Communication Barriers among Engineering Graduates in Tamil Nadu

Abstract

Ineffective communication has been found to the major cause for problems, conflicts and low productivity. There could not be and cannot be a comprehensive list of barriers to communication of people as there are different reasons for different people that act as barriers. This paper attempted to study the barriers to communication among Engineering students who belonged to Net generations as the knowledge of the barriers would be useful to organizations to apply them when these Net generation graduates join organizations. The study was conducted among six hundred engineering students of Anna University in Tamilnadu. The paper discusses the seven barriers to communication among engineering students as identified by the respondents of this study. The seven barriers are: 1) Fear of making mistakes, 2) Language, 3) Speaking to teachers, 4) Lack of trust, 5) Past mistakes, 6) Lack of listening and 7) Interest in cell phone. These barriers to communication among engineering graduates are presented and discussed in the order of preference. Fear of failure is identified by the respondents as number one barrier to communication.