Interpersonal communication is the `master key' to success in every profession. However, it is so intrinsic to our current office-life situations that overcoming the natural barriers like anger, fear, anxiety, etc., and also achieving effectiveness during the interpersonal process is undoubtedly becoming a complex act. This may be due to the high influence of fast track changes in the socio-economic and cultural aspects of professional lives. Especially, women face communication challenges when they tend to expose their feelings to others in the workplace and this may sometimes lead to conflicting issues or even cause damage to professional relationships. Hence, a descriptive research was undertaken among women academicians to identify the psychological barriers at the workplace for communicating effectively with others. About 50 women from reputed educational institutions were chosen at random as samples and a questionnaire was used to ascertain their commonly suffered psychological barriers that intrude into their workplace interactions. An initiative was made to correlate some highly influencing factors with interpersonal effectiveness and also to test their significance in the process.

Statistical tools like Correlation, Regression and Independent Sample t-test were adopted to substantiate the findings of the study. Some suggestions were furnished to mitigate the natural blocks in the process and to build strong professional relationships with others. This survey can help the professional women to understand the psychological influence in the interpersonal process and to try and overcome them by revitalizing their communication style in their office-lives. The study can be further extended to women working in other fields like banking, insurance, hospitals, hotels, manufacturing, etc., in order to optimize their interpersonal skills and ultimately empower them throughout their career.

Communication is a complex process of transmitting and understanding information between two or more people. It is also an integral part of organizations that support decision-making, work coordination, persuasion of people and enhance sustainable developments. However, effective communication occurs only when the sender's ideas or thoughts are transmitted to and understood by the intended receiver in the same sense.

Today, every organization expects its members to focus on establishing an effective interpersonal communication network among their superiors, peers, subordinates and supporting staff overtime, so as to achieve organizational goals through a collaborative effort rather than that of individuals. Interpersonal communication skills relate to `the ability to interact with others for achieving sustainable relationships at work place'. However, due to the impact of workforce diversity, teaching professionals suffer several barriers that create a `noise' in the interpersonal communication process, thereby inducing new communication challenges in their everyday lives. They may communicate with others everyday but they may not be effective in creating good professional relationships.

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