Business Chapter 5 Terms

Perceptual Barriers

How your audience perceives you and your agenda can create a significant obstacle to effective communication. If possible, explore their perceptions—both positive and negative—in advance!

Organizational Barriers

Some companies have built-in barriers to effective communication, such as an unspoken rule that the people at the top of the organization don't talk to the people at the bottom. These barriers are important to understand but hard to change.

Bias

A preconception about members of a particular group. Common forms of bias include gender bias; age bias; and race, ethnicity, or nationality bias.

Noise

Any interference that causes the message you send to be different from the message your audience understands.

Active Listening

Attentive listening that occurs when the listener focuses his or her complete attention on the speaker.

Intercultural Communication

Communication among people with differing cultural backgrounds.

Nonverbal Communication

Communication that does not use words. Common forms of nonverbal communication include gestures, posture, facial expressions, tone of voice, and eye contact.

Body Language Barriers

Even if your words are inviting, the wrong body language can alienate and distract your audience so completely that they simply won't absorb the content of your message.

Communication Barriers

Obstacles to effective communication, typically defined in terms of physical, language, body language, cultural, perceptual, and organizational barriers.

Passive Voice

Sentence construction in which the subject does not do the action expressed by the verb; rather the subject is acted upon (e.g., The taxes were done by our accountant.). The passive voice tends to be less effective for business communication.

Active Voice

Sentence construction in which the subject performs the action expressed by the verb (e.g., The accountant did the taxes.). The active voice works better for the vast majority of business communication.

Communication

The transmission of information between a sender and a recipient.

Cultural Barriers

These can include everything from how you greet colleagues and establish eye contact to how you handle disagreement, eat business meals, and make small talk at meetings. As globalization gains speed, intercultural communication will become increasingly pivotal to long-term business success. Identifying and understanding communication barriers is a vital first step toward dismantling them in order to communicate more effectively with any audience.

Physical Barriers

These can range from a document that looks like a wall of type, to a room that's freezing cold, to chairs in your office that force your visitors to sit at a lower level than you.

Language Barriers

clearly, if you don't speak the language, you'll have trouble communicating. But even among people who do share the same language, slang, jargon, and regional accents can interfere with meaning.