Effective Communication: Overcoming Barriers in the Workplace Report

This report delves into the realm of effective communication within a professional setting, emphasizing its pivotal role in fostering successful manager-employee relationships and overall organizational productivity. It begins by defining effective communication as a two-way process where the message sent is understood by the receiver, thereby fulfilling the communication's purpose. The report then identifies various barriers to effective communication, including linguistic, socio-religious, psychological, and technological hurdles, which can hinder the flow of information and ideas. To overcome these barriers, the report highlights the importance of developing strong communication skills such as active listening, empathy, providing and receiving feedback, and maintaining a positive and responsive attitude. The author reflects on their own communication skills, identifying both strengths and weaknesses based on a self-assessment and the Kolb's learning model, and suggests strategies for improvement, such as focusing on the issue rather than the person, ensuring clarity in communication, and seeking regular feedback from employees. The report concludes that effective communication is essential for building trust and achieving organizational goals, emphasizing the significance of communication skills in mitigating barriers and fostering a productive work environment.

Running head: EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION
Effective Communication
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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Introduction
Effective communication is a two way communication sharing process, where the
verbal speech that contains information reaches the receiver. Effective communication works
when the message sent by the sender is understood by the receiver, and the purpose of the
communication is fulfilled (Hussain, 2013). Effective communication in a workplace
involves the process of exchange of information and the ideas in the process of an open
communication. It facilitates commercial success and builds relationships between the
individuals so that the people can work for achieving their goal and can progress further. It
also helps the employees to experience an increase in the morale and commitment.
Discussion:
According to Jackson (2015), the flow of communication among the people and in an
organisation gets affected by different barriers. Three potential barriers to communication are
linguistic and socio religious barriers, psychological barriers and technological barriers. The
language barrier interrupts an effective communication since language is the most important
tool of communication. An organisational workplace involves employees of various dialects
and of different cultural backgrounds (Onea, 2013). Even the people may have different
linguistic skills. With the globalisation, the workplaces may have people from all regions of
the world and they can differ from one another in cultural perspectives. Thus communication
in one particular language or concentrating on one particular religion or culture could be
incomprehensible for the others. Even there can be several mental as well as psychological
issues among the employees, which can have a negative impact over the communication
process. They may suffer from fear, phobia, or speech disorders and depressions, which limit
communication. With the fast advancement of technology, it is often a challenge to keep

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oneself updated with the new developments. Thus the technology can also act as a barrier to
effective communication (Jureddi & Brahmaiah, 2016).
According to Zulch (2014), in order to have an effective communication, an
individual needs to have proper communication skills. Barriers of communication can
interrupt and limit communication, but one can overcome the barriers by having the effective
communication skills which include active listening, friendliness, confidence, receiving and
giving feedback, having empathy and respect for others, having a positive understanding and
lastly having a responsive character. It is extremely important for a person to consider the
audience and paying close attention to what they have to say. An active listener can
effectively communicate with his audience if he listens, understands and apprehends the
situation they are in. Honesty and kindness and being friendly foster trust and understanding
in the workplace relationships. This can further foster productivity and communication.
Strong communications involve the feedback mechanism where it is important to give as well
as accept feedback and solutions which can strengthen the organisational base (Dasgupta
Suar & Singh, 2014). Responding to the situations in a positive attitude and being responsive
can improve communication and make it fast and effective. By incorporating and improving
these skills, people can overcome the psychological as well as linguistic barriers, listening to
the audience, receiving feedback from them and respecting those help to overcome the
barriers.
According to the reflective practice model, and the feedback received from the self
assessment, I am quite open minded and I have no problem in adapting myself to situations
and change decisions according to the others. I tend to self-access my decisions and I can
keep myself cool and calm while having a communication with the other employees. When
group discussions get heated up, I have the communication skill to keep everyone calm and
settle the issue down by being a strong and effective communicator. In meetings, I don’t

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shout on people. Instead I have this skill of reading the boy language of others. An effective
communication skill involves being god at getting one’s point across with precision and in a
concise manner without much elaboration. According to the self assessment, it can be
considered that I possess this ability. According to the Kolb’s learning model, I do have an
active experience of an effective communication and the meetings that I have taken part has
helped me to reflect on my strengths and weaknesses of experiences. On basis of the
experience, I must strategize plans and improve my communication skills, by putting them
effectively into practise.
Being the branch manager of the organisation ABC, I at times lack the
communication skills, which create barriers in the effective communication. I often don’t
listen to what the other employees have to say and tend to get intimidated by the situations
where I am expected to communicate with the difficult employees (Nisbet & Shucksmith,
2017). I should focus more on the issue and not the persons. Although being manipulative is
somewhat necessary, I should be more genuine in my decisions. In order to address the other
lingual people, I should make sure that the house journals that are published have the
information in the major lingual languages so that the communication barriers can be
overcome. Also making of oral reports could be useful so that the psychological barriers of
communication can be overcome. People who have a problem reading reports can be
communicated and they can receive the information with oral reports. Along with these, I
must ask for weekly feedback from the employees so that they can keep their trust intact and
the manager employee relationship is maintained, with a promise to improve the productivity
of the organisation (Brandler & Roman, 2015). Along with the feedback, the directions that I
give to my employees must be comprehensible from their end so that the effective
communication process is complete.

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Conclusion:
Thus from the above discussion it can be concluded that effective communication is
essential for an organisation to maintain the employee manager relationship and to build the
trust with the company so that the end productivity is achieved. The barriers of
communication indeed result in interrupted communication between persons but
communication skills such as being an active listener, and having proper focus on what to
listen, taking in consideration the lingual priorities and being responsive enough to provide
and receive feedback can help the communication to be more effective.

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References:
A. Dasgupta, S., Suar, D., & Singh, S. (2014). Managerial communication practices
and employees’ attitudes and behaviours: A qualitative study. Corporate Communications:
An International Journal, 19(3), 287-302.
Brandler, S., & Roman, C. P. (2015). Group work: Skills and strategies for effective
interventions. Routledge.
Husain, Z. (2013). Effective communication brings successful organizational
change. The Business & Management Review, 3(2), 43.
Jackson, D. (2015). Employability skill development in work-integrated learning:
Barriers and best practice. Studies in Higher Education, 40(2), 350-367.
Jureddi, D. N., & Brahmaiah, N. (2016). Barriers to effective communication. Journal
of English Language and Literature, 3(2), 114-115.
Nisbet, J., & Shucksmith, J. (2017). Learning strategies. Routledge.
Onea, A. N. (2013). Levels of culture and barriers in organizational
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128.
Zulch, B. (2014). Leadership communication in project management. Procedia-Social
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