1. How well do
we communicate?
We
all believe we communicate well. We all believe we know the art of
communicating. We are confident we have no difficulty (in) communicating.
However, if we paused for a moment and thought about an instance or two, we
might just begin to wonder.
1 2
|
Raghu : Hi, Sundar!
Somu : …
Raghu : Go to hell!
|
|
Rani : How is your mother today?
Devi : Much better.
Rani : I want to visit her. I’ll join you
this
evening.
Devi : She’ll be happy. But my grandpa is
arriving. I have to get supper ready.
Rani: Okay. When are visitors allowed?
|
3
|
Joseph: Are you too busy, John?
John : I’m
completing Experiment 3 in the
Chemistry Lab Record.
Joseph: Oh.
John : You need
help? [Joseph nods] Okay.
Tell
me.
Joseph: Thanksda*. I don’t…
|
*
‘da’ is a suffix in Thamizh used between friends.
4.
|
Raju : [is answering an exercise on
tenses, has his pen between his
teeth, looking hard at the
exercise sheet (as if that would
somehow locate the answer for
him!)]
Raghu: Move over. Let me help you.
Raju : [moves
away without a word]
Raghu: [angrily] There’s always a next
time, my friend!
|
5
|
Sales Manager
: Sir, I need your
permission to
attend my
cousin’s
Shashtiaptapurthi.
General Manager: Permission? Don’t you
have any casual
leave
left?
Sales Manager
: No, sir.
General Manager: You’re a senior
manager. You
shouldn’t
have mismanaged
your
leave account.
How
could you have
planned
it so badly?
Sales Manager
:???
|
6
|
Floor
Supervisor: Babu, Can’t you ever
(accusingly) do a thing right?
Babu :
Sir, I was only mending
( taken unawares) …………
F.M. :
You mean you were
(glaring) fiddling.
Babu :
Sir, …..
(clearly
upset)
F. M. :
Don’t argue with me.
(cutting
him off)
Babu :
No, sir. Let me…..
(firmly)
F.M. :
How dare you talk
(threatening) back to me?
Babu :
Yes, sir. I mean, no
(bewildered) sir. (!)
|
A
few more instances of communication. Read on.
7.
|
I had once submitted an article for consideration for
publication in a magazine to be brought out by the Ministry of Education in
an African country for which I was working on a contract. The article
depicted the feelings of a frustrated teacher and how he viewed his students,
his colleagues and his principal.
A top ministry official was very angry and threatened
to cancel my contract. His accusations implied that I was referring to the
local students and the principal and that my article was an affront to his
nation and race.
I was perplexed because I thought that my
article would be seen as no more than a literary piece based on imagination.
I was naïve enough to expect objective assessment of my article because the
official was highly educated. Instead, the officer perceived me not as a
writer but as a foreigner who in his perception had no right to comment or
say the things that I’d said in the article.
|
8.
|
A young fresh teacher entered his class for the first
time. While lecturing, he observed two women students chatting and smiling
while looking at him on and off, and he concluded that they were not only
disrespectful but mocking at him and that they were not behaving as women
students should. When he warned them and put them in their places, one woman
student got up to say that she and her friend had not done anything to
deserve the warning; the teacher became enraged at this audacity and punished
them in as many ways as he could think of.
|
Communication
in dialogues 2 and 3 goes on smoothly whereas in 1, 4, 5 and 6 you notice
barriers to communication, don’t you? The two
incidents in 7 and 8 are two clear instances where barriers to communication
are working effectively!
Or think of some other ordinary events. Like,
for instance, ordering a coffee. I might order a coffee, drink it, pay for it
and leave the hotel. Or the server might come late to receive the order or
bring the coffee late. Based on my perceptions and attitudes, I might draw
inferences that are not there in the server’s behaviour, and what might follow
could be unpleasant for the server and me as well. Let’s say somebody knocks on
the door, I take a little time to reach the door, in the meantime, the knock
gets longer and louder. I might not make much of the longer and the louder
knock, open the door, speak to the person. Or influenced by my perceptions of
how a person knocking at a door should behave, I might misinterpret the event and
there could be trouble! And the guest may have his ideas of me for not
answering the door immediately!
2. Barriers to
communication
What
are these barriers?
These
barriers can be classified as ‘intrapersonal’, ‘interpersonal’ and
‘organizational’.
Intrapersonal
refers to barriers coming from within an individual. Interpersonal
refers to barriers arising from actions or no actions between individuals.
Organizational combines intrapersonal and interpersonal barriers in the place
of work.
What are barriers after all?
Obstacles
or obstructions that prevent genuine communication.
3. kinds
Barriers
are of two kinds: 1. internal [occurring within an individual and between
individuals] 2. external [environment
outside the individuals]
1.
Internal Barriers
Communicating
or not communicating depends on assumptions and expectations. In the eight
samples presented in the previous pages are examples of assumptions and
expectations.
In
sample 1, Raghu considers Somu his friend [assumption], so greets him
and expects response from Somu
but Somu doesn’t respond [probably he assumes, for whatever reason,
Raghu is not his friend]. Raghu’s expectation is not fulfilled, he gets upset
and says something unpleasant. The barriers are assumptions and nonfulfillment
of expectations.
In
sample 4, Raghu tries to help Raju but Raju doesn’t accept it. The barriers
here are Raghu’s assumption that Raju would want help and Raju is perhaps too
proud to accept help from anyone, even from Raghu who may be his friend.
