Paper presented at the ACTS: Communication in Evolution conference, Conde Duque Cultural Centre, Madrid, January, 2005

When Communication Goes Wrong

Neil Thompson

Summary

In professional practice in the human services there is a long-standing tradition of placing a great deal of emphasis on communication skills. While not wishing to challenge the importance of communication skills in promoting high levels of professional practice and management, this paper argues that it is essential to balance an emphasis on individual skills with an understanding of wider contextual factors that influence communication – particularly those factors that can lead to communication breakdown. In presenting this argument, there is a shift of emphasis from the individual in terms of skill towards the wider social and organisational context.

Communication can break down in a number of ways and for a number of reasons. One of these reasons is a lack of skills on the part of one or more people involved in the efforts to communicate. However, there is a danger that a strong emphasis on individual skills issues distorts and oversimplifies the reality of communication – it presents a complex psychosocial situation as if it were simply a matter of individual psychology. It is therefore important to balance out our understanding of how communication can go wrong by considering aspects of the wider social and organisational context as they affect communicative success or otherwise.

The paper briefly explores six areas of communication breakdown:

poor systems Communication does not operate in a sociological vacuum – to understand communication (and how it can go wrong), we need to place greater emphasis on how communication systems work or fail to work.
non-existent systems In some circumstances, the situation is even worse, because systems of communication do not exist, and this lack can act as a structural barrier to communication.
too simple a model of communication The traditional tripartite model of communication (transmission - noise - reception) has proven to be far too simplistic and needs to be replaced by a much more sophisticated understanding.
a lack of communicative sensitivity Often, communication is a problem, not simply because of the skills of the individuals concerned, but because it was not appreciated that communication needed to take place – there was a lack of communicative sensitivity.
unintended communication Communication can go wrong not only because of a failure to ‘transmit’ the appropriate message, but also because an inappropriate message has unintentionally been transmitted.
failing to value diversity Inequality and discrimination can act as significant barriers to communication.

Introduction

Communication is increasingly being recognised as a key factor in organisational effectiveness. As Hargie et al. (2004) comment:

Management fads such as business process re-engineering, just-in-time and total quality management come and go. Financial systems ebb and flow. Production methods are regularly updated. However, one of the few things that remains constant in the workplace is the primacy of the human encounter. There is a deeply felt need among homo sapiens to communicate with one another. (p. vi)

What this means, in effect, is that communication is at the heart of organisational life and can therefore be seen as a key factor in determining the effectiveness of an organisation in achieving its goals. However, we continue to see significant problems relating to communication within and between organisations. Clutterbuck and Hirst (2003) illustrate this when they point out that:

One of the depressing features of MORI surveys of internal communication is how little impact much of the activity in this area appears to have made. Over a period of thirty years, employees’ average satisfaction with communications from their organization has remained steady at around 50 per cent. (p. xv)

Fifty per cent satisfaction is clearly not a figure to be proud of. It would appear that all is not well within the field of organisational communicative effectiveness. This paper should therefore be seen as part of an attempt to understand why communication can be such a problem and to explore steps to improve the situation. It does so by exploring some of the ways in which communication can go wrong and thereby contributes to laying a foundation for reducing the incidence of communication failures.

Communication breakdowns

The six areas of communication failure identified above by no means form an exhaustive list, but should be sufficient to illustrate my basic point, namely that we need to move away from a reductionist position of psychologism (that is, one which reduces a complex, multilevel psychosocial phenomenon to one of individual psychology) towards a more sophisticated position which addresses both psychological factors (individual skills, for example) and sociological ones (social and organisational factors). In order to illustrate and support my argument, I shall discuss each of the six areas in turn.

Poor systems of communication

Individual communication efforts can be either drowned out or amplified by the system in which these efforts are being made. Systems of communication will tend to handle certain forms of communication better than others. The success or otherwise of a particular effort to communicate will therefore be influenced by whether or not it ‘fits’ the system. For example, I have come across many ‘Complaints and Compliments’ procedures which, although including ‘compliments’ in their title are predominantly defensively oriented complaints-handling processes and are therefore less likely to handle compliments quite so effectively. Attempts to communicate satisfaction may therefore get lost in a system that is more geared up to dealing with complaints of dissatisfaction.

One of the implications of this is that managers concerned with effective communication need to look beyond matters of individual performance when communication breaks down and also take into consideration wider matters of communication systems. This involves avoiding the common pitfall of equating communication systems with IT requirements. While computers clearly have an important role to play in communication, we must make sure we avoid the dangerous pitfall of concentrating on IT issues and thus losing sight of the bigger picture of communications requirements at a broader level (Thompson, 2003a).

Non-existent systems of communication

In the UK child protection procedures and communication systems have been in place for a long period of time, but it is only fairly recently that the abuse of vulnerable adults (elderly or disabled people, for example) has received attention in terms of the establishment of systematic processes of registering concern and mobilising a multidisciplinary response to those concerns. Communication, then, can be hampered by the non-existence of a formal system of communication for the purposes required (how do you make a constructive suggestion in an organisation that does not have a suggestions scheme?).

One implication of this is that it is important for organisations to consider whether there are important communication issues that are not adequately covered by existing systems of communication.

Too simple a model of communication

Traditional models of communication involve three elements:

Transmission This is where the ‘message’ is transmitted to the selected ‘target’ for communication.
Noise This refers to the various factors that can stand in the way of effective communication. This includes simple, concrete factors (for example, a fax that has printed so faintly it cannot be read properly) as well as more complex, abstract issues (for example, a lack of clarity on the part of the person making the transmission).
Reception The way the ‘message’ is received also plays a part in the effectiveness or otherwise of a communication (for example, the use of selective perception, as in a reliance on stereotypes, can influence how the message is received – regardless of the intentions of the person transmitting it).

