Navigating virtual communication w/ Dr. Andrew Brodsky

This week, I interviewed Dr. Andrew Brodsky to learn more about his recent book, Ping: The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication.

Dr. Brodsky is a management professor at McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. He is an expert on how technology affects how we work and communicate. He also has years of experience consulting and training organizations across the world such as PricewaterhouseCoopers, Amazon, Dell Technologies, Novo Nordisk, and GuideWell Connect.

In his book, he shares advice that helps you navigate workplace communication – whether you’re fully remote or in person.

We are all virtual communicators. We call each other over the phone or via Zoom, text, email, and IM. In fact, the average worker spends about five hours a day on email and ninety minutes IM’ing– on top of virtual calls.

We therefore need to know how best to use these tools.

I highly recommend this book. In fact, I have already encouraged many of my coworkers to read it and we’re doing a book club on it (I know, I know).

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Here are my top 3 take aways from Ping:

I. Be explicit about expectations

So much of Dr. Brodsky’s book is about understanding each other’s perspectives (it’s the ‘P’ in the PING framework). However, we all struggle to understand where people are coming from and what’s on their mind.

This is evident, for example, when it comes to how quickly we think someone needs us to reply to their email. This is called email urgency bias.

We assume that when someone emails us, they expect a response sooner than they actually do. This keeps us tethered to our phones, constantly checking emails. We interrupt our tasks to respond to every new email right away.

However, in a lot of cases, the sender is fine with a response within a reasonable time frame.

One thing we can do to reduce this stress is to be explicit about our expectations.

As the sender, you can help by writing something like “If you could let me know by X date, I’d appreciate it” so that the recipient doesn’t feel like he/she has to reply back immediately.

Or you can talk to your manager and teammates about norms like:

* If you expect a quick answer, send me an IM instead of an email

* Or if I don’t respond to your email in 48 hours, feel free to follow up via chat or in email

Dr. Brodsky’s site has resources to help your team have open conversations about this.

While we’re on the subject of emails: we may worry about over communicating via email but quick replies like “Thanks for letting me know” are less harmful than no replies.

Dr Brodsky highlighted research that showed how under-communicating made leaders seem less qualified because they’re seen as less empathic.

A quick messages can show that you’re attentive and acknowledging the other person’s message.

II. Cameras off or on?

There has been plenty of articles and research about Zoom fatigue.

We know that one of the causes of that is that when we have a video of ourselves, we tend to look at what we’re doing. Our posture, our facial expressions, our backgrounds. It’s exhausting constantly reevaluating how one looks every few seconds.

One way to fix that is to turn our ‘self view’ off, so you’re not sucked into watching yourself.

While there is a place for cameras being on – it is helpful earlier on in a working relationship – there is less benefit for established relationships. When you’re already familiar with your coworkers, you don’t get any incremental value by switching your cameras on during meetings.

In the book, Dr. Brodsky shares one study that looked at audio-only vs video and found that there wasn’t much difference when there was already a history of working together.

If you are starting to get to know people, shorter one-on-one videocalls are going to be more effective for building a relationship and trust.

Interestingly, when it comes to virtual video calls, fake backgrounds (like a stylish hotel) worsened the first impressions as they seem less professional. Plants and book cases are good.

III. A better way to brainstorm

Dr. Brodsky shares research on how brainstorming in meetings is ultimately less effective, especially with three or more participants.

They tend to produce fewer ideas in general and fewer high-quality ideas.

There are a few reasons why:

* People get anchored to one idea and any subsequent comment is influenced by it, so these groups tend to get less surprising/innovative ideas.

* People can get self-conscious about throwing out ‘bad’ ideas in group settings, especially if they’re junior.

* Obviously, only one person can talk at a time so getting everyone to contribute a few ideas in a 30–45-minute meeting is challenging.

A more effective way is to brainstorm is to:

* Have people submit ideas independently (and anonymously).

* Collect everyone’s responses, scramble them up, and send them back to the group to rank.

* Select the top 5 ideas for the group to then discuss together.

The smaller the group, the better. Also, the more concentrated the list, the better.

Again, I recommend you check out Ping.

Enjoy the episode.

What is your email/IM/video call pet peeve?