Andrew Brodsky is a management professor at McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. He is also CEO of Ping group and has received numerous awards, including being chosen by Poets&Quants as one of the World’s 40 Best MBA Professors Under 40.
What’s the big idea?
Instant messaging, email, video calls, and other digital tools have largely replaced in-person communication for most workplaces. We have all become virtual communicators, and with this comes a new set of rules for interpersonal success. The PING framework distills best practices for optimal outcomes when relying on technology to communicate.
Below, Andrew shares five key insights from his new book, Ping: The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication. Listen to the audio version—read by Andrew himself—in the Next Big Idea App.
1. P is for perspective taking.
When interacting virtually, misinterpretations and misunderstandings are more likely. But this is due to more than the commonly cited fact that we pick up on fewer nonverbal behaviors. In person, it is hard to forget that you are interacting with a human being because they are standing right in front of you. But when looking at a thumbnail-sized video of the person you are interacting with, hearing only their voice through the phone, or seeing nothing but their words in an email, it can be easy to forget that another person is on the other end of your communication.
As a result, there’s a tendency to be more self-focused virtually than when interacting in person. To see this in action, think of a song you are confident other people would recognize. Then, tap out that song on the nearest hard surface. Once you’ve done that, estimate how likely it would be for someone else to identify the song if you tapped it out again.
This same scenario was played out by Stanford researcher Elizabeth Newton. She found that participants expected 50 percent of listeners would be able to correctly identify their song. However, listeners only recognized the song three percent of the time. This huge discrepancy happens because we hear the music in our heads as we are tapping it out, so it seems obvious to us. All the listeners are just hearing a series of taps.
The same applies to virtual communication. We may think our meaning was clear, but because we are so self-focused when interacting from behind a screen, we don’t realize the person on the receiving end doesn’t have the same context for accurately understanding our meaning. What you think is an obviously friendly and supportive email may come off as condescending to your coworker if they aren’t privy to all the same information as you.
The solution is pausing to consider the recipient’s perspective before sending or speaking a message virtually. One research-proven strategy for this in text-based communication is reading aloud what you wrote in a different tone than you intended, such as sarcastic or enthusiastic. Does the meaning drastically change? Knowing that the voice someone hears when reading a message isn’t necessarily the same one you heard while composing it will help avoid self-focused overconfidence that leads to misinterpretations.
2. I is for initiative.
You may have heard about the Fyre Festival debacle in 2017, when a team led by Billy McFarland created hype for a festival that was supposed to have the best of the best in food, music, celebrities, and even buried treasure. What festivalgoers actually found when they arrived were barren parking lots, soggy cheese sandwiches in Styrofoam containers, and a lack of bathroom facilities. Pretty disappointing for what was billed as the “biggest FOMO-inducing event” of the year. This incredible mismatch in expectations and reality resulted in a $26 million fine and jail time for McFarland.
In virtual communication, there’s often a disconnect between impressions and reality. Consider how these disconnects can make someone who works incredibly hard seem like a low performer. Imagine you are a manager with two subordinates. From one, you get a single five-paragraph email each Friday about the work they did for the week. From the other, you get a few-sentence email each day, updating you on their tasks. Which one seems to be a harder worker?
“To show effort and engagement, take the initiative to communicate more frequently.”
Despite the fact that both employees sent the exact same amount of text, if you are like most managers, you will say the employee who sends a brief few-sentence update each day is a harder worker because that employee seems like they are likely working each day. The one who sends the longer Friday update might just be doing all their work at the end of the week. This is why an important strategy in virtual communication is taking initiative in showing your effort.
Whether sending an email to your boss while working remotely or sending them an instant message from the next cubicle over, without taking this kind of initiative you end up in the of out of sight, out of mind pitfall. To show effort and engagement, take the initiative to communicate more frequently. Also, turning on your camera during meetings can help to show that you are physically and mentally present. These small steps make it more likely that those you interact with will perceive your work as a high-end lobster feast as opposed to a Fyre festival soggy cheese sandwich.
3. N is for nonverbal.
A Canadian farmer got himself into trouble when he responded to a customer’s text about an order of flax seed with a thumbs-up emoji. The issue was that the customer thought the thumbs up meant the contract was accepted. The farmer disagreed, saying he hadn’t planned on accepting it just yet. The court sided with the customer, stating that the thumbs up constituted a legally binding agreement. The farmer had to pay almost $62,000.
