Barriers to communication

Considering its complexity, understanding the core challenges to interpersonal communication can vastly improve the process of interpreting people's messages, and helping them understand how to interpret yours. According to Bolton (1993) there are twelve major communication spoilers, listed in three different categories:
Judging
1. Criticising - making a negative evaluation of the other person.
2. Name-calling - stereotyping the other person.
3. Diagnosing - analysing the other person's behaviour.
4. Praising evaluatively - making excessive positive judgments to the other person.
5. Ordering - commanding the other person to do something you would like.
6. Threatening - controlling the other person's actions by warning about consequences.
7. Moralising - telling what the other person should do in a given situation.
8. Inappropriate or excessive questioning - using close-ended questions in excess.
9. Advising - giving the other person a solution to a problem.
Avoiding the Other's Concerns
10. Diverting - "pushing" a solution to the other person's problems.
11. Logical argument - attempting to convince the other with an appeal to logic and facts.
12. Reassuring - trying to stop the other person from feeling negative emotions.
Improving Communication
There are many effective strategies to help improve interpersonal communication. Effective communication does not only involve the transmission of a message, but also ensuring that the other person is devoting enough attention and that the environment is appropriate to transmit the message (controlling the 'noise' and 'interruption' levels).
Attention is the major skill that needs to be 'practised' during the communication process. The more attention devoted to a dialogue, for example, the better a communicator can recognise body language and voice trends. Furthermore, understanding the context of each message and aligning that to the other person's cultural and emotional background plays a key role in creating reliability in the interpretation.
Basic Communication Skills
Such rules are beneficial for any communication process, but particularly important during a formal relationship.
1. Listening well - valuing the client and demonstrating interest for the conversation.
2. Observing - observing body language, voice tone and emotive expressions.
3. Acknowledgement - the recognition for the client's initiative to state his/her issues.
4. Awareness - ensuring that the counsellor's body language is appropriate for the context.
5. Thinking - reasoning about what is and what is not appropriate input to the process.
6. Verbal expression - ensuring the use of the appropriate tone, rhythm and volume of voice.
7. Reflecting - clarifying and verifying what the client has expressed to the counsellor.