PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION 1

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LEVELS OF COMMUNICATION

• EXTRAPERSONAL Communication is where the environment plays a vital role. This happens when people talk to
non-human and even non-living beings. For Example, a person talking to his pet, or talking to himself when he is
lonely, or talking to trees and walls etc.

• INTRAPERSONAL Communication occurs in your own mind. It is ‘self-talk’, the inner speech or mental conversations
that we carry on with ourselves. It may be conscious or unconscious. It is the basis of your feelings, biases, prejudices,
and beliefs. Examples are when you make any kind of decision – what to eat or wear. When you think about something
– what you want to do on the weekend or when you think about another person. You also communicate with yourself
when you put things down on paper (calendar, to-do list, planner, notes, writing warm-up).

• INTERPERSONAL Communication happens between two people or within formal or informal groups or teams. It is
group interaction that results in decision making, problem solving and discussion within an organization. Examples
would be a group planning a surprise birthday party for someone. A team working together on a project. A focus
group discussing the pros and cons of a new product. A group therapy session.

• MEDIA Communication takes place through mechanical and electronic communicating instruments like mobile
phones, e-mails, social media platforms, chat engines, interactive websites etc.

• GROUP Communication involves a speaker who seeks to inform, persuade or motivate an audience. Interaction and
feedback are there, but not immediate. Group members listen effectively and understand their role. Group size and
physical arrangement are the important factors. Examples: a teacher and a class of students. A preacher and a
congregation. A speaker and an assembly of people in the auditorium.

• ORGANIZATIONAL Communication involves communication that takes place at different hierarchical levels within an
organization. Co-ordination and collaboration are very important in organizational communication. This can be
further sub-divided into (i) internal-operational: all communication within the organization, (ii) external-operational:
communication between the organization and people outside the organization, and (iii) personal: communication
within the organization but other than business or official purposes.

• MASS or PUBLIC Communication is the electronic or print transmission of messages to the general public. It is non-
interactive. Outlets called MASS MEDIA include things like radio, television, film, and printed materials designed to
reach large audiences. A television commercial. A magazine article. Hearing a song on the radio. Books, Newspapers,
Billboards. The key is that you are reaching a large amount of people without it being face to face. Feedback is
generally delayed with mass communication.

BARRIERS OF COMMUNICATION

• INTRAPERSONAL

Each of us interprets the same information in different ways due to differences in culture, personality, education,
perception, and experience. These differences lead to certain in-built or intrapersonal barriers.

1. Wrong Assumption: This happens when the sender does not have adequate knowledge about the receiver’s
background e.g. when the doctor tells the patient to take a medicine in an SOS condition, not knowing if the
patient knows what SOS means.
2. Varied Perception: This happens when the same situation is perceived in different ways by different people e.g.
story of the six blind people who perceived an elephant in six different ways (as a fan/ snake/ sword/ tree/ wall/
rope).
3. Different Background: This happens when one person finds something about the other person difficult to
appreciate e.g. the other person’s culture, education, language, financial status etc.
4. Wrong Inference: This happens when someone comes to a conclusion without verifying facts e.g. when a teacher
assumes that the long absence of a student is due to laziness.
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5. Blocked Category: This happens when the receiver reacts positively to information only when it conforms with
his/ her own views, and rejects/ distorts/ avoids unfavourable information e.g. people who are uncomfortable
with the use of technology.
6. Categorical Thinking: This happens when a person thinks that he/ she knows everything about a subject and
refuses to accept further information e.g. an employee who thinks he/ she knows everything about the board
meeting.

• INTERPERSONAL

This kind of barrier occurs from inappropriate transaction of words between two or more people or certain
limitations on communication skills.

1. Limited Vocabulary: This happens when a person cannot use the right word in the right context.
2. Incompatibility of Verbal & Non-Verbal Communication: This happens when a person’s verbal message does
not match his/ her non-verbal message i.e. body language or tone of voice etc.
3. Emotional Outburst: This happens when our communication is rendered ineffective and broken due to our
judgment being clouded by our emotions such as anger, grief, prejudice, stereotyping and even boredom.
4. Communication Selectivity: This happens when the receiver pays attention to only a part of the message,
because of selective interest.
5. Cultural Variation: This happens when there is a failure to understand business practices or social customs and
etiquettes of any particular country or society.
6. Poor Listening: This happens because of the receiver’s own thoughts, wandering attention, indifference or
emotional disturbance of either party.
7. Noise in the Channel: This happens when there is a technical disturbance in theaudio or visual or audio-visual
channel, or illegibility of handwriting, or inaudibility of voice etc.