Undergraduates and MBA students often ask me, “Should I use emojis in my virtual communication?” The answer isn’t simple because research shows emojis can help or hurt depending on the situation. Don’t focus so much on what cues are best or worst. Rather, pay attention to how the person you are interacting with communicates and become a conversational chameleon. If they fill their texts with emojis and exclamation points, then feel free to do the same. If they use business jargon, follow their lead. If they take a more formal approach, it can behoove you to do the same.
A study led by Kate Muir found that negotiators who mimicked their partner’s behavior style by using similar nonverbal behaviors improved their individual outcomes by 39 percent and joint outcomes by over 30 percent. These mimicry effects are driven by two factors. First, we generally all think that our own communication style is the best, so when someone else communicates like us, we think they are doing it effectively. Second, we trust people who are similar to us, so when someone communicates in a way that feels familiar, we tend to trust them more. Even in the barest of virtual communication modes, nonverbal behavior plays a central role in how our messages are perceived.
4. G is for goals.
Should you schedule a meeting or send an email? Is phone or video better for reconnecting with old contacts? What’s the best mode to use when meeting someone for the first time? Too often, people thoughtlessly approach these and similar questions by defaulting to whichever mode is right in front of them without considering the consequences.
A while back, I was giving a talk to a group of retail executives, and someone asked a great question: what’s the best mode choice when you need to display emotions you might not really be feeling? Such as needing to seem excited during a customer interaction, even when you may be stressed or frustrated for unrelated reasons.
“Telephone seems much higher effort and thus more authentic than email, yet it allows you to avoid leaking nonverbal behavior indicating your true emotions.”
I ran a series of studies on this topic, using study contexts including negotiators, coworkers, and teachers and parents from international schools in Vietnam. Imagine you are a teacher in a school where parents pay a lot of money for their child to attend. Now, you have to tell one of these parents why their perfect angel is failing your course and being suspended due to serious misbehavior. Despite your frustrations with the student—and the parents for not helping improve matters—you need to put on your best smile to ensure the interaction goes smoothly.
There were three key findings in these studies. First, if you are being authentic, then the richest mode of interaction—face-to-face or video—is best as it comes off as the highest effort and lets your authenticity shine through. If you need to fake it, I found that many people choose email, but that is the worst choice because email seems so low effort that it comes off as most inauthentic. For those who aimed to appear authentic while masking underlying emotions, audio interactions were the sweet spot. Telephone seems much higher effort and thus more authentic than email, yet it allows you to avoid leaking nonverbal behavior indicating your true emotions.
This choice was consequential as in my studies. It determined everything from parent satisfaction with their teacher, how much coworkers were willing to engage with each other going forward, and to what degree negotiators punished one another with severe counteroffers. By defining your interaction goals, you will be able to strategically select the right mode and message to improve outcomes and avoid situations that risk you making bad impressions.
5. AI will never replace the human touch.
Imagine receiving a sympathy email from a colleague after the death of a loved one. The email is supportive, but you immediately recognize the message was AI-generated because your colleague doesn’t normally use formal words like “elevate” and “profound.” After making this observation, you probably think your colleague doesn’t really care about you because they did not write the message themselves. When it comes to the most important interactions, there’s no replacement for the human touch.
Researchers have found that people instinctively think of everything from songs to recipes to paintings as more authentic when we believe they were created by a human, as opposed to identical ones that were AI-generated. When something is hand-crafted, it seems more effortful and special.
In the vast majority of interactions, it will be impossible for others to tell that you used AI to create something on your behalf, but all it takes is one slip up for your interaction partner to suspect you did not write the message personally. Then, they will question every single virtual interaction you’ve had with them and wonder whether you were simply outsourcing your communication and not putting effort into the relationship. They will ask themselves why they interact with you personally in the first place if all they are doing is speaking with an AI.
There are times when AI increases productivity, such as using AI as an assistant for ancillary aspects of communication—such as generating ideas, editing, and summarizing conversations. This can free up valuable time and mental energy for more complex, nuanced interactions. But, as AI replacing human communication becomes more common, adding that human touch to core parts of communication is likely to become an ever-more-valuable signal of how much you value a relationship and how vital you are as a person to that interaction.
To listen to the audio version read by author Andrew Brodsky, download the Next Big Idea App today:
