Communication Barriers

Communication Barriers

Communication is playing nowadays one of the most important roles in organizations and companies, because it is the only source of mutual understanding among employees and customers, directors and suppliers, etc. Future success of an international company mainly depends on its ability to use language and to communicate effectively not only within organization/company, but also across cultural boundaries. Therefore, the two main barriers in communication are cultural differences and hierarchy or status.

Firstly, it is necessary to outline that learning cross-cultural communication is nowadays not only necessity; it is not only an option.

Cultural differences are based on different background and usually they involve religion and values, roles and status, decision-making customs, concepts of time, concepts of personal space, body language, social behavior and manners, etc. Understanding how to communicate cross-culturally will assist business developing in   promoting creating smoothly working project teams; responding to customers, clients, and markets; living and working in a culturally diverse world. Those people who know how to use language and how to communicate cross-culturally have a crucial advantage over other businesses.

It is known that the more differences exist between cultures, the more difficult is the process of intercultural communication, especially in business sphere. Actually, the first step in learning how to communicate with other cultures is to learn the details of that culture.

Secondly, hierarchy and status also affects communication process, because the fact that a person is a boss certainly create barrier to open and sincere communication. Boss is responsible for determining rewards and penalties and thus he is often treated negatively. Therefore, the only way to improve the situation is collaboration approach meaning that boss has to motivate employees to share information and, furthermore, he has to introduce rewarding systems for skillful employees to show that he really respects their work.

References

Hargie, Owen.  (2003). Skilled Interpersonal Communication: Research, Theory, and Practice. London: Routledge.