Barriers to Effective Communication

Barriers to Effective Communication

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May 21, 2012

Clark Amanda Williams

CJA Nissen

Barriers to Effective Communication

The communication process has four key components; encoding, medium of transmission, decoding and feedback. But two other factors that go along with these key components are the sender and receiver. The sender is the person who will initiate the message. The receiver is the person who the message is directed at. First, the sender must encode the message using verbal, non-verbal, and body language where the receiver will be able to decode it. Next, the sender will begin transmitting the message, using some kind of medium (channel); verbal or written are the most common. These would include person to person, telephone calls, memos, letters, and reports. Once the message has reached the appropriate receiver, then they will begin to decode the message, listen to how the sender is speaking and look at the body language of the sender, if the message is written the they will look for certain words, punctuation, this will show them if there is good news, anger, excitement, or bad news. After the receiver has decoded the message he/she will provide the sender with feedback letting the sender know if they understand the message. Officer Stacy misunderstood is message and thought he was going to be fired as chief of police.

The difference between listening and hearing are they are two different things; they just share the ears, because a person has to have ears to listen and hear. Listening has two main categories: passive and active. Passive listening is how people listen when they are passion or motivated about something, like telling a story, watching television, or listening to music. A person's mind can drift while listening to someone, the cure for this problem is active listen, which means to listen with a purpose. The listener may be trying to help a friend, solve a problem, and understand information or share interest of others. Some ways people can be more active listeners are: listen more when others are talking, do not finish other people's sentences, do not answer a question with a question, try not to be biases, never daydream or get preoccupied in your own thoughts and provide feedback (Clark, D., 2010).

The criminal justice system includes the courts, police, and corrections. Then there are formal and informal channels of communication within the criminal justice organizations. The formal channels are "strict procedures defined by the policies of the organization (Sinclair, C., 2011)." The informal channels are "undocumented sharing of information (Sinclair, C., 2011)." Upward, downward, horizontal communication is directed the levels of command in the formal channels of communication. When supervisors or higher authorities need to get information to the lower level employees' downward communication is the channel of formal information. Downward communication is passed to the next highest employee in line. When the supervisor or higher ups are given feedback from