Community Setting
Communication is a common aspect of everyday life that entails the passing of information from one person to another. Individuals communicate in every setting, and no operation, function, or work takes place without effective means of communication. The communication process suffers from a wide range of avoidable and unavoidable communication inhibitors. Individuals strive to acquire all the required skills, attitudes, and traits amongst themselves to effectively overcome all the communication inhibitors.
I work at Del Sur SDAC JV, LLC Washington DC as a data entry clerk. The organization is a mechanical contractors and facilities support company that provides federal government customers with a team experienced in delivering maintenance, facility management, investment and support, and construction. Communication plays a vital role in Del Sur SDAC JV, LLC because it is a diversified workplace where employees come from different ethnicities, social status, religion, age, and gender. Communication is one of the elements of the firm's behavior and helps connect employees so that they can achieve a common goal. The organization uses communication to inform employees about tasks, policies, rules, and other issues affecting the firm. Communication helps in maintaining the human resource and assists the firm in setting goals and develop a plan it will use to achieve them. Moreover, Del Sur SDAC JV, LLC, uses communication to create an atmosphere that allows employees to share their views and help in motivation, guidance, and management.
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The various communication inhibitors affecting Del Sur SDAC JV, LLC include cultural diversity, environment, organizational barriers, and emotional barriers. The inhibitors refer to factors that distort, filter, or blocks the message when conveying the information from the sender to the recipient. Communication inhibitors usually occur because of the words people choose, how they use them, and the meaning they give them in a communication process.
Definition of Communication Inhibitors
Cultural Barrier
Cultural diversity affects the communication process because of differences in languages, symbols, signs, beliefs, and behavior. Culture gives rise to manners and opinions, ethnocentrism, and prejudices. Cultural diversity causes differences in behavior and personality like thinking, body language, and speech intonation and patterns, which can cause miscommunication in the work environment.
Environment
Environmental barriers to communication include space, time, physical distance, external noise, and climate. External noise inhibits an effective communication process by making it impossible or difficult for individuals to hear one another. Noise also changes physical cues because an individual might shout to be heard and alter how they deliver communication. The physical distance between individuals affects the way they communicate. For instance, when communicating persons are too far apart, telephonic conversations may not prove to be very useful. Climate can affect the communication process, mainly due to too high or too cold temperatures that can make people frustrated, agitated, and uncomfortable during a communication process.
Organizational Barriers
Organizational barriers of communication emanate from a firm's weaknesses such as the authoritarian attitude of the management, organization rules and policies, and complex organizational structure. Dictatorial attitude due to the status of hierarchical structures in organizations makes communication between individuals occupying higher levels and those in lower levels difficult. The formal communications acts as a barrier to effective communication when lower-level employees develop a reluctance to send messages to their superiors because of fears of sending faulty or wrong messages. Organizational policies define the mode, medium, and message of communication that employees must use. Employees escape themselves from sending messages due to the stringent rules leading to delays in transmission. Complex organizational structure affects the communication process due to the greater number of management levels that delay information and might change the message before it reaches the intended receiver.
Emotional Barriers
Emotional barriers affect the communication process due to mental limitations in a person. In an emotional state of mind or under stress, individuals' mind does not see things normally. Individuals' unique values, perceptions, backgrounds, and expectations can motivate a sender to encode and a receiver to decode information in the communication process. At times, individuals may not develop an interest in communicating with other employees because of feelings of anger, fear, or mistrust that may arise within their minds.
