Four Key Barriers to Communication

There are four key barriers to communication. These barriers are Process barriers, personal barriers, physical barriers and semantic barriers. As a manager I plan to overcome all of these barriers using guidelines, tools, processes and procedures.

Process barriers are a big barrier to communication. The process of communication involves sending and receiving a message between two people. Sometimes things go wrong during the transmission of information. To overcome these barriers I would work on my communication skills. I would make sure I am speaking slowly and clearly in easy to understand terms. I would ask the other person to repeat back to me what I said and make sure I use my listening skills to fully understand what they comprehended. I will also not use text messages or email to communication. I will rely on phone and face to face.
Another barrier to communication is personal barriers. Personal barriers are related to trust and ego. If two people don’t trust each other the communication process will be distorted. I will use honesty and integrity to earn the trust of my employees. I will not let my ego get in the way of how I run my business. We will have a strict policy for honesty, respect and fair treatment of employees.

Physical barriers are pertaining to distance time and work office noise. Sometimes because of distance and time companies use email to communicate. I feel that this is not as good as face to face communication because communication is often misunderstood through email. I will enforce a strict policy of actually talking to each other rather than emailing. Phone calls and Skype will be our primary form of communication at our company. Everyone will have their own office to cut down on background noises. Flex time schedules will be used to compensate for the time difference on the west coast.

Sematic barriers are encoding and decoding errors because of phrases and jargon. Cultural diversity is a key contributor to sematic barriers. As a manager I will not allow any company jargon or phrases to be used. We will only speak in terms that the average person could understand. Also when hiring new employees they will be interviewed by 3 different managers with different foreign accents. If they have trouble understanding different accents then they will not be hired. We will also encourage hiring a very diverse workforce from every culture.