Barriers to Effective Communication

Encoding Barrier
1. Lack of Sensitivity to Receiver. A breakdown in communication may result when a message is not adapted to its receiver. Recognizing the receiver’s needs, status, knowledge of the subject, and language skills assists the sender in preparing a successful message. If a customer is angry, for example, an effective response may be just to listen to the person vent for awhile.

2. Lack of Basic Communication Skills. The receiver is less likely to understand the message if the sender has trouble choosing the precise words needed and arranging those words in a grammatically-correct sentence.

3. Insufficient Knowledge of the Subject. If the sender lacks specific information about something, the receiver will likely receive an unclear or mixed message. Have you shopped for an item such as a computer, and experienced how some salespeople can explain complicated terms and ideas in a simple way? Others cannot.

4. Information Overload. If you receive a message with too much information, you may tend to put up a barrier because the amount of information is coming so fast that you may have difficulty comfortably interpreting that information. If you are selling an item with twenty-five terrific features, pick two or three important features to emphasize instead of overwhelming your receiver (ho-hum) with an information avalanche.

5. Emotional Interference. An emotional individual may not be able to communicate well. If someone is angry, hostile, resentful, joyful, or fearful, that person may be too preoccupied with emotions to receive the intended message. If you don’t like someone, for example, you may have trouble “hearing” them.

Transmitting Barriers: Things that get in the way of message transmission are sometimes called “noise.” Communication may be difficult because of noise and some of these problems

1. Physical