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- [00:00]
Ed Mylett
So, hey guys, listen. We're all trying to get more productive and the question is, how do you find a way to get an edge? I'm a big believer that if you're getting mentoring or you're in an environment that causes growth, a growth based environment that you're much more likely to grow and you're going to grow faster. And that's why I love Growth Day. Growth Day is an app that my friend Brendan Burchard has created that I'm a big fan of. Write this down growthday.com forward/ed. So if you want to be more productive, by the way, he's asked me, I post videos in there every single Monday that gets your day off to the right start. Got about $5,000, $10,000 worth of courses that are in there that come with the app. Also, some of the top influencers in the world are all posting content in there on a regular basis, like having the avengers of personal development and business in one app. And I'm honored that he asked me to be a part of it as well and contribute on a weekly basis. And I do. So go over there and get signed up. You're going to get a free tuition, free voucher to go to an event with Brendan and myself and a bunch of other influencers as well. So you get a free event out of it also. So go to growthday.com forward/ed. That's growthday.comed.
- [01:05]
Brendan Burchard
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- [01:49]
Ed Mylett
This is the Ed Milan show. All right. Hey Gu. Welcome back to the show. This week's a topic I, I wish we would have covered for the last couple years, but I couldn't find an expert on the topic. This is something you needed to hear and you needed to learn about. And what we're going to talk about today is virtual communication. So that's everything from email zoom, text messaging, all of it. We're going about everything. Virtual communication, which I've never been taught how to do and my guess is you haven't either yet. It's the way most of us communicate nowadays and there's no content and no work been done on the topic until this man's written this book. And so he is a virtual communications expert at the University of Texas. This guy's a PhD, Harvard Business School. But more than that, the way he writes, you can understand it. You don't have to be a Harvard MBA or PhD to understand his work, but you can be anybody to utilize it. So he's an award winning professor. This guy's got his act together. And this book is awesome. The book is called Paying the Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication. And the guy who wrote it is with me here today. Andrew Brodsky, welcome to the show, brother.
- [02:55]
Andrew Brodsky
Thanks for having me on this term.
- [02:56]
Ed Mylett
In your book I love which is virtual charisma. And I think charisma is one of the most under explained invisible things on the planet that winners have. And charisma can come in a lot of different ways. But I, I'll give you my turn when you're done. But on the, in the virtual world, it's very easy digitally to lose charisma when you're an overall influential, charismatic person. Do you think leadership could the separator may be charisma? And how could someone become more charismatic? Virtually any hack or info from you.
- [03:32]
Andrew Brodsky
Eye contact, looking like you're paying attention is key here. For most of us, our cameras are not where the other person is. So there may be between your two monitors or your camera's on top of your webcam, but the screen of the other person. You know, it's a zoom. They're on the left side of your screen. So even though you're looking at the other person, to them it doesn't look like you're looking at them. And taking down notes is really useful. But for most of us, they can't see our hands on the call. Like right now, if you're watching the video because you've got a great podcast set up, you know, we see your whole upper body, but in most cases you see shoulders up. So if I were to take notes now, it looks like I'm doing the one thing you said would be the worst. Checking my cell phone.
- [04:15]
Ed Mylett
But on my other zooms, I want to keep going back and forth to you on this. You're so right. I just want to tell everybody what I do on a zoom because I don't want them thinking that when I'm on a zoom, that's more closed up. This is little stuff, guys, but it's big stuff. I will raise my notepad up and do it in screenshot and then put it back down so that they know when I'm doing that, what I'm doing. It's a little easy. Here's the bottom line and then I'll let you jump. Keep going. The bottom line is when you're in virtual communication, you need to be thinking most of the time about your perception to the other person. And we don't because it's virtual. We're just perceiving things. So the best people virtually are thinking about how they're perceived. So like when I do coaching calls, one on one, I'll, I'll not say it but I'll be like this and then I'll put it back down so they know that that's what I'm doing. So everybody just, that's why, that's why we're doing the back and forth version of the interview today. That's important that you just become hyper aware of your perception on the zoom. Keep going please. I didn't, I jumped because we decided we were going to do it that way. So jump in.
- [05:18]
Andrew Brodsky
I, I love when we kind of go back and forth. Yeah, yeah. And you could just say it too. And this gets to the perspective taking the P framework, right. It's. They don't you think, oh, it's obvious, I'm taking notes. But they don't see it. So just saying, ah, that's a really good point. Let me write it down. And saying that you're writing it down as you're looking down so it doesn't look like you're looking off your computer screen at your cell phone.
