Barriers to Communication

Brief introduction

• It's not always easy and often takes a lot of determination. But making an effort to remove the obstacles - tangible and intangible - that stand in our way, can be the key to building relationships that really work.

• Many people think that communicating is easy. • It is after all something we've done all our lives. • There is some truth in this simplistic view. • Communicating is straightforward. What makes it complex, difficult, and frustrating

are the barriers we put in the way:

1. Physical barriers

Physical barriers in the workplace include: • marked out territories, empires and fiefdoms into which

strangers are not allowed• closed office doors, barrier screens, separate areas for people

of different status• large working areas or working in one unit that is physically

separate from others.

• Research shows that one of the most important factors in building cohesive teams is proximity. As long as people still have a personal space that they can call their own, nearness to others aids communication because it helps us get to know

one another.

2. Perceptual barriers

The problem with communicating with others is that we all see the world differently. If we didn't, we would have no need to communicate: something like extrasensory perception would take its place.

The following anecdote is a reminder of how our thoughts, assumptions and perceptions shape our own realities:

A traveller was walking down a road when he met a man from the next town. "Excuse me," he said. "I am hoping to stay in the next town tonight. Can you tell me what the townspeople are like?"

"Well," said the townsman, "how did you find the people in the last town you visited?"

"Oh, they were an irascible bunch. Kept to themselves. Took me for a fool. Over-charged me for what I got. Gave me very poor service."

"Well, then," said the townsman, "you'll find them pretty much the same here."

3. Emotional barriers

• One of the chief barriers to open and free communications is the emotional barrier. It is comprised mainly of fear, mistrust and suspicion. The roots of our emotional mistrust of others lie in our childhood and infancy when we were taught to be careful what we said to others.

• "Don't speak until you're spoken to"; "Children should be seen and not heard". As a result many people hold back from communicating their thoughts and feelings to others.

• They feel vulnerable. While some caution may be wise in certain relationships, excessive fear of what others might think of us can stunt our development as effective communicators and our ability to form meaningful relationships.

4. Cultural barriers

• When we join a group and wish to remain in it, sooner or later we need to adopt the behaviour patterns of the group. These are the behaviours that the group accept as signs of belonging.

• The group rewards such behaviour through acts of recognition, approval and inclusion. In groups which are happy to accept you, and where you are happy to conform, there is a mutuality of interest and a high level of win-win contact.

• Where, however, there are barriers to your membership of a group, a high level of game-playing replaces good communication.

Lack of cultural sensitivity

Culture comes in many shapes and sizes. It includes areas such as politics, history, faith, mentality, behaviour and lifestyle.

The following examples demonstrate how a lack of cultural sensitivity led to failure:

a. When colouring in 800,000 pixels on a map of India, Microsoft coloured eight of them a different shade of green to represent the disputed Kashmiri territory. The difference in greens meant Kashmir was shown as non-Indian, and the product was promptly banned in India. Microsoft was left to recall all 200,000 copies of the offending Windows 95 operating system software to try and heal the diplomatic wounds. It cost them millions.

b. The fast food giant McDonald's spent thousands on a new TV ad to target the Chinese consumer. The ad showed a Chinese man kneeling before a McDonald's vendor and begging him to accept his expired discount coupon. The ad was pulled due to a lack of cultural sensitivity on McDonald's behalf. The ad caused uproar over the fact that begging is considered a shameful act in Chinese culture.

c. When the US firm Gerber started selling baby food in Africa they used the same packaging as in the US, i.e. with a picture of a baby on the label. Sales flopped and they soon realised that in Africa companies typically place pictures of contents on their labels.

d. The film Hollywood Buddha showed a complete lack of cultural sensitivity by causing outrage and protest on the streets of Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Burma when the designer of the film's poster decided to show the lead actor sitting on the Buddha's head, an act of clear degradation against something holy.

e. The concept of Big Brother was somehow taken to the Middle East. The show was pulled of the air after its first few episodes due to public protests and pressure from religious bodies stating the show's mixed gender format was against Islamic principles.

f. A golf ball manufacturing company packaged golf balls in packs of four for convenient purchase in Japan. Unfortunately, the number 4 is equivalent to the number 13 due it sounding like the word "death". The company had to repackage the product.

• If businesses want to succeed internationally, cultural sensitivity must be at the heart of everything they do; from their personal interaction and relationships with clients to the products/services they develop.

• All international communication is influenced by cultural differences. Even the choice of medium used to communicate may have cultural overtones.

