Communication barriers: how to recognize and overcome them

Communication in communication is, first of all, influence: if communication is successful, there is a change in the ideas about the world of the person to whom it is addressed. A communication barrier is a psychological obstacle to adequate information between communication partners. What are these barriers and how to overcome them?

Analyzing the communication process, we are convinced at every step that communication is communication, i.e. exchange of opinions, experiences, considerations, moods, desires, etc. In other words, this side of communication is usually understood as the process of information exchange. In fact, information is not only transmitted, but also formed, clarified, and developed.

This second side of communication has its own characteristics, namely:

the content of a specific communication can be extremely diverse: from a conversation between three-year-old children to a conversation between specialists at a scientific symposium;
the effectiveness of communication is associated primarily with this function;
communication in communication is always significant for its participants, because the exchange of information does not happen “just like that”, but in order to achieve some goals, satisfy some needs;
communication in communication is, first of all, influence: if communication is successful, there is a change in the ideas about the world of the person to whom it is addressed.

In the process of communication, difficulties and misunderstandings often arise. They may be caused by communication barriers that arise in the process of managerial communication.

Speech, any kind of information has always been and is a way of suggesting something . However, we often witness counter psychological activity called counter-suggestion , i.e. a person seems to be protecting himself from the inexorable effect of another person’s speech.

The counter-suggestion mechanism erects numerous communication barriers to the flow of information. Thus, a communication barrier is a psychological obstacle to adequate information between communication partners. What are these barriers and how to overcome them?

In the process of business communication, at least three communication barriers and their various modifications may arise:

"authority";
"avoidance";
"misunderstanding".

The first two provide protection from the source of information, the last - protection from the message itself.

Communication barrier “authority”

Having divided all people into authoritative and non-authoritative, a person trusts only the former and refuses to trust others. Thus, trust and distrust are, as it were, personified and depend not on the characteristics of the information being transmitted, but on who is speaking. For example, older people do not listen well to the advice of young people.

Classifying a person as authoritative depends on the following factors:

social position (status), from belonging to a real “authoritative” group. Psychologist P. Wilson showed students in different college classes the same man. In one class, the psychologist presented this man as a student, in the second - as a laboratory assistant, in the third - as a teacher, in the fourth - as an assistant professor, in the last - as a professor. After the guest left, the students were asked to determine as accurately as possible his height and the height of the experimenter himself. It turned out that the stranger's height steadily increased as his social status increased, while the psychologist's height did not change. Interestingly, the difference in the height of the stranger from the first to the last class was 14-15 cm;
attractive appearance (is the hair neat, combed, ironed, shaved, buttoned up, etc.);
a friendly attitude towards the recipient of the influence (smile, friendliness, ease of use, etc.);
competence;
sincerity, and if the listener trusts the speaker, then he perceives and remembers the conclusions very well and practically does not pay attention to the course of reasoning. If there is less trust, then he is cooler about conclusions, but is very attentive to the arguments and the course of reasoning.

Communication barrier "avoidance"

A person avoids sources of influence, avoids contact with the interlocutor. If it is impossible to evade, then he makes every effort not to perceive the message (inattentive, does not listen, does not look at the interlocutor, uses any excuse to end the conversation). Sometimes they avoid not only sources of information, but also certain situations (for example, the desire to close their eyes when watching “scary places” from horror films).

More on the blog: 3 foundations of trust

How to overcome this barrier? It has been established that most often the barrier is caused by one degree or another of inattention. Therefore, only by controlling the attention of the interlocutor, the audience, can this barrier be overcome. The main thing is to solve two interrelated problems:

attract attention;
keep attention.

Our attention is most influenced by the following factors: the relevance and importance of information, its novelty, non-standard presentation, surprise, the intensity of information transmission, the sonority of the voice and its modulation.

You can attract attention using three basic techniques. These include:

"neutral phrase" technique. At the beginning of a speech or conversation, a phrase is pronounced that is not directly related to the main topic, but certainly for some reason has meaning, significance, value for the interlocutor or for everyone present (where you come from, the last movie you watched, television show, book you read, hobbies and etc.);
“enticement” technique. The speaker says something that is difficult to understand, such as speaking very quietly, monotonously, or unintelligibly, and the listener has to make special efforts to understand anything. These efforts require concentration. As a result, the speaker seems to “lure” the listener into his “net.” In other words, the speaker provokes the listener to use methods of concentration, and then uses them;
receiving eye contact. The speaker looks around the audience, looks closely at someone, selects several people in the audience and nods to them, etc.

No less important is the problem of maintaining attention. It can be solved in a number of ways. The most important of them are the following:

“isolation” technique: when they take the interlocutor aside, seclude themselves, close the doors and windows in lecture halls, and make comments to the speaker. This is why the speaker disturbs the lecturer more than the sleeper;
the technique of “imposing rhythm”: constant change in the characteristics of voice and speech, i.e. By speaking now louder, now quieter, now faster, now slower, now expressively, “with pressure,” now in a tongue twister, now neutrally, the speaker seems to impose his sequence of switching attention on the interlocutor. This technique eliminates the monotony of sound;
“emphasis” technique: the use of various official phrases designed to attract attention, such as “Please pay attention,” “Important about, etc.

Communication barrier "misunderstanding"

Often the source of information is trustworthy and authoritative, but the information “does not reach” (we do not hear, we do not see, we do not understand). Why does this happen and how can these problems be solved?

Usually there are four barriers of misunderstanding: phonetic (phoneme - sound), semantic (semantics - the semantic meaning of words), stylistic (stylistics - style of presentation, correspondence of form and content), logical.

