Organizational Communication Barriers

Personal, physical and semantic barriers.

Communication is a critical skill for professional success, since without it goals and guidelines cannot be effectively conveyed.

However, this process is often hindered by various barriers that distort the original message.

Personal barriers arise from individual characteristics such as intense emotions, perception biases and personality (shyness or aggressiveness), which prevent clear expression.

On the other hand, semantic barriers occur when the sender and receiver assign different meanings to the same words, a common phenomenon in multicultural or regional interactions.

Physical barriers are environmental factors that make it difficult to hear or see, such as excessive noise, intervening walls or considerable geographical distances.

Finally, cultural barriers reflect differences in codes of conduct and language between people from different backgrounds.

It is the responsibility of the organizational psychologist to identify these interferences to ensure that information flows without noise affecting operability.

The danger of Groupthink in communication

A critical phenomenon that plagues group communication is groupthink, a dysfunctional decision-making pattern that prioritizes artificial consensus over critical evaluation of facts.

This problem usually breeds in teams with extremely high cohesion, where there is a sense of "us versus them" and an implicit pressure not to break harmony.

Symptoms include a lack of external information seeking, the presence of a leader who imposes his or her vision prematurely, and the dismissal of viable alternative solutions.

Groupthink negates authentic communication and can lead the organization to strategic failures by ignoring obvious risks.

To combat it, it is recommended to reward critical thinking, divide teams into subgroups to analyze dilemmas and encourage the leader to maintain an unbiased stance during initial discussions.

Summary

Effective communication is often ha