Define communication and explain various factors that hamper communication in

academic as well as corporate world ?

Answer.

Giving, receiving, and exchanging information — in other words, talking, writing, and
listening or reading — is the act of communication. Good communicators pay attention to
what others are saying, speak or write clearly, and respect differing viewpoints.

Strong communication skills can help children interact both in person and online.
Understanding how words and visuals affect others is essential to texting, talking, and
publishing appropriately. Teaching kids to use social media safely, modelling positive
communication, and viewing movies and TV shows that emphasise the benefits of healthy
communication can all help children develop their communication skills.

A sender, a message, and a recipient are all part of every communication. This may appear to
be a simple concept, yet communication is actually a very complicated topic.

A wide range of factors can influence the message's passage from sender to destination.
These factors include our emotions, cultural context, communication medium, and even
geographic location. The difficulty is why employers all over the world prize good
communication skills: accurate, effective, and unambiguous communication is incredibly
difficult.

The sender, the message, and the recipient are the three components of a communication.

The message is 'encoded' by the sender, who uses a combination of words and nonverbal cues
to do so. It is sent in some form (such as voice or writing), and the recipient 'decodes' it.

Of course, there could be multiple recipients, and due to the complexity of communication,
each one could get a slightly different message. Two people may interpret the same words
and/or body language in completely different ways. It's also likely that neither of them will
comprehend the message in the same way that the sender did.

The sender and recipient do not have separate roles in face-to-face communication. The two
roles will switch back and forth between two people who are conversing. Both parties interact
with one another, even if it is in very subtle ways like eye contact (or lack thereof) and
overall body language.

BARRIERS:

 Attitude is the first and most difficult barrier to good communication. It's complicated
since it contains so many aspects that influence one's mental state, such as:
Gender Social and economic circumstances Culture
Personal convictions
Religious convictions
Selective perception due to a lack of familiarity or credibility (the act of filtering what
we see and hear to suit our own agenda)
 Language and medium are the second impediment to good communication. It's just as
broad as attitude and includes things like:
Selection of words (including pitch, intonation and volume)
Nonverbal clues include body language and gestures.

 Listening and feedback are the third obstacle to effective communication. The sender
of a message will not know if the recipient gets it unless they have good listening
abilities. Without feedback, the sender will have no way of knowing if the recipient
understood the message correctly. Many variables can obstruct this critical process,
but they mostly fall into the following categories:

Inattentiveness
Defensiveness
Preliminary conclusions
Precision is lacking.
Fluency and clarity
Inaudibility

 Filtering
Filtering is the distortion or withholding of information to manage a person’s
reactions. Some examples of filtering include a manager who keeps her division’s
poor sales figures from her boss, the vice president, fearing that the bad news will
make him angry. The old saying, “Don’t shoot the messenger!” illustrates the
tendency of Receivers (in this case, the vice president) to vent their negative response
to unwanted Messages on the Sender. A gatekeeper (the vice president’s assistant,
perhaps) who doesn’t pass along a complete Message is also filtering. The vice
president may delete the e-mail announcing the quarter’s sales figures before reading
it, blocking the Message before it arrives.

Filtering prevents members of an organization from getting a complete picture of the

way things are. To maximize your chances of sending and receiving effective
communications, it’s helpful to deliver a Message in multiple ways and to seek
information from multiple sources. In this way, the effect of any one person’s filtering
the Message will be diminished.

Since people tend to filter bad news more during upward communication, it is also
helpful to remember that those below you in an organization may be wary of sharing
bad news. One way to defuse the tendency to filter is to reward employees who
clearly convey information upward, regardless of whether the news is good and bad.

 Information Overload

Information overload can be defined as “occurring when the information processing

demands on an individual’s time to perform interactions and internal calculations
exceed the supply or capacity of time available for such processing.” Messages reach
us in countless ways every day. Some are societal—advertisements that we may hear
 or see in the course of our day. Others are professional—e-mails, and memos, voice
mails, and conversations from our colleagues. Others are personal—messages and
conversations from our loved ones and friends.

 Emotional disconnects

Emotional disconnects happen when the Sender or the Receiver is upset, whether

about the subject at hand or about some unrelated incident that may have happened
earlier. An effective communication requires a Sender and a Receiver who are open to
speaking and listening to one another, despite possible differences in opinion or
personality. One or both parties may have to put their emotions aside to achieve the
goal of communicating clearly. A Receiver who is emotionally upset tends to ignore
or distort what the Sender is saying. A Sender who is emotionally upset may be
unable to present ideas or feelings effectively.

 Lack of Source Credibility

Lack of source familiarity or credibility can derail communications, especially when
humor is involved. Have you ever told a joke that fell flat? You and the Receiver
lacked the common context that could have made it funny. (Or yes, it could have just
been a lousy joke.) Sarcasm and irony are subtle, and potentially hurtful, commodities
in business. It’s best to keep these types of communications out of the workplace as
their benefits are limited, and their potential dangers are great. Lack of familiarity
with the Sender can lead to misinterpreting humor, especially in less-rich information
channels like e-mail. For example, an e-mail from Jill that ends with, “Men, like hens,
should boil in vats of oil,” could be interpreted as antimale if the Receiver didn’t
know that Jill has a penchant for rhyme and likes to entertain coworkers by making up
amusing sayings.

 Semantics

Semantics is the study of meaning in communication. Words can mean different

things to different people, or they might not mean anything to another person. For
example, companies often have their own acronyms and buzzwords (called business
jargon) that are clear to them but impenetrable to outsiders. For example, at IBM,
GBS is focusing on BPTS, using expertise acquired from the PwC purchase (which
had to be sold to avoid conflicts of interest in light of SOX) to fend other BPO
providers and inroads by the Bangalore tiger. Does this make sense to you? If not,
 here’s the translation: IBM’s Global Business Services (GBS) division is focusing on
offering companies Business Process Transformation Services (BPTS), using the
expertise it acquired from purchasing the management consulting and technology
services arm of PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), which had to sell the division
because of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX, enacted in response to the major
accounting scandals like the Enron). The added management expertise puts it above
business process outsourcing (BPO) vendors who focus more on automating
processes rather than transforming and improving them. Chief among these BPO
competitors is Wipro, often called the “Bangalore tiger” because of its geographic
origin and aggressive growth.

 Gender Differences

Gender differences in communication have been documented by a number of experts,

including linguistics professor Deborah Tannen in her best-selling book You Just
Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. Men and women work together
every day. But their different styles of communication can sometimes work against
them. Generally speaking, women like to ask questions before starting a project, while
men tend to “jump right in.” A male manager who’s unaware of how many women
communicate their readiness to work may misperceive a ready employee as not ready.

Another difference that has been noticed is that men often speak in sports metaphors,
while many women use their home as a starting place for analogies. Women who
believe men are “only talking about the game” may be missing out on a chance to
participate in a division’s strategy and opportunities for teamwork and “rallying the
troops” for success.

“It is important to promote the best possible communication between men and women
in the workplace,” notes gender policy adviser Dee Norton, who provided the above
example. “As we move between the male and female cultures, we sometimes have to
change how we behave (speak the language of the other gender) to gain the best
results from the situation. Clearly, successful organizations of the future are going to
have leaders and team members who understand, respect and apply the rules of gender
culture appropriately.

Being aware of these gender differences can be the first step in learning to work with
them, as opposed to around them. For example, keep in mind that men tend to focus
more on competition, data, and orders in their communications, while women tend to
focus more on cooperation, intuition, and requests. Both styles can be effective in the
right situations, but understanding the differences is a first step in avoiding
misunderstandings based on them.