Barriers to Effective Managerial Communication

Managers need to interact with each other as well as with their team members on a regular basis not only to get things done effectively but also to ensure peace at the workplace.
Effective communication at all levels within an organization helps resolve problems within the desired time frame.
Let us go through various barriers to effective managerial communication at the workplace:

• Partiality and workplace politics are the major barriers to effective communication at the workplace.
• Managers must not be partial to any of their team members. It is considered strictly unprofessional. Each employee should be treated as one. Do not ignore any of your team members just because you do not like him. A good manager is one who is impartial to all. Managers have a tendency to communicate with individuals who are their friends or say a yes to whatever they say. This indeed is a wrong practice. You must speak to all your team members and address their queries. Problems and misunderstandings arise when there is lack of communication and employees feel ignored.
• As responsible managers one must stay away from nasty politics at workplace. Politics leads to negativity all around and increases stress levels of employees. Do not believe rumours and prefer speaking to employees directly rather than finding out from others.
• Listen carefully what the other person has to say before jumping to conclusions. Being a patient listener helps improve managerial communication. Do not interrupt while the other person is speaking. One needs to very careful about his choice of words. Managers must ensure their speech makes sense and well understood by people around.
• Do not address your team members just for the sake of it. Take care of your pitch and tone. For effective managerial communication, one should be neither too loud nor too soft. Make sure you are audible to all. Address employees in a noise free zone. Noise is one of biggest barriers to effective communication.
• Employees fail to understand the speaker“s message and eventually dilute the meaning of effective communication. Do not address employees during lunch hours or when they are about to leave for the day. Employees are absolutely in a different frame of mind and fail to understand what the speaker intends to communicate. Organizations must have board rooms or conference rooms where employees come on a common platform and communicate effectively without disturbances.
• Prefer not to interact verbally. In verbal communication, employees tend to forget what was communicated to them a month ago. Managers must promote communication through emails at the workplace. Do not mark separate mails to team members. Mark a cc to all related employees. The emails need to be self explanatory and employees must be able to understand as to what is expected out of them. Emails must not be rude and ought to have a proper subject line.
• Do not communicate separately with your team members as information might not reach in its desired form. Transparency at all levels is essential for effective managerial communication. Communicating through middle men is unprofessional and affects communication.

Common Barriers to Effective Communication:

• The use of jargon. Over-complicated, unfamiliar and/or technical terms.
• Emotional barriers and taboos. Some people may find it difficult to express their emotions and some topics may be completely 'off-limits' or taboo.
• Lack of attention, interest, distractions, or irrelevance to the receiver. 
• Differences in perception and viewpoint.
• Physical disabilities such as hearing problems or speech difficulties.
• Physical barriers to non-verbal communication. Not being able to see the non-verbal cues, gestures, posture and general body language can make communication less effective.
• Language differences and the difficulty in understanding unfamiliar accents.
• Expectations and prejudices which may lead to false assumptions or stereotyping.  People often hear what they expect to hear rather than what is actually said and jump to incorrect conclusions.
• Cultural differences.  The norms of social interaction vary greatly in different cultures, as do the way in which emotions are expressed. For example, the concept of personal space varies between cultures and between different social settings.