• For example, it has been noted that advanced industrialized nations rely heavily on electronic technology and emphasize written messages over oral or face-to-face communication. Certainly the United States, Canada and Germany exemplify this trend.

• But Japan, which has access to the latest technologies, still relies more on face-to-face communications than on the written mode. The determining factor in medium preference may not be the degree of industrialization, but rather whether the country falls into a high-context or low-context culture.

• High-context cultures (Mediterranean, Slav, Central European, Latin American, African, Arab, Asian, American-Indian) leave much of the message unspecified - to be understood through context, nonverbal cues, and between-the-lines interpretation of what is actually said.

• By contrast, low-context cultures (most of the Germanic and English-speaking countries) expect messages to be explicit and specific. The former are looking for meaning and understanding in what is not said - in body language, in silences and pauses, and in relationships and empathy. The latter place emphasis on sending and receiving accurate messages directly, and by being precise with spoken or written words.

Sequential or synchronic

• Some cultures think of time sequentially - as a linear commodity to "spend," "save," or "waste." Other cultures view time synchronically - as a constant flow to be experienced in the moment, and as a force that cannot be contained or controlled.

• A friend from Venezuela was invited to a party in the States. The hours on the invitation were stated as 5:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. This was almost inconceivable to the Venezuelan. "How can anyone know when the party will be over?" she asked. To her way of thinking, a party can't be "timed." It begins when it begins and ends when it ends.

• Whether time is perceived as a commodity or a constant determines the meaning and value of being "on time." Think of the misunderstandings that can occur when one culture views arriving late for a meeting as bad planning or a sign of disrespect, while another culture views an insistence on timeliness as childish impatience.

Sequential culture

• In sequential cultures (like North American, English, German, Swedish, and Dutch), businesspeople give full attention to one agenda item after another. In many other parts of the world, professionals regularly do several things at the same time. I once cashed a check at a Panamanian bank where the teller was counting my money, talking to a customer on the phone, and admiring the baby in the arms of the woman behind me. To her, it was all business as usual.

• The American commoditization of time not only serves as the basis for a "time is money" mentality, it can lead to a fixation on timelines that plays right into the hands of savvy negotiators from other cultures.

A Japanese executive explained: "All we need to do is find out when you are scheduled to leave the country - and, by the way, it amuses us that you arrive with your return passage already booked. We wait until right before your flight to present our offer. By then, you are so anxious to stay on schedule, you'll give away the whole deal."

Synchronic culture

• In synchronic cultures (including South America, southern Europe and Asia) the flow of time is viewed as a sort of circle - with the past, present, and future all inter-related. This viewpoint influences how organizations in those cultures approach deadlines, strategic thinking, investments, developing talent from within, and the concept of "long-term" planning.

• There's a joke about an American and a Chinese businessman sitting on a park bench in Hong Kong. The American is saying, "Well, you know I've been in Hong Kong for my company for thirty years. Thirty years! And in a few days they are sending me back to the States." The Chinese executive replies, "That's the problem with you Americans: here today and gone tomorrow."

• Orientation to the past, present, and future is another aspect of time in which cultures differ.

• Americans believe that the individual can influence the future by personal effort, but since there are too many variables in the distant future, we favor a short-term view. This gives us an international reputation of "going for the quick buck" and being interested only in the next quarterly return. Even our relationships seem to be based on a "what have you done for me lately?" pragmatism.

• Synchronistic cultures have an entirely different perspective. The past becomes a context in which to understand the present and prepare for the future. Any important relationship is a durable bond that goes back and forward in time, and it is often viewed as grossly disloyal not to favor friends and relatives in business dealings.

Affective or neutral

• With much angry gesturing, an Italian manager referred to the idea of his Dutch counterpart as "crazy." The Dutch manager replied. "What do you mean, crazy? I've considered all the factors, and I think this is a viable approach. And calm down! We need to analyze this, not get sidetracked by emotional theatrics."

• At that point, the Italian walked out of the meeting. • In international business practices, reason and emotion

both play a role. Which of these dominates depends upon whether we are affective (readily showing emotions) or emotionally neutral in our approach.

• Research conducted with people who were upset about something at work, noted that only some cultures supported expressing those feelings openly. Emotional reactions were found to be least acceptable in Japan, Indonesia, the U.K., Norway and the Netherlands - and most accepted in Italy, France, the U.S. and Singapore.

• Reason and emotion are part of all human communication. When expressing ourselves, we look to others for confirmation of our ideas and feelings. If our approach is highly emotional, we are seeking a direct emotional response: "I feel the same way." If our approach is highly neutral, we want an indirect response: "I agree with your thoughts on this."

