Cultural Barriers In The Workplace Essay

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There are three barriers to effective communication in the workplace. These include:
• Emotional barriers
• Cultural barriers
• Perceptual barriers
Effective communication in important for the success of every organisation, without it, your company is bound to fail due to employees in the organisation being unable to work with each other due to lack of effective communication. These barriers stop us, as individuals from understanding each other.
Emotional barriers stop us from communicating to our colleagues, therefore it is important for employees to have training in communication skills (feigenbaum, 2017). Some people are just shy, while others are conflict avoidants. Due to them having issues with their self- esteem and confidence and just their natural dispositions, they may not
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For employees to communicate effectively we need to understand that the workplace is a diverse workforce with people of different races and religions, therefore the mindset of people from different religions are different.
It forms the way people think and the way they behave. Culture also gives rise to prejudices, ethnocentrism, manners and opinions. Some causes of cultural barriers include:
• differences in languages different cultures have different languages according to their own heritage. People are more confident dealing with languages they know rather than learning new ones. Therefore, it is important for employees to understand each other’s languages so no misunderstanding can arise.
• Semantics
Non- verbal cues can be misinterpreted (Mishra, 2017). Non-verbal cues cannot be relied on during communication (Mishra, 2017). Body language and expressions can be interpreted differently as each person has their own signs and symbols with their way of communicating in their culture (Mishra, 2017).
• Behaviour and beliefs in different

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