The Top 4 Obstacles to Communication and How to Overcome Them

It isn’t always the quality of your message or its transmission that’s the problem

Photo by Joshua Ness on Unsplash

Communications 101: The sender’s message travels to the receiver through a specific channel (radio signal, internet, handwritten note, spoken word, etc.), and the receiver interprets the message. Simple enough, but what happens when something interferes, distorting the message you’re trying to send? The result is that your communication is either flawed or fails.

This interference is called “channel noise.” When you become aware of the possibility of channel noise to disrupt communication, you can take steps to avoid it.

Noise in the channel can be a technical problem, static or feedback are good examples, but it can also be utterly unrelated to equipment failure. There are four kinds of obstacles to communication: physical, physiological, psychological, and semantic. Here are some examples:

Physical noise

Photo by Neal E. Johnson on Unsplash

• You’re trying to make a voice recording, but you keep picking up noise from a construction site across the street.