More recent developments in our understanding of communication show that this is a far from adequate model – it is far too simplistic. More contemporary accounts place emphasis on such complex issues as culture, social divisions, power, discourses and processes of social construction. Communication can no longer realistically be seen as a relatively simple process of conveying information from A to B. That is, we have begun to move from a psychological approach towards a more sociologically informed one (see, for example, Cobley, 2001).

A lack of communicative sensitivity

I have argued elsewhere that it is important to consider the concept of communicative sensitivity:

the ability to identify the circumstances in which communication is required, the nature of that communication, the persons or organizations that should be communicated with, and so on.

There is a great irony that it is often the case that people who have excellent communication skills play a serious part in serious problems arising from communication breakdowns. This is because, in such situations, advanced-level communication skills are of little or no value if they are not put into practice. That is, if the person concerned fails to realize that communication is needed, problems will still arise, despite the high level of communication that he or she is capable of. (Thompson, 2003a, pp. 33-4)

A lack of communicative sensitivity can arise for individual reasons (for example, the failure of the individual concerned to think sufficiently carefully about the matter in hand). However, there can also be organisational and social factors at play. For example, the culture of a particular organisation (or sector of an organisation) can have the effect of playing down certain forms of communication and prioritising others. For example, the culture of a human services agency which does not value multiprofessional collaboration may have the effect of devaluing communication with other professionals and thus contribute to a lack of communicative sensitivity in that regard (not giving feedback to someone who has made a referral is an example I have often encountered).

Unintended communication

This problem arises when we are attempting to give one message but we are in fact giving another instead of (or as well as) the intended message. For example, we may be trying to listen to what somebody is trying to say but, if we are preoccupied with other matters (the fact that we are late for a meeting, perhaps), what may be communicated is the unintended message that we are not listening, that we have more important matters that concern us. While this may often be a matter of communication skills (or a lack thereof), there can also be organisational and social factors at work here. For example, an organisation that communicates in very formal jargon can have a similar effect – unwittingly communicating the message that ‘our bureaucratic concerns are more important than your personal concerns’. This can once again be a matter of culture – an organisational culture that hinders communication in one or more ways.

Not valuing diversity

A failure to take seriously the notion of valuing diversity can lead to discrimination and disadvantage for certain sectors of the community and workforce (Thompson, 2003b), which in turn can lead to communication difficulties, such as:

Ill feeling, resentment and unresolved conflicts which can stand in the way of effective communication.
Distortions of communication based on stereotypes or other discriminatory assumptions.
Misunderstandings or blockages of communication as a result of a lack of awareness of, and sensitivity to, cultural differences in communication (Guirdham, 1999; Scollon and Scollon, 2001).
Failure to value individuals and the different perspectives, experiences and lifeworlds they bring can lower morale, demotivate people who feel undervalued and contribute to stress.

A clear implication here is that valuing diversity is not only a worthwhile endeavour in its own right, it is also a valuable contribution to trying to reduce the incidence of communication failures.

Conclusion

Turner (2003) makes apt comment when he argues that:

So ‘the reality is that in times of uncertainty organisations need more than just compliance from employees. They need to engage people’s hearts and minds, gain their energy and commitment and get them focusing their efforts in the right direction’ (Quirke 2002). An effective communication programme is key to this. (p. x)

The key point on which this paper is based is that an adequate understanding of how communication can go wrong needs to move beyond an individualistic perspective to develop an approach which takes account of wider social and organisational issues and is therefore psychosocial, rather than narrowly psychological. It is my contention that it is by addressing communication problems in this broader, sociologically informed way that we can make a contribution to the type of ‘effective communication programme’ of which Turner writes.

While the world of communication theory has already made significant steps in this direction, the situation in the world of management and professional practice is one that remains dominated by a psychologistic perspective and approach (for example, in terms of training provision). What is needed, then, is:

A continued development of a psychosocial perspective on communication in place of a narrow, individualistic approach that fails to do justice to the complexities of communication.
Greater links between theory and practice – for managers, professional practitioners, consultants and trainers, so that developments in theory that move away from simplistic models can also be reflected in the workplace.
A strategic approach to communication which recognises that there are significant organisational responsibilities related to communicative effectiveness (the leadership challenge of shaping organisational culture, for example) in addition to operational matters of developing the skills of individual employees.

Simply identifying these three key implications will not, of course, improve the situation per se. However, by being aware of what needs to change, we are in a stronger position to influence change in a positive direction.

References

Clutterbuck, D. and Hirst, S. (2003) Talking Business: Making Communication Work, Oxford, Butterworth-Heinemann.
Cobley, P. (ed.) (2001) The Routledge Companion to Semiotics and Linguistics, London, Routledge.
Guirdham, M. (1999) Communicating Across Cultures, London, Macmillan - now Palgrave Macmillan.
Hargie, O., Dickson, D. and Tourish, D. Communication Skills for Effective Management, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
Quirke, B. (2002) ‘An Interview with Bill Quirke’, Corporate Communication. Melcrum Online.
Scollon, R. and Scollon, S.W. (2001) Intercultural Communication: A Discourse Approach, 2nd edn, Oxford, Blackwell.
Thompson, N. (2003a) Communication and Language: A Handbook of Theory and Practice, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
Thompson, N. (2003b) Promoting Equality, 2nd edn, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
Turner, P. (2003) Organisational Communication: The Role of the HR Professional, London, Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.