- [05:38]
Ed Mylett
Very good.
- [05:38]
Andrew Brodsky
Or you know, even saying like, oh let me, I'm checking my other monitor here. Like I'm looking at the previous report, just dropping it casually in conversation. The assumptions are what is killer in virtual communication? Because you realize you're looking for other information to their question. To them it looks like you're looking away and you don't even care anymore about the situation. And for charisma, it's the cues that matter. So eye contact is key and so one of the things I recommend is finding ways to make sure that the other person is near your webcam. And the low tech way is drag their screen to right under your webcam. The mid tech options are there's like hanging webcams you can stick on your screen. There's webcam stands that bend. There's more high tech options are there now teleprompter webcams that are like behind a screen. So you could be looking at your screen and your webcam, still happening. And there's now AI tools that are center eye contact, although those can be a little creepy if, if you're looking away and your eyes are still dead center. But beyond eye contact, your background is going to matter. It's going to impact perceptions of you. You want it to be professional, your clothes matter, that's really key. And the other thing too is in person, it's obvious you're paying attention to the other person. So when you are interacting virtually, one of the most important things for charisma is making it clear you're paying attention. Repeat what they said, ask them follow up questions, as you mentioned, nod, use, you know, acknowledge them. Because we often think, I know I'm paying attention. So they probably realize it. Don't assume that when they're. When we're virtual and we don't see see what the other person is doing, we often come in with these negative assumptions. That's part of why so many managers hate remote work, is they assume everyone's just being lazy because they can't see them. Even though in many cases, albeit not all, people often put in more hours into their work. It's just not being able to see everything that leads these negative assumptions. So showing you're engaged, showing you care, are the biggest things you can do to improve charisma. There.
- [07:47]
Ed Mylett
Very good. You know, one of the things like outstanding, by the way. You know, no one writes about this and I'm a. I speak on stage, I do podcasts, obviously I had a TV show. I'm good at this type of communication. I'm a terrible texter. I am a terrible emailer, by the way too. People always tell me I come across as kurt or short. And I found in my life that people that sometimes are really good at one type of communication aren't good at like digital communication. And I'm not very good. I'm not a great text or anything like that. Is that why you decided to do this work? Is that there's been no one taught the topic? And, and how important is this ping framework that you created?
- [08:26]
Andrew Brodsky
The main reason why I wanted to write this book right now is there are all these arguments happening about is remote work good, is remote work bad? And the thing that they're all missing is that it doesn't matter where anyone works anymore, whether that's home or office. We're all communicating primarily through virtual communication. So even if someone's two feet away from you in the office, they're going to instant message you because that way they're not interrupting you every time they have a question. The old way was you'd go over, knock on someone's cubicle or door and ask them, but it didn't matter what they were doing, you just interrupted them. So now there's these good ways to avoid just interrupting what everyone is doing. And even at home, if your kids are a few feet away from you, they might be texting you instead of talking to you. So we're just all doing this all the time. And for me, it felt valuable to be able to put this out there.
- [09:15]
Ed Mylett
What's Ping? What's that framework?
- [09:18]
Andrew Brodsky
Yeah, when I, when I read a book, I love having a framework. So I want to win for my book. Ping. And the ping framework represents P for perspective taking, I for initiative, N for nonverbal, and G for goals. So perspective taking is centered on this idea that when we communicate virtually, we tend to be more self focused. When we're in person, someone's standing right in front of us. When we're doing email, there's just working at text on a screen instead. We're not thinking about the person. And like even during this call that you and I are having on video, I'm looking at a small square of you over here as opposed to you being all the way in front of me. And that's one of the main drivers behind why we often write things we wouldn't do in person. Because we're much more self focused and we wouldn't say it if they were standing right there in front of us. I is the initiative and that is the idea that every mode has strengths and weaknesses and you need to think about how can I add back in what's missing here. So for instance, text based communication, it often misses small talk and small talk is, it's annoying because it's a productivity sync, but it's also really useful because it builds trust. And thinking about how to add back in whatever's missing in a given mode can make it even better. N nonverbal. That's the idea that there's so many different cues that occur virtually that we don't even realize as opposed to in person. So for instance, typos can relay emotion. And email time of day, message is sent, can relay power. When you're doing a video call, your background matters. Should you look at the person, should you look at your webcam? There are all these different nonverbal behaviors that alter how your message is interpreted. And lastly, G is goals. And the idea here is that there's no One best mode of communication. If you're someone who's had hours of wasted meetings every week, that should have been an email. You know that emails should be better sometimes. If you've ever had one of those, like email chains or text chains that went on for weeks, that could have been ended if someone just picked up the phone and talked for five minutes, then you know that sometimes that's the worst choice. So the best choice is going to depend on what your goal is for the given situation. So that ping framework, I tie all the recommendations into it in the book to make them easier to remember.
