What are the major barriers to communications?

When certain information is being transmitted to the receiver, it has to pass through a process of decoding and filtering. Only then can it be received and interpreted by the receiver. Unfortunately, there are a number of factors that create problems in the decoding and filtering process. These are known collectively as communication barriers.

A short list of problems that may negatively affect the decoding of a message transmitted includes past experience, intelligence, personality, expectations, language, culture, semantics, reputation, and situation.

There are many other factors. It is clear that we have to pay attention to breaking down the barriers in order to be sure the information is being transferred and perceived accurately.

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Among the communication barriers, we should first of all pay attention to individual ones. We mentioned some of them before, including different assumptions, emotions, semantics, cultural background, etc. Unfortunately, these barriers are not the only ones that we have to face in order to increase the efficiency of our communications. Organizational structure also puts its own restrictions on an open exchange of information and efficient communications. As we have already mentioned, communications are built in a very different manner in the three major types of organizations. The project organization could be regarded as best for efficient communications because there is a single authority and a single goal, and good horizontal linkages are developed among the members of the organization.

In a functional organization, the communications can be set pretty efficiently within one department because of the similarity in technical and educational backgrounds and goals and attitudes among the people in the department. However, the interdepartmental horizontal communications as well as vertical communications through a number of management levels can create a real problem in understanding. Investigations show that the information distributed at the top level of management of the company loses 80 percent of its content as it filters down to the worker.

A matrix organization is probably the most difficult environment for communications. Although the people participating in each project are united around the same major goals and objectives for this project, the differences in their professional and technical backgrounds often create problems in communicating. To that you may also add the difference in goals between "vertical" (functional) and "horizontal" (project) management, the fact that a number of projects involving the same people can be going on simultaneously, and the temporary position of people on the project, which sometimes does not allow enough time to set up good relationships, etc. All that emphasizes the fact that it is extremely important to a project manager to manage well both the interpersonal skills of improving communications efficiency and the skills needed for setting up an efficient communication infrastructure in the project (communications management plans, staffing plans, a responsibilityaccountability matrix, organizational charts, etc).