Overcoming Communication Barriers

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Overcoming Communication Barriers Eugene M. Johnson Barriers to effective communication are various and occur throughout the entire process. To effectively communicate we must train our personnel and management to understand the process and where in the process we are having misunderstandings. The process includes a sender, a message and a receiver. The sender encodes the message and chooses a medium to deliver it, the receiver then decodes and gives the message meaning, and then the receiver sends feedback which causes the sender and receiver to switch roles as the original sender receives the feedback. As this process continues noise interferes with the receiver understanding what the sender intended the receiver to understand. This noise constitutes barriers to communication. The 4 barriers to communication are; process barriers, personal barriers, physical barriers and semantic barriers. Process barriers are any interference to communication at any step in the process; sender barrier (neglecting to send message), encoding barrier (poor choices of words), medium barrier (transmission failure), decoding barrier (information to technical for receiver to understand), receiver barrier (receiver is not listening intently), feedback barrier (no response or mixed signals). The training needs to make us aware of potential problems in the process so they can be avoided. Awareness of the pitfalls will allow us to tailor the messages with the audience in mind when we encode the message, or choose which type of medium to use to transmit the message with the most effectiveness and understanding. Any individual attribute that diminishes understanding is a personal barrier to effective communication. Some examples are variations in the sender’s and the receiver’s language skills, background and culture. Stereotypes and prejudices can alter perceptions and
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