- [11:46]
Ed Mylett
Okay, that's awesome. Let's break down some of these things together. We're going to talk about text, email, I think, and predominantly virtual meeting like Zoom or. Okay, you stipulate in the book that the type of communication you use sends an unspoken value to that communication. Correct. So if that's true, which are the most valuable and which are the least valuable, or does it depend on the conditions?
- [12:10]
Andrew Brodsky
It depends on the conditions. But let me give you an example here. That's a clear one. Authenticity. It's like a big buzzword now. Like, everyone wants authentic leadership. We should be authentic in the way we interact with each other. And so I did some research looking at, well, what mode of communication seems the most authentic. And I talk about two different types of authenticity. The first is your true authenticity. You actually feel what you mean. In those cases, the richer the mode, the better. So video in person, because you want to have that authenticity shine through and be most visible. The thing is, though, most of the time we aren't truly authentic. So maybe you had a fight with your partner in the morning, so you're upset, or maybe you had a bad commute so you're stressed, but you need to be happy with the person you're interacting with because maybe it's a coworker who got something good happen. You need to congratulate them, or maybe it's a friend who you're congratulating them, or you just want to be positive in that moment, but maybe you don't feel so good yourself. And so that's what we call surface acting. It's often referred to as service with a smile. But we're often doing it not just in service interactions. We do it with our friends, we do it with our coworkers, because oftentimes the best emotion just doesn't match what we're supposed to show. So if you're firing one of your employees because you just have to downsize your organization's Forcing you to do it, for instance. But you had something awesome happen to you. Maybe your partner accepted your marriage proposal. You can't go into that layoff meeting being like, I am so excited today, but I do have to lay you off. That's just really bad for everyone and those situations. What I found was that people tend to choose email and text based communication because it's easiest and it feels like it hides your emotion the best. But that's the wrong choice. What the best choice was was audio interactions. So that's a sweet spot. Because audio, whether that's cameras off meetings or telephone, it seems much higher effort than email. Could you imagine if someone sent you, you know, something really bad happened in your life and someone sent you an email about it, who's a really good friend and they never called you, they never came over. That just shows you they don't care. But the advantage of audio is that it masks all your other non verbal behaviors that you might show in a video call. All it does is your tone and your words. So it doesn't let things leak through that might in person or via video. It doesn't show if you accidentally grimace or you accidentally smile when you shouldn't. So the nice thing about audio is it seems really high effort similar to video or in person. But it doesn't have things leak through that you don't want to that would in a video call or in person.
- [14:59]
Ed Mylett
Let's break this down. I want to talk about voice memos or voice notes too. Okay, so everyone lean in here. Okay, this is big. This is why you're missing sales. This is why your relationships aren't as deep as they could be. This is why stuff just doesn't feel as connected as it could. So this is important stuff here. I got an email last week from somebody who has my phone number. We text regularly and we talk regularly and we have zoomed regularly. Yet I got an email and immediately when I got an email, I thought that's the coldest way you could have communicated with me. That's what it felt like. And it was a pretty heavy email about some business stuff where we're probably going to part ways. They chose that because it is the least connected way to communicate and they had the least amount of fear about typing out a long email to me. Its impact, I kept reading it over and over again. So they had no nuance, no ability to explain and almost no context also. So it came across very harsh when I got it. So I agree with you that a verbal call or a verbal Zoom would be good, I often find. I'll give you another example. I was going back and forth with someone yesterday about it doesn't matter what it was, but we were texting and it got a little bit. They thought I was more upset about what they had done than I was. And so I'd send a six letter response. They send me nine pages back. We've all had those texts, right? So finally what I did is I voice noted them and said, bro, I want you to hear my voice. Here's the context, blah blah, blah, blah, blah blah blah. And then it sort of normalized the dialogue. So I want to ask you about voice notes. One, I use them very rarely, only to communicate nuance and context. Typically when I think a conversation is not being communicated accurately, the reason I do it sparingly is I hate getting them. I think it's, I'm like, okay, you didn't want to take the time of typing me a text, so now you're going to make me sit here and listen to your 4 1/2 minute long voice note that, that cuts off every time my phone rings. And so I wonder your feelings about everything I just said in general about voice note for context and. Or though the recipient just going, shoot, I gotta. It sounds crazy, but nowadays to Listen to a three minute long voice note, isn't it amazing? 20 years ago that'd be nothing, but now it's like three minutes.
