Barriers To Communication Activity (Top 5)

In this article, we will look at barriers to communication activities which can be helpful in breaking down barriers to effective communication. This article also looks at the main barriers to effective communication.

What Are Barriers To Communication Activities?

Communication activities are guided activities that help identify barriers to communication and overcome them in an fun and interactive way. This article contains exercises that will help you understand more about effective communication, facilitate your communication with others, and enhance your communication skills. They’ll help you become a much more efficient, optimistic communicator with the people who matter most to you.

Barriers To Communication Activities 

Here are some communication activities you can practice to enhance your communication skills:

• Card Pieces
• Guess the Emotion
• The Guessing Game
• Listener And Talker Activity
• Silent Movie

Card Pieces

This MindTools exercise will help participants gain more empathy, understand other points of view, and improve their interpersonal and communication skills.

To begin, ensure you have enough people for at least three two-person teams, sufficient playing cards to give each person around 4 and 6 cards, and 15 minutes of time.

Here’s a breakdown on how to go about the activity:

• Each playing card should be cut in half diagonally, then in half diagonally again, yielding four triangular parts.
• Combine all of the parts and place an equivalent number of cards in each of the teams’ envelopes.
• Group people into three or four-person teams. At least three teams are needed. If you’re lacking people, two-person teams will suffice.
• Each team should be given an envelope containing playing card parts.
• Every team has three minutes to sort the parts, figure out the ones it needs to finish the cards, and devise a negotiating tactic.
• Enable the teams to begin bargaining for pieces after three minutes. Individuals can barter on their own as well as with their team. Allow each team eight minutes to bargain.
• When the timer goes off, count how many cards each team has completed. The round is won by the team with the most cards.

Just after this, you can use the following questions to help guide discussion about the activity:

• Which strategies for negotiating were successful? Which ones were not?
• What should they have done to make it better?
• What other qualities did they need to use, such as active listening or empathy?

Guess the Emotion

“Guess the Emotion” is also another helpful activity from the Training Course Material website. It entails acting out and guessing feelings, as you would imagine. This allows all participants to develop empathy and gain a greater understanding of the reactions of their colleagues or group members.

To perform this fun activity follow these simple instructions:

• Split the group into two teams
• Put a pack of cards on a table (or in a box) with a different emotion written on each one.
• Pick the top card from the table and have a member of Team A act out the emotion for his or her team. This must be completed within a certain amount of time, maybe a minute or two .
• Team A receives ten points if they accurately guess the emotion.
• Now have a member of Team B act out an emotion, and grant points as necessary.
• Acting options should be circulated between the two teams on a consistent basis.
• Blow the whistle and reveal the winning team depending on its total score after 20 to 30 minutes of acting and guessing.
• At the end of the activity, you may also reward the winning team with a special prize.

The Guessing Game

“The Guessing Game” is a fun and entertaining activity that will help you improve your communication skills. This game is close to what many people know as “Twenty Questions,” with the exception that there is no strict limit on the amount of questions that are asked.

To begin, divide the group into two equal (or approximately equal) teams. A single player of each team should walk out of the room for one minute and return with a common thing present in just about all offices; it could be a stapler, a printer, or a softboard.

Once this person comes back their team members can ask only “Yes or No” questions (i.e., questions which can only be addressed with “yes” or “no”) and try to figure out what the item is. 

The team can ask as many questions as they want to in order to find things out, but they must remember that they are competing with another team. If time allows, you can have several rounds to give the teams a more competitive streak.

Spend the last 10 minutes or so discussing and debriefing. To help you, consider the following points and questions:

• Ask the group that finding the object in every round took a very long time and hard work, but what if we did not have the time and had only a single question to ask to identify the object, what might that question be?
• “What is the object?” will be the question.Now this is an unrestricted and open-ended question.
• Closed-ended questions can be very helpful in certain situations to validate your knowledge or to enable you to monitor the interaction with an excessively chatty individual. 
• Open-ended questions are an ideal way to save valuable time to effort and get to the answers you want quickly.

Listener And Talker Activity

This is another great activity for demonstrating the value of active listening in effective communication and breaking barriers to effective communication. It allows participants a chance to exercise their skills as both listener and speaker.

Divide the group into pairs, with one partner assuming the role of the talker while the other takes on the role of the listener. The role of the speaker is to explain what he or she desires from a vacation without naming a place. The listener’s responsibility is to pay attention to what’s being said and what isn’t said, and to show that they are listening attentively by their behaviour.

After several minutes of careful listening, the audience can outline the three or key conditions that the speaker is contemplating when it comes to having a good time on holiday. 

Eventually, the listener should try to persuade the speaker to visit a particular vacation spot. The pair should swap roles and try the exercise again for a short briefing about how well the listener listened.

Silent Movie

Finally, to emphasise the significance of good nonverbal communication, perform this exercise.

Split the audience into two groups. One group will then be scriptwriters and the other will be performers for the first part of the activity. The two groups should swap positions in the second half.

Direct the scriptwriters to create a silent film while keeping the following points in mind:

• Without the use of language, silent films tell a tale. It’s crucial to begin the scene with the performer doing a simple activity, such as household chores or rowing a sail.
• Once a second (or several) actors join the action, the scene should be disrupted, and their appearance must have a significant effect. 
• These characters may be thieves, salespersons, teenagers, or even pets.
• There must be a visible commotion.
• At the conclusion of the scene, the dilemma created by the commotion must be overcome.
• Allow the script writers to finish their script before having the actors execute it. After the scene is completed, the groups can switch positions.

Conclusion

In this article, we will look at barriers to communication activities which can be helpful in breaking down barriers to effective communication. This article also looks at the main barriers to effective communication.

Frequently Asked Questions: Barriers To Communication Activity

References

49 Communication Activities, Exercises, and Games