Question

Filtering and perception, communication pitfalls, can create distortions in the communication process. Describe each using examples and discuss what managers can do to avoid these communication distortions. (Do not use the same examples as described in the text.)

Answer 1

Filtering is the manipulation of information in order to make the information appear favorable or less problematic to the recipient. When the employees find the message as unfavorable for the supervisors, the employee may try to hide or modify some of the contents to make the message pleasing and the superior reactions positive. Filtering mostly occurs due to the fear of superiors becoming angry on hearing the unfavorable information. Filtering does not allow the recipient to know the complete information. For example, consider the situation where the senior management has asked for the monthly report of a customer service project to analyze the performance. While submitting the report to senior management, the project manager may remove some of the problematic tickets which were solved very late or manipulate the number of days taken to solve such tickets to show that they have achieved the performance as committed. In order to avoid this kind of filtering, the message recipient should be more flexible to the information and accept the messages controlling the emotions. The recipient can also try to get the information from multiple sources to get the correct data eliminating the effects of filtering. Another method recipients can adopt is rewarding the senders who always deliver accurate information without considering the message was good or bad. Such rewards would motivate the employees in organizations to deliver only correct information to the management.

Selective perception occurs when the receiver accepts the contents that are matching with their expectations and beliefs and block the contents that do not match. They hear things according to their perception and interpret the message which may completely deviate the meaning intended by the sender. For example consider the above example where the senior management has asked for the monthly data to the project manager for resource planning. But the perception made the manager to think that the report is asked to analyze the performance and the manager manipulates the report using filtering and provides a report showing that they are performing well. The top management will not approve additional resources based on the report and the intent of the communication gets spoiled. In order to avoid selective perception, the communication should be made simple and the receiver should try to pay attention to each word spoken. Active listening would help to avoid such issues as the receiver would ask questions and clarify what they have listened is correct or not. Another method can be giving the communication in written form to avoid the cultural and language barriers from affecting the oral communication.