Did you know that communication barriers can pop-up at every stage of the communication process (consisting of sender, message, channel/media, receiver, feedback and response) and have the potential to create misunderstanding and confusion.
To be an effective communicator and to get your point across without misunderstanding and confusion, your goal should be to lessen the frequency of these barriers at each stage of this process with clear, concise, accurate, well-planned communications.
Communications is thus only successful, when the receiver understands your message exactly the way you intended it!
Here are some possible barriers to effective communications:
- Different assumptions
- Different points of views
- Emotions
- Misunderstanding of language
- Use of difficult words
- Lack of attention
- Poor clarity of speech
- Conflicting body language
- Sending discouraging feedback
- Cultural differences
- Lack of trust
- Too much information
So many things can go wrong already in the normal communication process; now imagine what happens when you find yourself in an intercultural context!
Photo credit: Ed Yourdon / Foter / CC BY-NC-SA