- [17:14]
Andrew Brodsky
I don't have three minutes.
- [17:15]
Ed Mylett
I got other stuff. So what are your thoughts about voice notes overall?
- [17:19]
Andrew Brodsky
So to the base point, you talked about this emotion misinterpretation research shows that we are heavily overconfident about our ability to relay emotions over text based communication. So the problem isn't just that we're bad at it, it's that we don't realize we're bad at it. And they've done studies where they have people say, okay, we want you to relay a sarcastic message or a serious message. And they say, how confident are you the other person's gonna get it? And people are super confident. Turns out they very rarely get it right. And one of the recommendations stemming from this is that a way to fix this is if you have an important message, read it out loud in the opposite tone that you intended because suddenly you're like, oh wait, that is clearly not clear. The problem is when we're writing messages, we hear the emotion in our heads and so it seems obvious. But the other person, they don't hear the emotion in their heads. They come from a different set of information assumptions and they hear something different and that causes the misinterpretation to voice notes. Now. So it depends on the situation here. And you hit on two really good points about voice notes. The first is they are a pain. And there's also asynchronous videos now. So more casually people use Snapchat. But there's a number of companies now that are allowing basically create a technology that you can send videos, personalized videos in email and this often in sales context, you'll see this and they can be a pain to receive. Whereas with an email or text message, you can read it quickly, you can skim it with a video or a voice note, you gotta listen to the whole thing. It doesn't work really well. And then later on, let's just say you said something I want to go back to in an email. I could just do, you know, control f to find it or I could skim it and find it for a voice note. I'm like clicking around, trying to get to the right part of that. And so it's really unproductive for going back to as well. All that together, though, they do serve a purpose and you hit on it really nicely. If you're in an email situation or text or instant message or slack and it's not going right, something's going real sideways as opposed to just sticking with that mode switch. And whether that's a phone call and if a phone call doesn't work because it'd be interrupting them, maybe then a voice note could be a good play. And it shows you care about them, getting understanding you that you care about them because now you're putting more effort into that. If I send you a video, yeah, it may be annoying to go through, but it shows that I really care about you in the process. So what you decide here relates to your goals and the goals of the other person. Is it about showing you care and reducing this interpretation or is it a situation where productivity reigns supreme? If it's a latter, then you want to do text. If it's a former, you want to go richer.
- [20:07]
Ed Mylett
Got it. And we talk about richness. By the way, everybody, you're wondering why I put this one out on a Thursday is because this is one of the topics all of you have asked me to cover because I'm a communicator, yet I felt like there's somebody I could go back and forth with that just make it a far more productive conversation on this topic. And so let's talk about. We're going to go To Zoom. Then we're going to come back to text. I want to talk about hacks to make Zoom more connected, more entertaining, you know, so it almost feels in person. Any strategy you have. This Saturday I gave a speech for a company. Actually, I gave two. One in the morning and one in the afternoon. The first speech that I gave was a company they brought me on. It was just a dry introduction. It was just a guy at his computer, to your point, not a big background. They didn't play my introduction video like you would in person. He basically dry introduced me and now I'm just sort of talking into a camera to 2,000 people that were on this Zoom. They also had the chat open with comments, right? And that went okay. The second one I did when I got on, they were playing music, they were rocking and rolling. They went to split screens with people kind of dancing and, you know, doing like a real live virtual event. There was an energy, there was swagger to it, there was context. They played a quick video of me before they introduced me. I felt like I was at an in person meeting. They also did not allow chat in the meeting. I noticed because they thought that perhaps that would distract from what I was saying. Like in a normal meeting, people aren't yelling out their thoughts, hey, I've seen this video. You could read this. No one's doing that. So they were very different meetings. The second one, in my opinion, was far better and I performed far better. Give us some hacks to make Zoom more in. Zoom's not the only one. I'm using Zoom, but more important virtual meetings like this because you might not use them. You can do Microsoft, whatever. There's a bunch of them. So. But what are some hacks to make it more connected and less distant?