• ORGANIZATIONAL

Organizations have certain communication policies which describe the protocol to be followed. The complexity
and structure of this protocol can create barriers in communication.

1. Too Many Transfer Stations: This happens when there are more links in the chain of communication, which means
there are more chances of miscommunication. People also filter out parts that seem unimportant.
2. Fear of Superiors: This happens when an employee fears to lose the goodwill of the boss and thus does not speak up
about his own opinion or speak out against any unjust behavior.
3. Negative Tendencies: This happens when there are conflicting ideas between members of a group or sub-group and
the non-members e.g. the recreational committee in a club wants to increase fund allocation and the other members
are not happy about it.
4. Use of Inappropriate Media: This happens when an employee chooses the wrong medium for a particular
communication without considering the advantages, disadvantages, and potential barriers e.g. use of social media for
a confidential message.
5. Information Overload: This happens when there is a decrease in efficiency as the employee handles huge amounts of
data. As qualntity becomes more important than quality, this results in fatigue, disinterest, and boredom.
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SEMANTIC BARRIERS

Semantic barriers (Lewis, 1980): The word ‘semantics’ comes from the Greek word, ‘semantikos’, which means ‘significant’.
‘Semantics’ in the context of communication refers to the meanings of words. Semantic barriers refer to the obstacles caused
in communication due to problems with the interpretation of word meanings.

a) Allness: Allness is an attitude of finality in communication. Allness refers to a tendency to convey or assume or
believe that what someone says about a particular subject is all there is to say on that subject. For example, someone
may say that bananas contain large amounts of sugar, which when consumed produces large amounts of energy
(calories) and that makes people fat, which is bad for health, and so they must be avoided. They may not even be open
to the idea that in addition to calories, bananas are also one of the richest sources of potassium, and consuming
bananas may actually be good for health. So, there is no opening up possibilities of and no acceptance of additional
perspectives.mIt is similar to Labelling or Stereotyping, which involves attaching pre-decided descriptors (that may or
may not fit) to what one is talking about. Avoiding the use of these descriptors enhances one’s ability to accept other
points of view.

b) Levels of abstraction: This deals with the complexity of concepts we use to define what we experience. In simple
words, this could be labelled as ‘non-specific’ conversation where we seem to be saying too many things about the
same thing at the same time.

Abstraction depends upon: (i) Extensional knowledge: This operates on perceptions and uses names, statistics, and
descriptions from actual observation which can be verified by someone else. (ii) Intensional knowledge: This involves
inferences, opinions, assumptions, judgments, and generalizations. While using intensional knowledge, a person is
more concerned with verbal description of an event than with the event itself.

Abstraction may manifest itself in our conversation as:

i) Closed-mind syndromes: Closed mind syndromes stems from Allness. We start believing that since we are exploring
various points of view, we are in a position to cover all points of view there may be about a particular subject, and so
others cannot have points of view that we may not have thought of. In reality when others share points of view that
are different from us, we try and find ways to refute them because we believe that we know everything.
ii) Bypassing: Bypassing is the tendency to ignore the fact that the same word can have different meanings (e.g. run,
fast, mouse), and that different words can have the same meaning (e.g. restroom, washroom, loo). This leads to our
unwillingness to understand the other person’s perspective or way of describing the same things. This also leads to
our unwillingness to acknowledge that what we are saying may be interpreted differently by the receiver of our
message since the words we use may have different connotations in different contexts. This can lead to a breakdown
in communication.

c) Tendency to evaluate or judge: We tend to evaluate or judge the messages we receive based on our past experiences
with that category of messages. We evaluate to help us decide whether we are comfortable or uncomfortable with the
information we are receiving and whether we understand what we are receiving. Categorization helps us reduce the
complexity of information in our environment. So, when we are bombarded with information in quantities and
complexities that we are unable to handle individually, and we feel the need to understand it, we tend to evaluate the
information we are receiving. This causes problems with effective understanding as we tend to miss out vital
information that is connected to what we perceive.

