OVERCOMING BARRIERS TO COMMUNICATION
Bernard L. Erven Department of Agricultural, Environmental, and Development Economics Ohio State University 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. Employees typically are hesitant to state their goals, their concerns and their disappointments. Of course, an employee may be a complainer and share views to the point a supervisor silently begs for less "communication." Much more common is the need to better understand what an employee is "really thinking." This paper is about improving communication skills. 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. Communication Model The model in Figure 1 identifies the major components in the communication process. The process starts with a sender who has a message for a receiver. Two or more people are always involved in communication. The sender has the...