Case Application: Communication Lesson
1. What barriers to communication were evident at Voyant? What other communication barriers likely existed? Explain.
Communication is the transfer and understanding of meaning. It is effective when a transmitted thought or idea is received and understood by the receiver as it was envisioned by the sender. However, good communication is often erroneously defined by the communicator as agreement with the message instead of clearly understanding of the message.
Communication encompasses both interpersonal communication – communication between two or more people and organizational communication – all the patterns, networks and systems of communication within an organization. Both types are important to managers. * In Voyant, the most evident barriers to communication were: * Language: Age, education, and culture background are three of the more obvious variables that influence the language a person uses and the definitions he or she gives to words. Even employees who work for the same organization but in different department, backgrounds and patterns of speech often have different jargon. Voyant’s top engineers and product managers both may speak English, but the language each uses is vastly different. The engineers – who design and improve the products, were not communicating to the product managers – who advertise and actually sell it to the market. * Other communications barriers likely existed were: * Emotion and Defensiveness: How a receiver feels when a message is received influences how he or she interprets it. With extreme emotions, we often disregard our rational and objective thinking process and substitute emotional judgments; we easily become defensive – engaging in behaviors such as verbally attacking others, making sarcastic remark, being overly judgmental and questioning others’ motives. There might be negative emotions between engineers and product managers because of disagreement and miscommunication in the process of working,
Communication is the transfer and understanding of meaning. It is effective when a transmitted thought or idea is received and understood by the receiver as it was envisioned by the sender. However, good communication is often erroneously defined by the communicator as agreement with the message instead of clearly understanding of the message.
Communication encompasses both interpersonal communication – communication between two or more people and organizational communication – all the patterns, networks and systems of communication within an organization. Both types are important to managers. * In Voyant, the most evident barriers to communication were: * Language: Age, education, and culture background are three of the more obvious variables that influence the language a person uses and the definitions he or she gives to words. Even employees who work for the same organization but in different department, backgrounds and patterns of speech often have different jargon. Voyant’s top engineers and product managers both may speak English, but the language each uses is vastly different. The engineers – who design and improve the products, were not communicating to the product managers – who advertise and actually sell it to the market. * Other communications barriers likely existed were: * Emotion and Defensiveness: How a receiver feels when a message is received influences how he or she interprets it. With extreme emotions, we often disregard our rational and objective thinking process and substitute emotional judgments; we easily become defensive – engaging in behaviors such as verbally attacking others, making sarcastic remark, being overly judgmental and questioning others’ motives. There might be negative emotions between engineers and product managers because of disagreement and miscommunication in the process of working,