In
sample 5, the barrier is the authoritative attitude and the tone of the GM. He
could’ve refused permission without being bossy. The sales manager assumes that
exhausting casual leave and asking for a day’s permission is no crime. But the
GM thinks so because he believes that no subordinate should exhaust casual
leave early.
In
sample 6, the barriers are [1] the floor supervisor’s assumption that a worker
should observe silence, respond only by accepting his boss’s reprimand, and
that he is haughty if he tries to respond [2] Babu’s assumption that he is
entitled to explaining his position and his explanation is not arguing with his
boss on equal terms.
In
sample 7, the barriers are the perceptions and the resultant assumptions and
expectations. Because the article portrayed a negative picture, the ministry
official saw the article through his perception of who a foreigner should be
and interpreted the article as an offrent. Because I expected the ‘educated’
ministry official to look at the article as no more than an imaginary piece.
Both of us failed to acknowledge that there could be difference between
intended and perceived meanings irrespective of whether or not we were
‘educated’.
In
sample 8, the teacher’s perceptions of how a woman student should behave in a
classroom and the student’s perception of how a teacher should perceive her
behaviour stand as barriers. The teacher felt he was superior and his
superiority meant that no student should question his interpretation. The women
students should not have thought it their right to chat and smile while looking
at the teacher and expect the teacher to accept their behaviour.
Perception
is a view, an image, idea or understanding of people, places, things. It
leads to assumptions. These assumptions lead to expectations. Now
the questions is: how is perception formed?
|
perceptions of
|
|
____________________________________________
| | | |
self
image image
of health relationship
| others between
speaker
|
|
and listener
_____________________
Formed
and expressed through
|
_________________________________________
| | | | | |
language body stereo culture
silence physical
language types characteristics
|
This
box contains all the barriers arising from ‘intrapersonal’ and ‘interpersonal’
behaviour like ‘wrong assumptions’, ‘varied perceptions’, ‘various
backgrounds’, ‘wrong inferences’, ‘prejudices’, ‘complexes –superior/inferior’,
‘lack in language use’, ‘mismatch between verbal and nonverbal communication’,
‘emotions, ‘being selective in focusing only on specific portions of message’,
‘cultural variations’ .
Self image
This refers to
what you are, who you are as you grow out of
your experience
[your abilities, attitudes, values,
emotions, feelings, needs, memory, thinking etc.]
In
other words, you think of yourself as a superior, modest or inferior
person. Non-English medium students, for instance, may behave confidently even
if they are unable to use English as a medium.
Image of others
This refers to
the
pictures you have of other people as superior, modest or inferior persons.
You
may think well or ill of their language abilities, of their body language; you
may or may not like their physical appearance [height, weight, colour, hair
etc.], dress, perceptions, attitudes.
‘he doesn’t like me’, ‘she looks pretty’, ‘he looks aggressive’, ‘she is
so selfish’, ‘he thinks he’s an expert on women’, ‘she thinks she can teach me
a thing or two’, ‘oh god, what colours does she choose’ are how we think about
others.
Health
This refers to
physical
condition [ill or well], physical ease [comfortable or not], mental disposition
[mood, motivation, willingness, confidence, curiosity, concern, fear, doubt and
so on].
Relationship
between you and others
This refers to
the
closeness or distance you’ve developed or you’ll develop with people around
you.
All
these factors impinge on the communicating act every time, every moment
favourably or unfavourably. They may become barriers to or support interaction.
2.
External Barriers
They
are: 1. location 2. noise 3. audience 4. authority
Location:
This refers to the climate and the geography of the place of communication.
‘Climate’ refers to atmosphere
available for communication. If music is
blaring on one side, if heavy
traffic flows on either side of the building, if a
politician’s voice amplified,
the climate cannot be thought of as congenial to
communication.
Noise : It is anything that makes it hard for a
communication act to complete, anything
that interrupts and makes
sending or receiving messages difficult. It can be external
like a noisy restaurant,
construction noise outside, music blaring and
deafening, traffic snarls and
the resultant noise, children playing nearby. Or it can
be internal such as poor use of
language [vocabulary and structure],
pronunciation, too low or high
a volume, delivery speed, distracting
mannerisms, body language seen
as unpleasant.
Audience
: This refers to people in the communication scene. They can influence a
communication. Presence or absence of
one individual or certain individuals,
arrival or departure of a
person or a group of persons in a communicating
situation may change the
complexion of the communication. Say, your were
about to confide in your
friend (leaning close) and somebody walked in,
you’d shut up (drawing
away). Or you could be prepared to come out with
your story once a person was
out of earshot. You may wait to pass on
information until someone
you wanted to be present arrived.
Authority
: This is part of organizational barriers. Exercise of excessive
authority
prevents open and frank and
encourages pretence and routine. Again, a
management may have so many
channels that communication can get
distorted. Communication in
a team can become difficult if it consists of
people believing in different
value systems. And there may be too many
messages to receive and
hence there may be difficulty in comprehension.
Conclusion
When
two or more than two people converse, more often than not, their efforts can
fail for one reason or the other; the culprit could be how the speaker, the listener
or both how they see themselves and others and other things in a communicating
environment.
The
intention of this article is to not frighten readers, not to picture
communicating as an extremely arduous activity but to point out aspects that
can hamper or hinder an attempt at communicating , and so to bear in mind these
and proceed in such a manner as to help the other person feel comfortable and
to conduct communicating as smooth as possible.
_________________________________________________________________________________
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