- [22:02]
Andrew Brodsky
Video meetings. You want to make them really engaging. I do a lot of them. I'll do a lot of talks for conferences and companies remotely and I teach them remotely as well. So it's something I've thought about a lot. And you want participants to be as engaged as possible. So I'll start at the end chat. There's actually been some studies on this that shows that chat during meetings can be beneficial because a lot of people who normally don't speak up during the meeting, who aren't heard and or just they do speak up during the meeting, but there's 20 people in the meeting, so they only get a chance to talk once. They can engage more throughout the meeting. The trick is being mindful and like actually talking about what's appropriate on chat. Or not. So you don't have five conversations going separately. But it may be useful because then people can add in their thoughts more. And that's one of the nice things about text based communication is everyone can talk at once and that's a lot more productive. You have 20 people texting at once as opposed to each one have to take their turn. You're having a lot less said in the latter one.
- [23:06]
Ed Mylett
I agree with you. You just sort of changed my mind about that because I've been on other calls where. Other meetings where they are texting and it's created energy, it's spurned dialogue, it's engaged people who may or may not have been engaged. So I. You kind of just spun me on that a little bit. I just want to interject.
- [23:24]
Andrew Brodsky
Well, let's keep on that topic for a sec. So brainstorming is a related thing. Everyone loves being in a room. There's a whiteboard, we're jotting down notes. It's all really exciting. But that's actually been shown to be the worst way to brainstorm. It's better when you do it separately and via text for a few reasons. One's that first one, in a meeting, only one person can say an idea at a time. So you know, if you want each person to come up with 20 ideas, trying to say those out loud in a meeting is going to take forever. As opposed to people are typing them. The other thing is, when we're sitting in a meeting and someone's. Your whole team's staring at you, you're nervous to say something that might really diverge from the rest of them because they're judging you, they're looking at you. And then lastly is when they are. When someone says an idea, your mind gets stuck on it. And suddenly all of your ideas that you come up with are just variations of their idea. Whereas when we're all typing this out and doing it separately, the initial stages, that does better. But when you're making a decision on which idea is best, then you want to meet because that's a group consensus where you really want to go back and forth there. So that's the idea. Like where this relates to brainstorming.
- [24:34]
Ed Mylett
Okay.
- [24:34]
Andrew Brodsky
But going back to engagement now, what are some other things that are good? So if we're using chat and you want to be thoughtful, you want to give instructions about let's use chat for this, but not this. The other thing is you really want to mix it up a lot. When I'm doing talks, I often use video clips. I'M using polls. I'm occasionally calling on volunteers to do a couple funny activities in the process because it is easier to get distracted when you're virtual. You got your computer, you got your devices there in person. If you were to open up your laptop and start looking at dinner recipes, that would go over badly when you're interacting via video. It doesn't. They can't tell. So finding ways to really mix it up as opposed to just talking for an hour is one of the best things you can do there.
- [25:21]
Ed Mylett
Anything you've seen me do online, Shopify has probably been involved in it. I was at a speaking engagement this weekend. There were three other very prominent influencers there and each of them were talking about how they use Shopify and their businesses right now, this day, just like I do. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e commerce in the US is Shopify. Household names like Mattel, Gymshark to brands that are just getting started with no clients yet. And so I can tell you Shopify is something you need to investigate to help you with your business online. Best yet, Shopify is your e commerce expert with world class expertise and everything from managing inventory to international shipping to processing returns and beyond. Turn your big business idea into With Shopify on your side, sign up for your 1 month $1 per month trial period and start selling today at shopify.com mylet go to shopify.com mylet shopify.com mylet.
- [26:21]
Brendan Burchard
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy. Just drop in some details about yourself and see if you're eligible to save money. When you bundle your home and auto policies, the process only takes minutes and it could mean hundreds more in your pocket. Visit progressive.com after this episode to see if you can save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.