A Table of Communication Samples and Inhibitors
|
Communication Example |
Inhibitor Type |
Justification of the Inhibitor |
| "I cannot deal with African Americans; they are arrogant and impatient." | Cultural barrier | The quote from an employee refusing to deal with an African American customer indicates the role of cultural factors in the communication process. A cultural barrier occurs when individuals from different cultures cannot communicate effectively due to diverse factors such as customs, languages, backgrounds, viewpoints, customs, and ideas. A variety of problems may arise when individuals from different countries, values, races, and corners of the world interact in the globalized business environment. Employees working in multicultural teams and serving diverse target groups encounter many challenges, conflicts, and disagreements. Cultural communication barriers in the work environment lead to misunderstandings due to differences in values and beliefs among individuals. The cultural variations promote high levels of uncertainty and anxiety that yield misunderstanding. The employee termed African Americans as arrogant and impatient because of value judgments about people. Inadequate information about individuals promotes unintelligent choices when communicating with individuals from different cultures. Cultural stereotypes overgeneralize or exaggerate what individuals perceive others and increases anxiety. Every person enacts a stereotype on others, especially due to a lack of knowledge about them, or born out of fear of the person they stereotype. Hostile and inaccurate stereotypes about individuals from other places can be a barrier to communication in the workplace. |
| A supervisor walking around the room while talking over the phone repeated the phrases, "what? Sorry I can't hear you, pardon, please repeat, I didn't get that you're in a noisy place." The supervisor disconnected the phone, observed it, called back, and after a long pause, said, "I still can't hear you!" |
Environment |
The call made by the supervisor indicated that he could not effectively communicate with the person on the other end. The communication inhibitor, in this case, was the environment due to a wide range of factors such as noise, time, and distance. Noise may be physical due to disturbances that occur because of background or outside disruption and environment, or technological, occurring in the channel or medium of communication, such as lack of sound while talking on phone or message sending failure in chats. The factor of time and distance could have forced the supervisor to use the telephonic mode of communication rather than wait for face-to-face interaction. If the supervisor did not deliver the message at the appropriate time, the message could have lost the impact it should have, causing barriers in communication. The distance between the messenger and the recipient added more requirements and barriers to communication, creating the need for more technical channels. Face-to-face communication is easier because it has more communication channels and has the least physical barriers. Noise disrupted the communication process and acted as a barrier making the message less productive and unclear. |
| "I can't talk to this client. I'm the manager, not a sales representative." | Organizational barrier | Organizational barriers to the communication process in this context occurs as a result of authority relationships, organizational structure, or rules and regulations. The problem occurs due to organizational structures that damage relationships between managers and their subordinates. The communication barrier inhibits effective reliance of information and creates the potential for misunderstandings and differing expectations. Such antiquated ordering systems can prevent streamlined communications among employees in different departments within the firm. The hierarchical position of the manager in the firm acts as a barrier to effective communication because low-level employees, such as sale representatives, might be reluctant to send information to their superiors due to fear of sending the wrong message. |
| "Your suggestion does not make sense. What do you know about antivirus anyway!" | Emotional Barrier | The examples indicate emotional barriers to effective communication. Emotional inhibitors occur when people do not develop an interest in communicating with others due to pride, anger, mistrust, or feelings of fear. Anger affects the communication process by inhibiting the brain from processing information effectively. Angry people often have difficulties in processing logical information, limiting their ability to accept solutions and explanations offered by others. Pride affects effective communication because of the need to be right all the time and shutting the chance to hear other people's perspectives. |
Organization’s Communication Effectiveness
On a scale of 1-100, Del Sur SDAC JV, LLC, has a rating of 80 in terms of communication effectiveness. The organization focuses on eliminating the various forms of communication barriers to achieving success in the international business environment. The organization understands the value of effective communication and strives to eliminate inhibitors that may jeopardize its international negotiation, global marketing, consumer behavior, free trade policies, team building, staffing, and interpersonal relationships.
Del Sur SDAC JV, LLC, addresses cultural barriers of communication by promoting cross-cultural competence to achieve its objectives and accord due respect to beliefs, norms, and values of all its stakeholders. The firm conducts cross-cultural knowledge training to all its staff to enable them to admit and recognize the existence of cultural diversity in the workplace. The organization offers language training to employees with more chances of interacting with foreigners. The firm also promotes cross-cultural competence by enforcing a mutual benefit policy for all the cultures in the workplace.
Del Sur SDAC JV, LLC, overcomes the organizational barrier of communication by forming a positive workplace culture. The firm's policy emphasizes the need for politeness and respect when interacting with superiors, subordinates, and colleagues to create an integrated work environment. The firm emphasizes on efficiently managing and supervising the subordinates, working in coordination with co-workers, and maintaining trustworthy relationships with the employers and superiors.
Del Sur SDAC JV, LLC overcomes environment or physical communication barriers by addressing the factors of time, distance, and noise. The firm thrives on collaboration and adopts an open office space as well as quite stations to give employees who need time for themselves a break from the bustle during certain work activities. The firm uses video conferencing tools with effective sound and video quality to eliminate the factor of distance. The organization addresses emotional barriers of communication through training programs that focus on helping employees to handle their emotions. The program addresses the need for employees to be genuine rather than manipulative, focus on others, analyze their perceptions, and work on improving their perceptions.
