Discuss and choose, as a Learning Team, the most
important barrier that you think creates a communication challenge within
groups and teams, as highlighted in the “Barriers to Effective Communication”
section in Ch. 11 of Organizational Behavior. Why did your
team choose this particular barrier and how does it create a communication
challenge? Provide real-life examples you may have experienced regarding this
particular barrier.
Prepare a 350- to
1,050-word paper detailing the findings of your discussion.
Communication
Barriers
Chapter
11 – quoted Joel in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, “Constantly
talking isn’t necessarily communicating.” (Stephen P. Robbins, 2013) Joel
summed up communication in one phrase. If the audience does not understand
what is being articulated, then the communication has failed to deliver the
message properly. Communication’s channels continue to expand. It is
important to be extremely clear, precise and deliberate in the words and tone
of delivery to prevent misinterpretation and to create a communication barrier
between the sender and receiver. The most common communication barriers are
filtering, selective perception, information overload, emotions, language,
silence, communication apprehension and lying. (Stephen P. Robbins,
2013).
Reference:
Robbins,
S., & Judge, T. (2013). Organizational
behavior(15th ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Pearson
Prentice Hall.
I’m so
glad you posted this. You stated from the book that “constantly
talking isn’t communicating. You also stated it is important to be
extremely clear, precise and deliberate in the words and tone of delivery.
I feel that in many electronic communications there is gap or even a stop
of communication or understanding from this. I feel the reason is that
people like myself and Stephanie stated earlier misinterpret the meaning or do
not even understand it all together. It was a great quote from Bill Gates
that says “I’m a great believer that any tool that enhances communication
has profound effects in terms of how people can learn from each other, and how
they can achieve the kind of freedoms that they’re interested in.”
From this quote I take that there should be a freedom of any employee
that wants to take his or her “employed” freedom in their hands.
What do you think?
I agree with you Jim. A few ways to avoid
communication barriers that develop in the workplace is to actively communicate
with employees and colleagues to ensure that assignments are understood,
instructions are detailed and tasks can be accomplished in a timely manner.
An effective communication can help avoid unnecessary delays and
unproductive work activity of supervisors and those who are subordinate.
Language is another communication
barrier. Every business and organization now operates as part of the
global economy. As it becomes easier to travel and immigrate to other
countries, language differences are creating a vast barrier within every
sector. The difficulties can stem from a difference in culture,
perceptions, emotions, personalities, and a lack of active listening.
Adeline, this is a great barrier that I think
many businesses are dealing with at this time. When I worked at State Farm,
they had a presentation on the Hmong culture. We got to here about differences
in the hierarchy of their family and how decisions are made. It was extremely
helpful to have this open dialogue to help me better interact with my
colleagues and my customers.
Iagree with you about language being a
communication barrier. I have a good friend of mine that is starting his
elder home business. He is starting it in San Diego. He and his
employees will be dual speakers. He feels that his employees as well as
himself should be able to speak English and Spanish at the same time. He
feels that doing so will broaden his business and his opportunities. It
is true about the differences, but I feel that in today’s economy and work
environment we need to as leaders set the example and pretty much ignore some
things that we were taught as kids so that we can be the example that many of
our employees and sometimes bosses need.
Emotions
You may interpret the
same message differently when you’re angry or distraught than when you’re
happy. For example, individuals in positive moods are more confident about
their opinions after reading a persuasive message, so well-crafted arguments
have stronger impacts on their opinions.48 People in negative moods are more likely
to scrutinize messages in greater detail, whereas those in positive moods tend
to accept communications at face value.49Extreme emotions such as jubilation or
depression are most likely to hinder effective communication. In such
instances, we are most prone to disregard our rational and objective thinking
processes and substitute emotional judgments.
If everyone agrees
this is the biggest barrier we can start to discuss examples. I can say that a
perfect example of this may have been our communication for the assignment last
week. I think that I can be very direct and to the point about things via
email. I have a lot on my plate with school and family and so I quickly lay
things out and don’t take into consideration how it may be interpreted. As you
learned in my assessment, I am not one to really have a lot of conflict in my
life and typically I will just take care of whatever I need to to avoid any
conflict. So this class is challenging because my quick emails can come across
as argumentative when really I am just a bit more rushed and quickly trying to
get things to move forward. Instead, it slows down the work because I have to
back up and further explain what I was trying to convey in my emails to the
team. I know that I am a very emotional person and can easily misread things as
well which can sometime shut me down a bit to avoid any sort of argument or
confrontation.
Anyone else have any
examples they would like to share?