- [26:51]
Ed Mylett
You mentioned earlier small talk and actually the value of it is what you talk about in the book. So in the real world small talk is kind of like yeah, small talk. But I want to talk about this with you too. So let's assume it's not a virtual speech, but it's a one on one meeting or with a group. So when I do an in person podcast, the reason I prefer those you think well, the connection with the person is so much better because they're right here. There's no delay, you don't interrupt one another. It's not really that. I mean that is part of it, but what it really is is it's all the small talk we have before we start recording. We actually do small talk to them about your kids, where are you from? Oh my gosh, your backyard. They'll look at the ocean out here. Whatever it is, we, we're having small talk. Whereas I find when it's a virtual meeting, oftentimes people click in, hey, how are you? How's everybody? Great, let's get started. And there's no small talk. So this may be a hack for a lot of you that are doing meetings with your team. What is your theory on small talk on virtual meetings and maybe give us, you know, an insight as to how to utilize it or when to shift. Also I've also been on calls, frankly, where we've small talked too long. You know, we're 23 minutes into our 30 minute meeting and we're like just small talking. So what are your thoughts on that.
- [28:01]
Andrew Brodsky
Before I get into the small talk? Just to let you all know my kind of view on this. And it gets to one of the things you said in person doesn't necessarily mean a better connection, right? If you think about the people you interact with, who are you closer with? The person you see for maybe three hours in person once a month, or the person you're sending a text message to every day or every other day, they're the frequency, you know, the three hours in person is probably longer than you spend texting once or twice, you know, every single day. But that frequency ends up being more important to the relationship than just seeing each other once for a long period of time every, you know, so often we need to think about, well, what can we add back into these less rich modes of interaction to make them as good or in some cases better than the other mode? And small talk is one of those. There was a research study of negotiators and they found that compared to in person negotiators, text based negotiators spent about a third less time engaging in small talk. And they didn't build as much rapport, they didn't build as much trust and the text based negotiators performed worse. Then what these researchers did is they had a different experimental condition where they had some of the text based negotiators do a five minute phone call right before they went to the text based negotiation to what the researchers called schmoozing. So they basically said socialize for five minutes, don't talk about the negotiation. And then we'll move you to text to negotiate. And what happened was those text based negotiators who schmoozed for five minutes, they ended up building more rapport, having more trust. Their negotiation scores were better, but not only that, their joint scores were better. The other person in the negotiation did better too, because they found more of those win wins. The small talk helped increase trust and reduce that competition that happens there. It made the other person feel less anonymous too, because they knew about the other person. Now, when to do this or not, it's going to depend on what is the primary goal of an interaction. Is it building relationships or is it productivity? Research shows small talk cuts both ways. There's a cost to it. You lose time, which is why so many people hate it often. But on the other side of it, it builds trust. We trust what we know. If we don't know what someone's weekend, what they did on the weekend, what their hobbies are about, their family, they're just this anonymous blob, basically. And it's hard to trust what we don't know. And small talk fills in those gaps. And then that question about, well, what to do. During meetings. It's really useful to set agendas. And this is good for especially virtual meetings that can just drag on or go off topic. And it's easier for someone in a virtual meeting to talk for 20 minutes and not realize no one's paying attention.
- [30:52]
Ed Mylett
Right.
- [30:52]
Andrew Brodsky
So actually having it saying, okay, five minutes, we're just kind of, you know, you don't say small talk, but say five minutes just to kind of, you know, brief chat and connect. Yeah. And then the next 25 minutes, we'll spend five minutes on this topic, five minutes on that topic, five minutes on that topic. And it keeps everyone honest so you don't end up having an hour long business meeting with only about five minutes of business.
- [31:13]
Ed Mylett
Okay, guys, what he just said is huge. So one of the shifts I've made this last year because a lot of my business now is virtual, I send out agendas and I usually have a five or eight minute, let's connect fellowship, whatever the title is that you use. But then there's an agenda. And the reason is, is that in an in person meeting there's cues you're picking up on that you've talked too long or that they're losing interest. You don't really usually get that on zoom. And so having everyone sort of know this is where we're going, that way we can pull it back to the center. Most of you don't do that. That's something you could add. That's a hack right now to make those meetings more productive and frankly last longer. One of the other things I want to shift back over and we'll come back to virtual meetings. I want to shift back over to like text and email. You talk about in the book, what does it mean to overcraft communications and how can people avoid doing this? Because it's. I do it especially when a conversation gets heated. I begin to overcraft my communication. So let's go right there. Talk about that for a second.
