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12.2 Communication Barriers
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
1. Understand different ways that the communication process can be
sidetracked.

2. Understand the problem of poor listening and how to promote active
listening.
Barriers to Effective Communication
Communicating can be more of a challenge than you think, when you realize
the many things that can stand in the way of effective communication. These include
filtering, selective perception, information overload, emotional disconnects, lack of
source familiarity or credibility, workplace gossip, semantics, gender differences,
differences in meaning between Sender and Receiver, and biased language. Let’s
examine each of these barriers.
Filtering
Filtering is the distortion or withholding of information to manage a person’s
reactions. Some examples of filtering include a manager who keeps her division’s
poor sales figures from her boss, the vice president, fearing that the bad news will
make him angry. The old saying, “Don’t shoot the messenger!” illustrates the
tendency of Receivers (in this case, the vice president) to vent their negative response
to unwanted Messages on the Sender. A gatekeeper (the vice president’s assistant,
perhaps) who doesn’t pass along a complete Message is also filtering. The vice
president may delete the e-mail announcing the quarter’s sales figures before reading
it, blocking the Message before it arrives.
As you can see, filtering prevents members of an organization from getting a
complete picture of the way things are. To maximize your chances of sending and
receiving effective communications, it’s helpful to deliver a Message in multiple
ways and to seek information from multiple sources. In this way, the effect of any
one person’s filtering the Message will be diminished.
Since people tend to filter bad news more during upward communication, it is
also helpful to remember that those below you in an organization may be wary of
sharing bad news. One way to defuse the tendency to filter is to reward employees
who clearly convey information upward, regardless of whether the news is good and
bad.
Here are some of the criteria that individuals may use when deciding whether
to filter a Message or pass it on:
• Past experience: Was the Sender rewarded for passing along news of this
kind in the past, or was she criticized?
• Knowledge, perception of the speaker: Has the Receiver’s direct superior
made it clear that “no news is good news?”
• Emotional state, involvement with the topic, level of attention: Does the
Sender’s fear of failure or criticism prevent him from conveying the Message? Is
the topic within his realm of expertise, increasing his confidence in his ability to
decode it, or is he out of his comfort zone when it comes to evaluating the
Message’s significance? Are personal concerns impacting his ability to judge the
Message’s value?

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