What are communication barriers?

We explain to you what are the barriers of communication and the elements that intervene in your process. Also, how to avoid these barriers.

1. What are communication barriers?

It is known as communication barriers to obstacles and difficulties that may arise during the communicative process and hinder the correct culmination of it or distort the original message.

The communication is a transmission process (often reciprocal) of ideas and concepts involving a sender (who produces and encodes the message), a recipient (who receives and decodes), and a physical channel through which transmits, using a common code between the first two.

The channel must be conducive to the transmission of the message , the code must be mutual, and those who intervene must be willing to participate, so that the information can be transmitted.

In that sense, communication barriers  are accidents of different types and that involve these elements involved in the process. These accidents can be of different types:

• Physicists . Circumstances of the environment that distort communication, hinder or prevent it totally or partially. For example: the material defects of a magnetic recording, the environmental noises that can obscure the voice of the transmitter, the presence of numerous communicative acts while becoming indistinguishable, etc.
• Semantic . They are those related to the communication code itself, which can vary between senders and receivers, making understanding (or simply impossible) difficult. For example, when we try to read a text in another language, or when we use a word of the same language that has different meanings in another country.
• Physiological . Tares and bodily defects of the sender or receiver, which make them less suitable for the communication process. For example: deafness, aphonia, blindness, etc.
• Psychological . Those conditions of the sender and / or the receiver that have to do with their emotionality or personality, and that somehow predispose it to a specific form of communication. This may mean that they are not at all willing, or that they simply reject communication, for example, being nervous, distracted, scared, etc.

2. How to avoid communication barriers?

To avoid communicative barriers, if possible, it is advised:

• Try to send clear messages, in a related code (maybe it should be verified first).
• Promote that environmental conditions are conducive to the communicative act. For example, speaking during a rock concert can be difficult.
• Employ feedback: exchange sender and receiver locations often. The opposite of monologing.
• Be aware of the emotional or emotional state that is possessed when initiating (or during) the communicative act, as well as their own predispositions or even prejudices, if relevant, in order to keep them at bay.
• Check that the channel is conducive to initiate communication: that the broadcaster does not listen to anyone else, that he is willing to communicate, etc.