- [32:09]
Andrew Brodsky
If you've ever had that experience where you're writing an email to your boss or really important client and you spent like hours and hours just writing, rewriting, editing the message, you understand this idea of overcrafting. And often you'll send it off and then they'll send back like thanks and you get like a one word response after you spend, you know, three hours writing this single email. And the problem with that is that it really is bad for you first off, like it increases your anxiety, it depletes you. And my own research has found this. And beyond a certain point, it doesn't help. There's something which is basically like a curvilinear effect, which in plain language is there's this upside down, down U. In terms of email effectiveness, if you spend too little writing an email or whatever, it's going to be really bad, right? You just, you've got typos. It shows you didn't care. You wrote like a really horrible email. But if you spend too long on it on the other side, that can actually worsen the outcomes as well. If you've been on the recipient side of one of these emails, you can tell it like bleeds anxiety. You can feel how anxious the person was. Their sentences have like a lot of if you don't mind, I hope this is okay. They're like 10 paragraphs too many. And that can make your email perform worse. So in this situation, you are making yourself more anxious and stressed and you're not having any benefit. So you want to kind of hit that middle of the curve where you made your email look good. It's not sloppy, there are no typos. But once you start to get to the point where you're just feeling, where you're realizing you're getting anxious and you're not necessarily improving it, then stop. And the one thing I like to point out to executives and students when we're talking about this, because they always feel like their communication is the Most important is there's something known as a spotlight effect. And this came from some studies that were done back when Vanilla Ice was popular. So you know the Rob Star, they had students wear a T shirt where they had a big picture of Vanilla Ice on it. And then they asked them, how many other people that you interact with during the study do you think will remember your embarrassing T shirt? And they thought everyone was going to remember their embarrassing T shirt, Pretty much. But it turns out very few people did. And the reason this relates to email and texting is that we all think our email and our text messages are so important because we're focused on ourself. But think about it from the other side. If you're like me, you probably get well over a hundred emails, instant messages every week. Do you remember anything about any individual message you had or any individual meeting? Chances are, unless someone did something, something real crazy, you've forgotten about it by the time you've replied to the message. So this self focus is part of what undermines our communication in that process.
- [35:15]
Ed Mylett
That's really good. No, I don't remember any of them. One weird thing. I'll just add everybody my two cents. When I get an email with a spelling error in it, it reduces your impact and makes me think that you weren't paying attention or taking care. When I get a text with a spelling error in it, ironically, it doesn't bother me and I'm just, I don't know what the difference is, why I'm that way. But when I get an email, I almost feel like email is a more serious or professional way of communicating. I don't know, that's just me. Maybe it's my age. So if there's a spelling error or two in there, I'm like, they didn't proofread their email. But when I get a text with a spelling error and I just keep plowing through, assuming they've done it very quickly. Almost like an email feels deliberate to me and a text feels off the cuff to some extent. Am I uncommon in that reception or perception?
- [36:01]
Andrew Brodsky
Not at all. There's these weird norms that are associated with communication. So we were talking about voice notes, for instance, people who, especially people who are younger now in the workforce, they see voice notes as normal. It's cool, it's good to use. But if you tell them you're going to leave them a voicemail, so you're going to call them and leave them a voicemail, they're like, that's horrible. That is like the worst thing you could do. But voice notes and voicemail are both asynchronous audio communication. There's nothing technically different about both of them. But voice notes, cool. Voicemail, uncool. So we all have these associations with different modes. Now to the typos thing. I did some cool research with Haley Blunden over American University on typos. We saw that we had a few findings from the study. The first one's obvious. It's that typos, on average, make you look less intelligent. But we also found that typos can relay emotion in communication. And it's not a specific emotion. It's like sticking your fist up in the air. If you're angry, they make you seem angrier. If you're excited, they can make you seem more excited. If they're happy, they can make you seem more happy. They're amplifiers. But the third finding which is relevant to this conversation is that in the context of emotional messages, typos were penalized less insofar as intelligence because people say, oh, it's. The person was emotional. It's not that they weren't less intelligent or they didn't care less. There's this other reason and there's other research that shows that when you have sent from my iPhone in your signature, typos are penalized less. When someone knows you're from a different culture, typos are penalized less because they know it's due to the language differences there. We're searching for reasons in virtual communication for why people did what they did. So if you see a typo in an email, you know, you may think, oh, they didn't care about me. But if there's another reason, it's like, I'm shooting this off as I'm right as I'm walking to the office, but I wanted to get back to you asap. You might see that typo then, because they provided that alternative reason as, oh, they really care. They're rushing because they wanted to get to me so quickly, as opposed to they didn't care. Which is part of the reason why it's so valuable to make sure that you're really explicit with information virtually, because then you're not leaving people guessing about why you did something. They're not thinking, oh, they did email because they don't care about me. Or they had a typo because, you know, this wasn't important to them. It's about they want to get back to me as quickly as possible, or, you know, they didn't want to interrupt me by calling me, giving those Alternative reasons can eliminate the downsides of using these potential negative cues.
