Sidhant is preparing for his first campaign speech. Advice him about the possible barriers to effective communication and how can he avoid them
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Answer:
Barriers to Effective Communication
Two men in an informal meeting, talking
Even though the setting is informal, can you identify some signs that indicate that good communication is taking place? Check your ideas with the author’s list at the end of this section.
Common sources of noise are explained in this section. How many of these examples can you remember affecting your conversations with friends, classmates, or coworkers?
Physical Conditions
Sometimes “noise” is just exactly that—loud or distracting sounds that make it impossible to hear or concentrate. Or the general level of background noise can be so intense that it is hard to focus for long on one particular voice. A room may be so hot or so cold that people can’t get comfortable and cannot pay attention. Outside activities may be a distraction to those with a view out windows. Finally, it may be lunchtime or too close to quitting time to keep people focused. Fortunately, with some awareness and advance planning, physical barriers to effective communication are some of the easiest to overcome.
Filtering
Personal and particular experiences color how people view the world and how they communicate. A message sender sees the world through one set of filters (experiences and values) and the receiver sees it through a different set of filters. Each message has to pass, therefore, through at least two sets of filters. The more similar people are in lifestyle, experience, culture, and language, the more similar their mental filters are likely to be and the less distortion should occur. This is why people who come from very different social and economic situations than their audience must work extra hard to say exactly what they mean to avoid confusion. Also, the fewer people involved in the transmission of a message, the greater the chance that it will be received as the sender intended. In business, however, messages may be summarized by a manager and relayed through an administrative assistant who has clarified or edited the message. Messages exposed to many filters should be repeated in various ways to make sure they were understood as the sender intended.
Selective Perception
Selective perception is the tendency to either “under notice” or “over focus on” stimuli that cause emotional discomfort or contradict prior beliefs. For instance, some people live purposefully healthy lifestyles by frequently exercising and eating only nutritious food but still smoke cigarettes. Psychologists believe that they are selectively ignoring the evidence that smoking is dangerous to their health. They have chosen to disregard the information that would make them feel guilty or fearful about this habit. This is called perceptual defense. Selective perception can also be vigilant, meaning people are extra sensitive to things that are significant to them. If a manager doesn’t like a particular employee, for example, she may be super critical of that person’s behavior and notice every time he is a minute late to a meeting. On the other hand, a favorite employee coming late to work one morning might elicit concern that she had car trouble. Selective perception introduces bias into the communication process.