Effectiveness of communication greatly contributes to the success of an organization and the performance of its managers. Therefore, it is imperative for an organization to improve the free flow of communication overcoming the possible barriers.
Some communication barriers cannot be eliminated altogether but at least they can be controlled. To overcome communication barriers, following methods could be followed by any organization:
1. Employee Orientation:
If employees are given orientation about organizational objectives, policies, procedures, programmes, authority relations, etc., it minimizes the communication barriers significantly. This apart, employees are required to be communicated about the vision, mission, goals, objectives, strategies and even, if required, they need to be involved in developing the same. Such participation enhances commitment from employees.
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This transparency on the part of the organization keeps the employees informed about the different issues concerning the organization. Unfortunately, this aspect gets neglected in organization, which culminates into conflict and creates organizational barriers.
There are examples of many success stories in the corporate world, where employee orientation could help the organizations to achieve even more than the planned rate of growth. Wal-Mart is an example to emulate. Wal-Mart is the biggest retail mall in the world and has more than 14.5 lakh people working on their pay-roll.
It follows the strategy of EDLP, i.e., every day lower price, and even in global economic downturn achieving significant growth rate. It considers their employees as associates and even share with them the strategic information like pricing, inventory-holding costs (when items remain in the store unsold), freight charges, etc. In the process, associates at the retail outlet level get the flexibility of deciding the sale price of the items independently. Wal-Mart emphasizes more on sales volume, rather than per unit profit margin.
2. Improving Interpersonal Relations:
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Improved interpersonal relations develop mutuality in organizations; employees become cooperative, and they work together for accomplishing the organizational goals. This requires superiors to respect the dignity and authority of their subordinates, which in turn develops subordinates’ trust on superiors.
This helps in eliminating issues concerning the status differences. Such an environment in an organization makes it possible for the manager to communicate freely even through their personal contacts and truly make communication a two-way process.
3. Empathetic Listening:
Due to the typical managerial attitude, quite often, the upward communication gets greatly distorted. In course of discussions with the subordinates, managers often talk more without allowing the subordinates express their feelings and emotions. Lack of such listening quite obviously creates barriers to communication, as managers evaluate information without getting the free and frank response from subordinates.
4. Using Proper Language:
Barriers to communication are often created due to the semantic distortions. This can be avoided using direct, simple and meaningful language in communication. Avoiding technical terms, words with more than one meaning, difficult symbols, etc., makes it possible to eliminate communication barriers.
5. Communication through Actions:
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Action speaks louder than words. When subordinates communicate and superiors do not act upon the suggestions, it sends a message back, which dissuades future communication. Same thing also happens when superiors differ from what they say. This leads to a situation when subordinates listen and will not act upon. Such barriers, therefore, require to be eliminated through actions and deeds.
6. Judicious Use of Grapevine:
Grapevine is important for communication. However, at times when managers depend too much on grapevine, ignoring official channels of communication, it develops a culture of informal communication and thereby creates barriers to communication. Hence, grapevine needs to be judiciously used.
7. Lack of Information Feedback:
Communication is essentially a two-way process; hence, feedback is very important. When there is no information feedback, it creates barriers to communication. Even in face-to-face communication, body language may provide a successful feedback.