The Six Major Barriers To Effective Business Communication In Business

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People COMMUNICATION BARRIERS 2 Effective business communication is central to the success of an individual’s career and consequently to that of the overall business entity. It would be imaginable therefore that there is some form of correlation between effective communication skills and such success. To put this into context, University of Kent (2011) has placed Verbal Communication at the top of the ten skills that employers most commonly look for. On the same note, anything that hinders effective communication is bound to have a negative effect not only on the specific message delivery, but also on the overall success of a career. In this paper, some of the barriers to effective business communication are discussed, with a few examples of how they affect the process. The six major barriers to communication according to McLean (2010) are the use of clichés, jargon, slang, sexist and racist language, euphemisms, and doublespeak. These were discussed in the context …show more content…

In the technical field for example, there is technical jargon, as legal jargon is to the legal field. I have used the term “subnetting a segment of nodes” in a business context while describing the kind of work that was to be done, to some users of a system. The users only worked with applications and were not familiar with the details of networks, and it is no surprise that they could not understand what was said. Rephrasing helped clear this up. Slang is mostly used in informal contexts and it would mostly be inappropriate for business communication. The use of words or expressions that take the place of conventional words may give a negative impression in a business context and so the intended message may not be fully appreciated. For example, using the expression “hey, what’s up” to your supervisor at work is likely not going to be the best way of conveying your

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