3.1. Phonetic barrier of misunderstanding

Occurs in the following cases:

when speaking a foreign language;
use a large number of foreign words or special terminology;
when they speak quickly, slurredly and with an accent.

To overcome the phonetic barrier, you need:

intelligible, legible and loud enough speech, without tongue twister;
taking into account the audience and individual characteristics of people (the less a person knows the subject of discussion, the slower one must speak, the more detailed one must explain; people of different nationalities speak at different speeds: in the north and in the middle zone - slower, in the south - faster; small children and old people do not perceive fast speech well, etc.);
availability of feedback from the interlocutor and the audience.

3.2. Semantic barrier of misunderstanding

It occurs when the language is phonetically “ours”, but the meaning conveyed is “foreign”. This is possible for the following reasons:

any word usually has not one, but several meanings;
“semantic” fields are different for different people;
Often slang words, secret languages, frequently used images and examples in any group are used (for example, the meaning of the words “feather”, “cabbage”, etc. in thieves’ jargon differs significantly from the true meaning).

The emergence of a barrier can be explained as follows: we usually proceed from the fact that “everyone understands as I do,” while it would be more correct to say the opposite - “everyone understands in their own way.”

To overcome the semantic barrier it is necessary:

speak as simply as possible;
agree in advance on the same understanding of some key words, concepts, terms, if you need to clarify them at the beginning of the conversation.

More on the blog: 15 bad tips for saving relationships

3.3. Stylistic barrier of misunderstanding

It occurs when a person is obliged to understand and reflect in some answer or action only that verbal address that is subject to the established grammatical structure. Otherwise, when there is a discrepancy between form and content, a stylistic barrier arises.

In other words, if the style of presentation is too heavy, too light, in general, does not correspond to the content, then the listener does not understand it or refuses, does not want to understand. The main thing when overcoming the stylistic barrier is to correctly structure the transmitted information.

There are two basic rules for structuring information in communication: the rule of the frame and the rule of the chain.

The frame rule is based on the action of the psychological law of memory, discovered by the German psychologist G. Ebbinghaus (this law is often called the “series factor”). Its essence is that the beginning and end of any information series, no matter what it consists of, is retained in human memory better than the middle.

The frame in communication is created by the beginning and end of the conversation. For the effectiveness of communication, the upcoming conversation, it is advisable to first indicate the goal, prospects and expected results of communication, and at the end of the conversation - to summarize, show a retrospective and note the degree of achievement of goals. Moreover, in initial communication, the most important part is the beginning, and in repeated business communication, the most important part is the end of the conversation. In the second case, people are not as interested in how the negotiations or conversation went, as in how they ended.

The chain rule is based on the assumption that the content of communication cannot be a shapeless pile of various information, it must somehow be built, connected into a chain, “listed.” Any chain, arranging, connecting, organizing the content, like a frame, performs two tasks at once: firstly, it allows you to improve memorization, and secondly, it helps to structure information in accordance with the expectations of the interlocutor.

The following transfer options are possible:

simple enumeration - “firstly, secondly, thirdly...”;
ranking - “first about the main thing, now about the constituent elements, and finally, the less significant...”;
logical chain - “if this is then, then we can assume that..., and therefore...”. The logical construction of the message should lead the interlocutor from drawing attention to interest, from interest to the main provisions, from the main provisions to objections and questions, from objections and questions to the conclusion, and from the conclusion to a call to action.

3.4. Barrier of logical misunderstanding

It occurs if a person, from our point of view, says or does something contrary to the rules of logic. Then we not only refuse to understand him, but also emotionally perceive his words negatively. At the same time, we implicitly assume that there is only one logic - correct, i.e. our.

Each person thinks, lives and acts according to his own logic, but in communication, unless these logics are correlated or if a person does not have a clear idea of his partner’s logic, a barrier of logical misunderstanding arises.

Overcoming a logical barrier is possible if the following conditions are met:

taking into account the logic and life position of the interlocutor. To do this, it is necessary to roughly imagine the position of the partner, the interlocutor (who he is, what positions he stands in, etc.), as well as individual and social-role characteristics, since the acceptability or unacceptability of a particular logic for a partner mainly depends on his initial orientation ;
correct argumentation.

Thus, barriers to communication are not the result of a conscious, voluntary and targeted defense against the effects of information. Their action is contradictory.

The barrier system is like an automated security system: when a security alarm is triggered, approaches to a person are automatically blocked; otherwise the human brain and psyche could be traumatized by the content or volume of information.

However, sometimes barriers also play a negative role. For example, difficultly presented but necessary information is not perceived or is perceived with distortions and incompletely. A person who knows the solution but lacks authority may not be heard. This contradiction can be resolved by knowledge of the socio-psychological characteristics of the listed barriers and ways to overcome them.

Author: Igor Nikolaevich Kyznetsov, image consultant, author of training programs on business communication and corporate culture.

Source

Causes

Lack of mutual understanding between interlocutors can arise for many reasons. These include:

level of intelligence;
unequal knowledge of the topic or subject of conversation;
differences in the lexicon and thesaurus (a set of concepts corresponding to any field of knowledge);
lack of understanding by partners of the communication situation;
different worldviews based on differences of social, cultural, political, religious, professional, national character.

Barriers between interlocutors often manifest themselves as individual characteristics of a psychological nature. Examples of communication barriers of this kind:

excessive frankness of one person and isolation of another;
resentment, mistrust, suspicion and other negative feelings directed at the partner;
intelligence versus assertiveness;
intuitive rejection of someone else's personality.

These filters can act in such a way that true information is perceived as erroneous, and false information becomes acceptable.