Barriers to Communication
27th Sep, 2021What are some various barriers to communication, and how do you overcome them?
This post is related to a college assignment about writing a blog post regarding barriers to effective communication.
When engaging in conversation with a person or audience, there are many barriers to communication that you have to keep in mind to preserve effective communication.
Language Barrier
Not being able to speak the language that your audience uses means that they will not understand what you say.
Interpreters can help get over this issue but learning the language itself will help engage your audience more as they won’t have to keep swapping between speakers.
Auditory
People will not be able to hear you if they are deaf. A sign language interpreter will help them understand your communication, however, just like before, it’s preferable to learn sign language yourself and interpret live so that your audience doesn’t need to swap between speakers.
Incoherence
Mumbling, stuttering, and slurring your speech can make it completely incoherent and your audience will not be able to understand you. Make sure to rehearse your speech and stay confident, and make sure to be clear so your audience can hear you. An alternative is to have a teleprompter or a similar method of reading your script so that you can avoid misspeaking.
Disengagement
If your audience is not engaged with the communication, they will not absorb information or bother listening. Make your speech interesting by adding things the audience can relate to whilst keeping it appropriate.
Distractions
If you are attempting to establish communication in a distracting environment, your audience may be more interested in other things if you don’t make your communication engaging. Reduce distractions as much as possible such as moving to a more closed space.
Multimedia
If your communication doesn’t have multimedia (images, videos, audio) your audience may become disengaged with it. Adding images and videos can emphasise parts of your communication and re-engage your audience. If you’re doing a PowerPoint, using animations can also re-engage audience members.
Body Language
If your audience sees your body language as negative, they will become disengaged and become negative themselves. Keep your body language positive and engaging. Audiences tend to reflect your body language, so by using positive body language they will become positive.
Informal Language
Usage of words such as slang words can result in your communication being unintelligible for certain people who do not know what the slang means. Keep your vocabulary simple and avoid terms that your audience may not understand. This makes it so everyone is on the same page, and not just people from a certain community.
Unorganisaed
If you are stumbling through your communication because you never organised it or planned, your audience will not take you seriously and will disengage. Plan and rehearse your communication to make sure you stay on track and don’t disengage the audience. As before, you can use a teleprompter or some other method of reading a script to act as a point of reference.
Unpresentable
Without a proper presentation set up, your audience will not understand your communication well and may even completely misunderstand what you say. Make sure your communication is presentable, either by practicing it to make sure it makes sense, or with someone else and ask for feedback. Asking someone else for feedback also has the advantage of knowing how your ideas came across to an audience.