Communication

Introduction

Communication plays a major role in employer-employee relationships on farms. It also affects the relationships among family members on the management team. Although effective communication does not guarantee success of a farm business, its absence usually assures problems. A communication problem may soon become a crisis or it may linger on for years. More specifically, communication influences the effectiveness of the hiring and training of employees, motivation of employees, providing daily instructions, performance evaluations and the handling of discipline problems. These are the obvious roles of communication.

Communication also affects the willingness of employees to provide useful suggestions. Employees’ feeling a part of the business requires communication. In fact, for employees to make the important evolution from "workers" to "working managers" requires effective communication between supervisors and employees.

The Managers

There are three managers that can fully understand the importance of communication and the impact of it in their respective works. The first manager is a supervisor of an engineering company where the tactical and decoding are involved. Meanwhile, the second and the third manager are both came from business industry where the manufacturing is the nature of business they served. All the managers have more than five years of experience and professional enough in handling the different kind of problems in their companies.

The Communication Problems

Manager 1: In the nature of our business, which is the software, the projects suffer serious breakdowns in coordination and communication throughout the development. An engineering phase of software experiences the “one-way communication”. This happens when the engineering methodologies are communication methodologies. The information are transferred within the development team to the various stakeholders which is too expensive and demanding since the project needs to be monitored.

The second type is the unfamiliarity of words or codes. The programmers speak the same language about the system but in terms of mixing the mechanical engineers to the information engineers, you should expect the presence of miscommunication is there.

Manager 2: In the sense of business, I was assigned in the manufacturing for five months now and I experienced much communication deficiency in the production area. The missing link often appeared as inability to trace human sources. Part of the production is the strict policy of creating the products close to perfection and when there is failure of complying, it is automatic to find the people involved in the process. The traceability is important part of production, not to punish the people involved but to tell or show them how to do the product in the right way. And employees are typically afraid of that.

Manager 3: I’ve been working in marketing department, and the common problem I noticed is the popularity of informal communication. The informal communication is considered advantage when the group is in the field, but it can lessen the relationship of people whenever we are inside the office. The connections are suddenly disappearing and sometimes the competitions of the groups are part of it. The information cannot be delivered for the entire group if this type of communication stayed inside.

Barriers to Communication

Manager 1: Stereotyping is the first type of barrier that came in my mind. Stereotyping means the oversimplified conceptions, beliefs, or opinions. Example, the sender sent a very short message or codes - which are very popular in my field of work - but the receiver is not capable enough to read the message fully.

Manager 2: The poor listening skills and distractions are the things I can say related to each other and can affect the effective communication. In production, the machineries are very loud and there is no time to talk as well as there are chances the hearing abilities of the people became weak.

Manager 3: The people under me experience the lack of feedback is one hindrance to communicate well. Because the department I handle are divided into two groups and the competition is high. Sometimes, the people of the other group often answer the question through nodding or stare in which in my part is not good. I sometimes thought that they are plotting something against me, though I know they are not.

Manager Tactics

Manager 1: I usually inform my people to study the other codes and get knowledge from it. I believe that it can increase awareness about the field they are working especially for those who are new to the field. They will get the hard time in processing all the information but I am sure they will survive it with the guidance of their superiors.

Manager 2: My people actually don’t need my advice because I know that when they are out of the work, they can finally talk to each other – freely. But in case they need it anyway, I guess they have to define the other channels of communication. They should also cast away their fear for it will not make them improve.

Manager 3: For me, I guess it is about the acceptance of the miscommunication and determining the reality of its negative effects. Once the employees understand the burden or the missed fun it brought to them, I am sure that they are the one to make another adjustment to connect to the other group.

Typical Types of Problems and Barriers

The language or the lack of using of words is the common problem that revolves around the three departments. Meanwhile, the barrier is the lack of listening skills. They don’t pay attention much on coordinating with the other people and it is hard to make the company focus on its progress, because inside the people that lack of communication can’t understand the business’s objective and establish their own career goals.

Conclusion

Communication is at the heart of many interpersonal problems faced by farm employers. Understanding the communication process and then working at improvement provide managers a recipe for becoming more effective communicators. Knowing the common barriers to communication is the first step to minimizing their impact. Managers can reflect on how they are doing and make use of the ideas presented in this paper. When taking stock of how well you are doing as a manager, first ask yourself and others how well you are doing as a communicator.

Employees typically are hesitant to state their goals, their concerns and their disappointments. Removing barriers to communication is one of the easiest ways to improve communication. Removing these barriers starts with an understanding of a communication model. This paper should help managers think about their own communication skills and the way they communicate day-to-day back home.

Works Cited:

Al-Rawas, A., & Easterbrook, S., 1996. Communication Problems in Requirements Engineering: A Field Study. [Online] Available at: http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~sme/papers/1996/NASA-IVV-96-002.pdf. [Accessed 13 Nov 2009].

Erven, B., (n.d.). Overcoming Barriers to Communication. [Online] Available at: http://www.aede.osu.edu/people/erven.1/HRM/communication.pdf. [Accessed 13 Nov 2009].