Communication Barrier

One communication barrier has to do with the words you use and the words you do not use. Those words are the ones that speak to the human emotion verses just giving information.

One of my favorite expert communicator educators is Bert Decker. He best explains the reason why you cannot just give an informational talk and expect people to take in the information.

Got to Be Believed to Be Heard

In his book, You Got to Be Believed to Be Heard he explains that people buy on emotion and rationalize the purchase on fact. It is impossible to connect with the Cerebral Cortex unless you first get past the gatekeeper, the brain stem and Limbic system.

All the information we process has to first go through the gate keeper, the spam filters of our brain, the brain stem and Limbic system. This is where the likability, credibility and trust spam filters all signal what the appropriate emotion that needs to be expressed by the cerebral cortex.

To connect to people on an emotional level, it is necessary to incorporate emotions. You need to reach to the heart in order to speak to the mind of your audience.

How

You can say a cold hard fact like 40% of all marriages end in divorce (The 40% is not necessarily a real number). Say nothing else and it is a cold hard statistic.

Or you can ask to those who are married what was the feeling they had when they met the love of their life. What happened to their heart. What happened to their thoughts. Ask if they remember that feeling?

Then add...but things change. Life changes us or the world we live in changes. The result, one of the changes that happens, people forget that feeling that you just remembered. They forget it so much so that their marriage ends in divorce.

To appreciate how often, this happens, count five couples next to you, either to your right or left. Now imagine that next year, two of the five will not be married. This is repeated for every five couples counted for the entire room. For the entire office, the entire city, and even the entire state. Yes, 40% or 2 of every five marriages will end.

Look at any information you share. Can you turn it into a story? Can you speak to the emotions? if so, you will have overcome this communication barrier.

Communication Main Page

Other Barriers to Effective Communication

Gender Differences in Communication

Speechmastery.com: The Communication Barrier Resource

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