Friday, January 3, 2014

Communication - Barriers 2

In the last byte, we looked at Physical Separation as a barrier to communication. In today's byte, we look at how status difference acts as barriers to communication.

Status Difference:
Almost every organization has a hierarchy structure. Invariably an individual reports to someone above him and that individual supervisor id the one primary connection to the organization. This hierarchical arrangement creates a barrier to communication - the employee is more likely to distort up-ward communication compared to communication with their colleagues or their subordinates.

As a supervisor, one would need to make use of the skills discussed in the earlier bytes on effective supervisory skills and become more approachable - this would act as the soothing factor in such status related issues. This would help ease the employee and make him/her more secure and would potentially lead to a straightforward upward communication.

One would, through the above line of thought be likely to suggest a hierarchy free work environment - this practically would be extremely hard to achieve (refer to the discussion on transaction cost earlier); however the extensive use of information technology could drastically reduced the hierarchy.

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