Communication Roadblocks Worksheet
By
HappierTherapy
Author bio
The Happier Therapy editorial team is made up of Masters and PhD counselling psychologists. Each worksheet is created by a team member with exposure to and experience in the subject matter. The worksheet then gets reviewed by a more senior editorial member. This is someone with extensive knowledge of the subject matter and highly cited published material.
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Communication roadblocks are defined as obstacles or hindrances that prevent communication from serving its purpose.
Communication roadblocks sabotage the feelings, opinions and thoughts that are being conveyed through the message being communicated.
What Are The Theories Behind This Worksheet?
Roadblocks interfere strongly with a person’s ability to stay centred and continue to explore and talk about his or her own perception of the problem.
There are 12 communication roadblocks.
- Making Judgements
Criticizing, judging, blaming or name-calling can negatively impact one’s ability to communicate effectively.
- Sending Solutions
Advising, sending solutions, or suggestions can cause dependency and resistance.
- Avoiding Concerns
Trying to solve problems, diverting or utilizing logic in response to someone’s concerns can be invalidating.
- Preaching
Better communication skills are less about your subjective opinions, moralizing, or obliging and more about allowing space to consider the experience of the other person.
- Commanding
Commanding, directing, or ordering produces fright, resistance, defensiveness and resentment. Using this approach closes down future conversations.
- Moralizing
Do not try to impact your beliefs or play the all-knowing moral sage onto others, understand people’s perspectives.
- Threatening
Threatening, warning or punishing can cause anger, resentment, and resistance. Putting someone on the defence automatically loses their ability to engage productively in the conversation.
- One-Upping
Using our stories as a reference when someone else is opening up to you is a way to lose the interest of the other person.
- Shaming
Do not shame a person for the decision they made or the experience they had. Learn to always listen without judgement.
- Interpreting
Diagnosing, psychoanalyzing, interpreting or reading-in can be seen as a rejection of the other person’s self-perception, arousing anger and possibly serious insecurity.
- Interrogating
Cross-examining, interrogating, questioning, or prying messages may show interest in what the other person is saying. However, they ignore the other person’s feelings. Learn to be mindful of the amount and the quality of questions asked.
- Kidding
Kidding, teasing, making light of, joking or using sarcasm may create feelings of rejection, resentment, and hostility if used too often or inappropriately.
How Will This Worksheet Help You?
This worksheet will help people understand and conceptualize the different communication roadblocks and open up channels for effective and efficient communication.
How Should You Use This Worksheet?
This worksheet can be used to build better relationships among people in a family, friendship, work, and romantic relationship.
This worksheet should also be used to help people improve relationships and facilitate behaviour change.
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References
1.-
Big Brothers Big Sisters of New York City: The Power To Change Lives. (No Date). Communication Roadblocks. Available at: http://elearning.daremightythings.com/bbbsnyc/Challenges/Downloads/roadblocks.pdf. [Accessed October 29, 2022]
2.-
Pollack Peacebuilding Systems. (© 2022). 12 Roadblocks to Communications & Why They Matter. Available at: https://pollackpeacebuilding.com/blog/12-roadblocks-communication/. [Accessed October 29, 2022]
