Communication is the process of transmitting information and understanding between individuals, crucial for personal and organizational effectiveness. Barriers to effective communication can arise from various factors, including sender and receiver issues, physical distractions, semantic misunderstandings, and psychosocial dynamics. Improving communication skills is essential for success in both academic and professional settings, as highlighted by studies indicating their importance to recruiters.
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Communication Intro
Communication is the process of transmitting information and understanding between individuals, crucial for personal and organizational effectiveness. Barriers to effective communication can arise from various factors, including sender and receiver issues, physical distractions, semantic misunderstandings, and psychosocial dynamics. Improving communication skills is essential for success in both academic and professional settings, as highlighted by studies indicating their importance to recruiters.
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Communication is the process of transmitting information and
common understanding from one person to another. With this, it includes
the communication process, barriers to communication, and improving communication effectiveness.
The study of communication is important, because every function and
activity involves some form of direct or indirect communication. This implies that every person’s communication skills affect both personal and organizational effectiveness. It seems reasonable to conclude that one of the most inhibiting forces to organizational effectiveness is a lack of effective communication Good communication skills are very important to ones success as a student and a professional in general. A recent study indicated that recruiters rated communication skills as the most important characteristic of an ideal job candidate.
Communication can be defined as the process of transmitting
information and common understanding from one person to another (Keyton, 2011). The word communication is derived from the Latin word, communis, which means common. The definition underscores the fact that unless a common understanding results from the exchange of information, there is no communication. The Communication Process Two common elements in every communication exchange are the sender and the receiver. The sender initiates the communication. In a school, the sender is a person who has a need or desire to convey an idea or concept to others. The receiver is the individual to whom the message is sent. The sender encodes the idea by selecting words, symbols, or gestures with which to compose a message. The message is the outcome of the encoding, which takes the form of verbal, nonverbal, or written language. The message is sent through a medium or channel, which is the carrier of the communication. The medium can be a face-to-face conversation, telephone call, e- mail, or written report. The receiver decodes the received message into meaningful information. Noise is anything that distorts the message. Different perceptions of the message, language barriers, interruptions, emotions, and attitudes are examples of noise. Finally, feedback occurs when the receiver responds to the sender's message and returns the message to the sender. Feedback allows the sender to determine whether the message has been received and understood. Barriers to Effective Communication Process Barriers Every step in the communication process is necessary for effective and good communication. Blocked steps become barriers. Consider the following situations: Sender barrier. A new administrator with an innovative idea fails to speak up at a meeting, chaired by the superintendent, for fear of criticism. Encoding barrier. A Spanish-speaking staff member cannot get an English speaking administrator to understand a grievance about working conditions. Medium barrier. A very upset staff member sends an emotionally charged letter to the leader instead of transmitting her feelings face-to-face. Decoding barrier. An older principal is not sure what a young department head means when he refers to a teacher as "spaced out." Receiver barrier. A school administrator who is preoccupied with the preparation of the annual budget asks a staff member to repeat a statement, because she was not listening attentively to the conversation. Feedback barrier. During a meeting, the failure of school administrators to ask any questions causes the superintendent to wonder if any real understanding has taken place.
Because communication is a complex, give-and-take process,
breakdowns anywhere in the cycle can block the transfer of understanding Physical Barriers Any number of physical distractions can interfere with the effectiveness of communication, including a telephone call, drop-in visitors, distances between people, walls, and static on the radio. People often take physical barriers for granted, but sometimes they can be removed. For example, an inconveniently positioned wall can be removed. Interruptions such as telephone calls and drop-in visitors can be removed by issuing instructions to a secretary. An appropriate choice of media can overcome distance barriers between people. Semantic Barriers The words we choose, how we use them, and the meaning we attach to them cause many communication barriers. The problem is semantic, or the meaning of the words we use. The same word may mean different things to different people. Technology also plays a part in semantic barriers to communication. Today's complex school systems are highly specialized. Schools have staff and technical experts developing and using specialized terminology—jargon that only other similar staff and technical experts can understand. And if people don't understand the words, they cannot understand the message. • Psychosocial Barriers Three important concepts are associated with psychological and social barriers: fields of experience, filtering, and psychological distance. Fields of experience include people's backgrounds, perceptions, values, biases, needs, and expectations. Filtering means that more often than not we see and hear what we are emotionally tuned in to see and hear. Filtering is caused by our own needs and interests, which guide our listening. Psychosocial barriers often involve a psychological distance between people that is similar to actual physical distance. For example, the school administrator talks down to a staff member, who resents this attitude, and this resentment separates them, thereby blocking opportunity for effective communication