Barriers to Effective Communication
The globalization of markets has led to business organizations forming diversified working environments and incorporating culturally and socially diverse workforce. Effective communication is therefore vital to ensure business organizations can manage their employees, ease decision making, and provide accurate and timely information flow (Osborne et al. 2017). Workforce diversity exposes a business to several communication barriers that may affect its productivity. The most prevalent communication barriers in a diversified organization, especially in the Canadian market, are sematic problems, cultural and linguistic barriers, and listening challenges. The three barriers to communication are interconnected, and more than one barrier can hinder communication at a given time.
Cultural and linguistic barriers are a significant barrier to communication in the workplace. A person’s reaction, perception, thinking, and reception are significantly impacted by cultural and linguistic factors (O’Connor et al. 2017). This impact results in varied responses to different situations and different communication and etiquette views. Some managers could argue that it is challenging to manage a culturally and linguistically diverse workforce and thus avoid employing people on these grounds. Despite these concerns, a diversified workforce brings a fresh perspective, ideas, and creativity leading to innovations and developments. The Canadian business environment is currently a hub of diversified cultures, and the different beliefs, behaviors, and socially transmitted traditions from different ethnic groups create a cultural and linguistic barrier in the workplace. Therefore, it is imperative for organizations to focus on diversity management and to develop cross-cultural business models to incorporate and manage the different cultures in their workforce.
The second obstacle to effective communication in the workplace is listening challenges. Listening is a vital aspect of communication, as poor listening can lead to misinformation and distortion of information. In organizations, some people may not give much consideration to listening when a person speaks, and they might be doing something else or even talking back. This illustrates their disregard for listening as a vital aspect of communication. Without a doubt, one cannot communicate effectively without being an active listener. Therefore, it is imperative to ensure you listen attentively without being distracted to enable you to hear, understand, interpret, and evaluate the information you have received (Abboud, 2018). This is vital in ensuring accurate information flow, especially in a diversified work environment, as it will eliminate misunderstandings. Many organizations overlook the importance of listening, yet it is a significant contributor to distortion and misrepresentation of information. To eradicate this communication barrier in the workplace, there is a need for the management to create awareness of the importance of listening and the consequences of not listening.
The third significant communication barrier in the workplace is semantic problems. Semantic problems are interlinked with cultural obstacles as well as poor listening skills. Semantic challenges arise when a speaker is not understood mainly because of an accent, which makes hearing difficult (Raju, 2018). Many people do not like communicating with a person with semantic challenges, and even employees can discriminate based on the same. However, I cannot entirely agree with the idea of discriminating against someone because of sematic challenges. Sematic challenges are significant barriers to communication, but they can be navigated through attentive listening and patience. The Canadian business environment is full of different cultures making sematic challenges part of everyday life. It is, therefore, advisable to work on listening skills to overcome this challenge. However, the communicator should also use exact, precise, and familiar words that would have the same meaning to the receiver.
In conclusion, the current business environment is highly diversified. Therefore communication barriers such as sematic problems, listening challenges, and cultural and linguistic barriers are prevalent. These three barriers are interlinked with a plethora of other barriers in an organization to hinder effective communication. Therefore, organizations need to create awareness on the need for active listening and try to instill listening skills in their employees to eliminate listening challenges. Secondly, Organizations should focus on diversity management when dealing with sematic problems by creating a cross-cultural business model. Finally, organization staff should build their listening skill and be patient and empathetic when dealing with an affected semantic colleague.
References
Abboud, K. A. (2018). The Way to Develop Listening Skills.
Osborne, S., & Hammoud, M. S. (2017). Effective employee engagement in the workplace. International Journal of Applied Management and Technology, 16(1), 4.
O’Connor Jr, J. R., & Jackson, K. N. (2017). Interpersonal communication: A strategic perspective. In Encyclopedia of strategic leadership and management (pp. 317-327). IGI Global.
Raju, C. P. (2018). Types of listening skills: Barriers and tips to overcome them. International Journal of Advanced Multidisciplinary Scientific Research (IJAMSR ISSN: 2581-4281), 1, 41-45.