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Unit 13: Communication and Leadership

reduce the risk of problems related to status differences. In addition, when employees feel Notes
secure, they are more likely to be straightforward in upward communication.
Use of conflicting signals: A sender is using conflicting signals when he or she sends inconsistent
messages. A vertical message might conflict with a non-verbal one.

Example: If a manager says to his employees, “If you have a problem, just come to me.
My door is always open”, but looks annoyed whenever an employee knocks on his door”, then
we say the manager is sending conflicting messages.
When signals conflict, the receivers of the message have to decide which, if any, to believe.
Reluctance to Communicate: For a variety of reasons, managers are sometimes reluctant to
transmit messages. The reasons could be:
1. They may doubt their ability to do so.
2. They may dislike – or be weary of – writing or talking to others.
3. They may hesitate to deliver bad news because they do not want to face a negative reaction.

When someone gives in to these feelings, they become a barrier to effective communications.
Projection: Projection has two meanings:
1. Projecting one’s own motives into others’ behaviour:

Example: Managers, who are motivated by money, may assume their subordinates also
motivated by it. If the subordinate’s prime motive is something other than money, serious
problems may arise.
2. The use of defense mechanism to avoid placing blame on oneself: As a defense mechanism,
the projection phenomenon operates to protect the ego from unpleasant communications.
Frequently, individuals who have a particular fault will see the same fault in others,
making their own fault seem not so serious.
The “Halo Effect”: The term “halo effect” refers to the process of forming opinions based on one
element from a group of elements and generalizing that perception to all other elements.

Example: In an organisation, a good attendance record may cause positive judgments
about productivity, attitude, or quality of work.
In performance evaluation system, the halo effect refers to the practice of singling out one trait
of an employee (either good or bad) and using this as a basis for judgment of the total employee
(e.g., seeing the well-dressed manager as the “good” manager).

13.4 Overcoming Barriers to Communication

Following are some of the additional measures to overcome the barriers to communication:

1. Fostering good relationships: Strong relationships must be fostered between the employer
and employee in order to avoid misunderstandings and accept each other’s view points in
order to remove the barriers and to facilitate proper communication in the organisation.
2. Purposeful and well focused communication: Communication should be purposeful and
directed to an individual. At the end of the communication, the receiver should not be left
to feel that communication had been meaningless or useless.

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