Some ways in which we may evaluate the meanings of words we hear are:

• Confusion of facts with inferences: Sometimes, when facts are presented to us for the sake of analysis, we take
them at face value and decide that these facts are in fact the final message or the inference. An inference is a
statement about the unknown made on the basis of the known. Collections of facts logically tied in with each
other should lead us to an inference. For example, one of our students comes and tells us that she has not
been able to study because there was a party the previous night. As teachers who feel that students do not
want to study and so they find excuses to not come prepared to class, we assume, on the basis of just one
statement, that all students were not able to study because of a party the previous night. Maybe only one
student made this mistake, maybe many did, but we will not know that till we ask other students whether
they have come prepared to class or not.
• Polarization: Polarization refers to ‘either or’ thinking, or judging people and events in terms of extremes.
Most of the times situations, people, and concepts are not absolute. Human behaviour and its reasons are not
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absolute. They are relative. Relative descriptions require more complex thinking and more time to
understand. In order to simplify our understanding and move on to the next item on our agenda, we tend to
take the easy way out and classify the descriptions we hear and read as good or bad, right or wrong, this way
or that way. This leads to misinterpretation of the message and causes problems in communication.
• Bias and prejudice: Bias deals with our tendency to skew our understanding of the words we hear in favour of
or against particular situations, concepts or people depending upon how we feel about them. Prejudice
specifically deals with our hostile attitude towards people, situations and concepts that we feel
uncomfortable about. Prejudice causes us to believe that the people, situations and concepts we dislike are, in
fact, flawed, and any information that indicates otherwise does not need to be taken into account while trying
to understand them. This causes us to leave out relevant information while perceiving messages pertaining to
the people situations and concepts we are biased against, and add additional information to complete the
picture of goodness and appropriateness while perceiving messages pertaining to the people, situations and
concepts we are biased towards. This, as is evident from the above description, results in the reception and
transmission of an imbalanced message, and causes difficulty in interpretation.
• Stereotyping: As discussed earlier, stereotyping is our tendency to define collections of stimuli in terms of the
categories they belong to. This leads to the addition or deletion of important descriptors of the situations,
people or concepts that are the subjects of these interactions. Some ways in which we can reduce or avoid
biases and prejudices and stereotypes are:
• Frozen evaluations: Frozen evaluations are judgments set in concrete. At times, we tend to be stuck in our
evaluations of people, concepts and situations. We may have formed a judgement or an opinion at a different
time, under different circumstances. And we are so set in our understanding of what we see and hear that we
stick to the same judgement even in a totally different time and context. An example of this could be the belief
that an employee who was found to be disloyal five years ago, is still working against the organization.

d) Snap judgments: A snap judgment is a direct, uncontrolled immediate response to some circumstance. As the term
suggests, snap judgments refer to immediate reactions we have to what we experience. By definition, these are
imbalanced interpretations and analyses based on incomplete information we receive from the environment. Since
while making snap judgments we selectively perceive only a small fraction of the medley of stimuli we are bombarded
with, the interaction is ridden with gaps.

e) Misuse of the language: Sometimes we use language incorrectly or interpret the use of language incorrectly. We may
do this in the following ways:

i) Misuse of small talk: Small talk refers to information exchanged in casual conversations. Sometimes, we misinterpret
this information exchanged in casual conversations as vital information on which we can base our decisions and
interpretations. This, if incorrect, can cause problems with communication.
ii) Misuse of ‘Is’: The use of the word, ‘is’ stems from allness and refers to absolute interpretations of events. When we
use the word, ‘is’, we indicate that our interpretation of events is absolute, and fully correct, and that there is not and
cannot be another interpretation of the events we are referring to. Such absolute interpretation, as one may agree,
should be understood as flawed.
iii) Misuse of ‘And’: Sometimes we use the word, ‘and’ to connect the content of interaction. Sometimes this content
contains ideas that may not be related. Indiscriminate use of the word, ‘and’ may lead to misinterpretation regarding
the existence of complex relationships where there are none.