• It's easy for people from neutral cultures to sympathize with the Dutch manager and his frustration over trying to reason with "that excitable Italian." After all, an idea either works or it doesn't work - and the way to test the validity of an idea is through trial and observation.

• That just makes sense - doesn't it? Well, not necessarily to the Italian who felt the issue was deeply personal, and who viewed any "rational argument" as totally irrelevant!

• When it comes to communication, what's proper and correct in one culture may be ineffective or even offensive in another.

• Culture is, basically, a set of shared values that a group of people holds. Such values affect how you think and act and, more importantly, the kind of criteria by which you judge others. Cultural meanings render some behaviors as normal and right and others strange or wrong.

5. Language barriers

• Language that describes what we want to say in our terms may present barriers to others who are not familiar with our expressions, buzz-words and jargon. When we couch our communication in such language, it is a way of excluding others. In a global market place the greatest compliment we can pay another person is to talk in their language.

• One of the more chilling memories of the Cold War was the threat by the Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev saying to the Americans at the United Nations: "We will bury you!" This was taken to mean a threat of nuclear annihilation.

• However, a more accurate reading of Khruschev's words would have been: "We will overtake you!" meaning economic superiority. It was not just the language, but the fear and suspicion that the West had of the Soviet Union that led to the more alarmist and sinister interpretation.

6. Gender barriers

• There are distinct differences between the speech patterns in a man and those in a woman. A woman speaks between 22,000 and 25,000 words a day whereas a man speaks between 7,000 and 10,000.

• To a woman, good listening skills include making eye contact and reacting visually to the speaker. To a man, listening can take place with a minimum of eye contact and almost no nonverbal feedback. (Women often cite a lack of eye contact as evidence that their male boss "doesn't value my input.")

• Men are more comfortable when approached from the side. Women prefer approaches from the front. Likewise, two men speaking will angle their bodies slightly, while two women will stand in a more "squared up" position - a stance that most men perceive as confrontational.

• When a man nods, it means he agrees. When a woman nods, it means she is listening.

• Female superiority in reading nonverbal signals during business meetings allows women to accurately assess coalitions and alliances just by tracking who is making eye contact with whom at certain critical points.

• Men are judged to be better at monologue - women at dialogue.• A man's ability to hold his emotions in check and to "keep a poker

face" is viewed as an advantage in business situations. A woman's tendency to show her feelings more outwardly in gestures and facial expressions is perceived as a weakness.

• When a woman can't read the person she's talking to, it makes her anxious. Men's ability to mask their facial expressions causes uneasiness in women, who often perceive this as negative feedback.

• As women make decisions, they tend to process and think of options out loud. Men process internally until they come up with a solution. This can lead to problems if a male thinks that the female's verbal brainstorming means that she's looking for approval rather than just thinking aloud.

• Men's discomfort dealing with emotion leads them to believe that there needs to be a solution, rather than understanding that sometimes people just need to be heard.

• Because they access the full message (words and body language), women are better at watching and listening for reactions. This allows them to ensure that they are being understood, and adjust accordingly.

• In negotiations, men talk more than women and interrupt more frequently. One perspective on the value of speaking up comes from former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who - when asked what advice she had for up-and-coming professional women - replied, "Learn to interrupt."

• Men make direct accusations (You didn't do it!) while women use an indirect method (Why didn't you do it?)

• Women are viewed as less professional when they resort to girlish behaviors (twirling hair, playing with jewelry, etc.) or flirtatious body language (tossing hair back, crossing and uncrossing legs, etc.).

• Men who don't know each other well tend to keep a greater distance between them than women who have just met.

7. Interpersonal barriers

• There are six levels at which people can distance themselves from one another:

• Withdrawal is an absence of interpersonal contact. It is both refusal to be in touch and time alone.

• Rituals are meaningless, repetitive routines devoid of real contact.

• Pastimes fill up time with others in social but superficial activities.• Working activities are those tasks which follow the rules and

procedures of contact but no more.• Games are subtle, manipulative interactions which are about

winning and losing. They include "rackets" and "stamps".• Closeness is the aim of interpersonal contact where there is a

high level of honesty and acceptance of yourself and others.

Conclusion

• Working on improving your communications is a broad-brush activity. You have to change your thoughts, your feelings, and your physical connections.

• That way, you can break down the barriers that get in your way and start building relationships that really work.

THANK YOU!