Communication Barriers

March 2026

• Mar 10, 2026ConceptsWhy Miscommunication Happens Even When Words Are ClearKeysar and Henly had speakers convey ambiguous statements and rate their own success, then measured what listeners took away: speakers consistently overestimated how well they had got through, though the result belongs to that task and should not be stretched across every medium. The page separates six causes, and distinguishes read-back from teach-back and closed-loop confirmation.12 MIN9.9k

May 2025

• May 20, 2025CultureCultural Miscommunication: Causes and ImpactsThe NTSB found no mechanical failure. The first officer raised his concern indirectly, saying things like "Look how the ice is just hanging on his, ah, back, back there, see that?" rather than stating plainly that takeoff was unsafe, and rank made the indirect form feel appropriate. Avianca Flight 52 ran out of fuel in 1990 after using the word emergency once, without urgency. This page explains the patterns and the Crew Resource Management response.26 MIN16.7k
• May 8, 2025CultureMisinterpretation ExplainedNASA lost the $125 million Mars Climate Orbiter because one team worked in metric units and another in imperial: the numbers were transmitted accurately and still read differently. That is the normal condition of communication. The Joint Commission found communication failures were a root or contributing cause in over 70 percent of the sentinel events it reviewed between 1995 and 2005, which is what SBAR and closed-loop readback were built to catch.18 MIN64.3k