Communication is the exchange of ideas, opinions and information through written or spoken words, symbols or actions.
Communication is an important part of our world today. The ability to communicate effectively is considered a prized quality. But people in the world are not alike. These differences, however, can cause problems in sending/receiving messages. Simply these are the hurdles in the way of communication and anything which blocks the meaning of a communication is a barrier to communication.
Barriers to effective communication
A. Physical barriers
Internal structure of the organization and layout of office machines and equipments creates physical barriers in communication
a. Distance: – communication is found obstructed in long distance. Like communication between America and Nepal.
b. Noise: – it is from external sources and affects the communication process. Noise negatively affects the accuracy
c. Physical arrangement: – the physical arrangement of organizational sources like men, money, material and machine obstruct the communication process.
B. Semantic barriers
The use of difficult and multiple use of languages, words, figures, symbols create semantic barriers.
a. Language: – we can find some words having different meaning. As meaning sent by the sender can be quite different from the meaning understood by the receiver. Long and complex sentences creates problem in communication process.
b. Jargons: – technical or unfamiliar language creates barriers to communication that may be drawn from the literature. So message should be simple and condensed as far as possible so that no confusion creation will be there to the receiver.
C. Organizational barriers
It is raised from the organizational goals, regulations, structure and culture.
a. Poor planning: – it refers to the designing, encoding, channel selection and conflicting signals in the organization.
b. Structure complexities:-