Reference no: EM132364282

Question

A workplace experience I had where miscommunication occurred was when my boss asked me to approve some invoices that were overdue. The invoices had somehow fallen through the cracks and the vendor was anxious for payment. All of our invoices route through various approvers, depending on the client matter or general ledger accounts that they will be charged to.

My boss asked me to review the invoices and ensure they were fully approved so that payment could be wired out before end of day. I reviewed the invoices, made some adjustments, and approved the invoices for the Accounts Payable review. I then emailed the next approver in line, let them know this was a rush situation, and asked them to approve the invoices, as is our general practice for rush requests.

It was already afternoon when I was asked to approve the invoices so we were in a time crunch. They were still waiting for approval by the second approver a few hours later and I checked in with my boss to see what the next steps should be. He was initially annoyed that the invoices weren't already approved. He calmed down and explained that he had wanted me to manually approve the invoices for all the approvers since this was such a rush situation.

It had never occurred to me to go outside of our approval process. Once things had been clarified and I understood what my boss wanted, I manually pushed the invoices through the rest of the approval process, added notes explaining the situation, and imported the invoices so that payment could be wired to the vendor.

The communication between my boss and I was impaired by ambiguity. My boss instructed me to review the invoices and make sure they were fully approved.

In his mind, that meant I would review the invoices and completed all of the approvals myself. In my mind, I would review the invoices and work with the other approvers to get them approved so the invoices could be paid. The intended meaning was ambiguous. It would have helped if my boss had clarified his meaning and made sure I understood. It didn't occur to me to finish all the approvals myself because that wasn't our general policy.

I also could have clarified that I should follow the normal process even though there were extenuating circumstances. Either my boss or I could have cleared up the ambiguity by making sure I understood what was being asked of me. My understanding of the communication was also impaired by noise. Noise can distort or interrupt messages (Cardon, 2016). My understanding was likely impacted by semantic noise and psychological noise. Semantic noise occurs when different meanings are applied to the same words or phrases (Cardon, 2016).

I had a difference understanding of making sure the invoices were fully approved than my boss did in this situation and that kept me from understanding his actual meaning. Psychological noise is when understanding is impaired due to attitudes, ideas, and emotions that are experienced during interactions between people (Cardon, 2016).

My understanding of my boss' meaning was impaired by my ideas about following firm policy and my attitude that one should never go against the rules. My boss was thinking about how to best preserve our relationship with the vendor and the stress he likely felt to get the invoices paid. The noise we experienced contributed to the misunderstanding.

Required

In response to the above post, discuss specific techniques (e.g., active listening, disclosure, feedback) that could be used to remove the communication barriers and improve interpersonal communication in the workplaces described in the above post. Use specific examples to support your assessment and explain how this technique would help remove the barrier to communication.