Barriers to Communication

Barriers to Communication

What are barriers to communication?

In the dictionary it says that barriers to communications are “obstacles in a workplace that prevent effective exchange of ideas or thoughts”. Something that stops the understanding of a message is a barrier to communication.

General Communication Skills
 

Problems with technology:

There are many different types of technology out now a day such as computers. Many people may not have a lot of experience with computers and may find it difficult to use and how to learn how to use them. This may be difficult for some of rainbow lights volunteers to pick up how to do certain tasks on now technology.

There are many different way to communicate through technology. For example through a program called Skype, this allows you to talk and video conference over the internet with a webcam. This can be useful for business meetings so you don’t have to travel to different countries to see people face to face.

While using video conferencing you could run into several problems such as hardware issues. For example your computer system may not have the required hardware components such as a webcam to perform this action. Another problem could be that you may have a bad internet connection so the video and audio could be hard to understand and view.


Interpersonal Communication

There are several types of interpersonal communication barriers which are;

. Bad Body language

. Negative Emotions

. Use of negative language

. Background noise

. Distractions

. Lack of concentration

Body Language Signs:

There are many barriers that can affect body language which are; holding objects, checking the time, looking down, touching your face, faking a smile, resting hands behind head, crossing your arms and pointing your finger.

Using certain body language features such as crossing your arms or resting your hands behind your head can show that the person is not interested or couldn’t be bothered listening to someone. Faking a smile can show that the person doesn’t really care that they are only pretending to be interested. Someone checking the time can show they are not interested and they just want to be somewhere else.

 

Written Communication Skills

 

There are two barriers that can affect written communication which are;

 

·         Documents that contain spelling and grammar errors

·         Documents that are not well structured

In written communication feedback is not immediate. For example if the words are spelt wrong then the reader will not be able to read the message. If you have a lot of spelling mistakes and grammar issues in your work or emails it will make you look very un-professional. If you are writing to some one for example through an email and you cannot understand what they have written to you then you will not be able to respond to them correctly.

If you are communicating to someone and the document you are sending is not well structured then it will be very difficult for reader to understand the message you are trying to tell them. For example if there are no headings then the reader will have to figure out which sections are which could be difficult for the reader and also very inconvenient. Another major issue would be if the document wasn’t in logical order which means the reader would have no sense of direction on reading the document.