: Hand them the Questionnaire & ask them to answer itDebrief:Ask them to stand up & share their inputs with others.Give them 10 minutes to do so.Tell them that these are like Identity cards which will help us communicate better.
What do you see ??Now , can you see how many horses in this picture ?
The following pictures prove that two people could have different points of view regarding something and they could be both right, so it’s very important to both respect and try to understand people’s different points of view even if they completely oppose ours.