- [38:38]
Ed Mylett
I make a lot of 30 second to 1 minute long video messages that I then text to somebody because I don't use Snapchat. I feel that the difference between in the morning texting a friend going, hey, thinking about you, I love you, hope things are great, that's one passive way to do it. The other one is, hey, let's jump on a zoom. That's a lot of work. But for some reason I find when I receive them too that someone somehow took the time I can see their face, their spirit, and they've said something to me. I mean this mainly on encouraging messages or congratulations. A perfect example is yesterday I met somebody who I've known of for 30 years but never met. And we finally met yesterday. And then when he left later that night, he sent me a text and said, hey, it was great to connect with you, etc. Etc. Which was awesome. I sent him back a video message and just said, brother, it was unbelievable connecting with you, I think. And I feel as if my video back to him is far more impactful than just his text to me. You agree with that?
- [39:41]
Andrew Brodsky
In most cases I agree. So the higher effort on average is going to show that you care. Although now that you just said this on your show, you're about to get video messages from pretty much everybody. You know, probably I get a lot.
- [39:53]
Ed Mylett
I know.
- [39:53]
Andrew Brodsky
Which.
- [39:54]
Ed Mylett
Yeah.
- [39:54]
Andrew Brodsky
Which you may begin to appreciate less. You know, one of the things that I talk about is that it's often good to actually talk to other person about how they prefer to communicate. We often come in with assumptions of interactions about, okay, video's best, or a telephone call be best, or email be best, but we never ask the other person, what do you prefer? I'd say 99.9% of the meeting invites I get, I get either a video meeting invite, I get a telephone call invite, or they just do it via email and they never say, hey, would you prefer video or a phone call? And I might have a really strong preference. Some people have really strong reasons for their preferences. So for instance, someone who has difficulty hearing may prefer video because they can help them read lips. For instance, someone whose kid is home sick from daycare may prefer cameras off because they may be running amok in the background. But even beyond that, some of us just have our preferences. Like, you clearly love video. You know, you're sending it to people, other people. It may real, they may hate it, they may feel self conscious looking at themselves on the camera. A Lot of people get like they're so concerned about their non verbal behavior, they overthink it. It's stressful for them. So just asking the other person saying, hey, how do you want to do this? You want to do video, you want to do phone? Should we do email? It has two benefits with the main one being they're going to want to interact with you more in the future. And those two reasons are one, you get to do it on their, on the terms they like so they're more willing to do it. And two, it shows you care about them because you're asking them what their preferences are in those situations.
- [41:40]
Ed Mylett
It's really good. That's really good. What about zoom fatigue? Listen, all of us are busy and I keep hearing about tonal when it comes to fitness. I'm like, what is tonal? And then they ended up approaching the show. I have so many friends that are working with tonal because let's be honest, we have a million things to worry about every day. Getting in a good workout should not be one of them. Enter tonal. Tonal will pick the perfect weight, track your progress and suggest what to do based on your muscle readiness. Taking the guesswork out of getting a great workout, working hard is worth it if you're seeing results. So many people train and don't get any benefit. Don't grow, don't lose the weight, don't get bigger and stronger. That's what tonal is built for. Tonal's at home strength training system uses adaptive weight to learn your movement and then set optimal weight for every move. It's really cool. Right now, tonal is offering our listeners $200 off your tonal purchase with promo code Jed Mylett. That's Tonal.com and use promo code Ed Mylett for $200 off your purchase. Wow. That's Tonal.com promo code Ed Mylet for $200 off. I mean, just overall, companies got zoom fatigue. A person that does, like, what are your recommendations? It's, it's, it's become the thing. Friends of mine, what do you got today? Oh, I got seven zooms, you know, and it's almost become like things that people truly dread, you know, and, and I think that's going to affect productivity. I think it affects your approach, your energy level, your preparation level, the results. You know, there's a great book called death by meeting. I think we're now having companies have death by zoom, right? So what would you say to a person leading a group, a company, or even an individual who's got zoom and virtual meeting fatigue? It's in the book, by the way. Everybody.
- [43:25]
Andrew Brodsky
It's a great segue to this idea of we're staring at ourselves and we get anxious. You know, one of these drivers of zoom fatigue is we're staring at ourselves a lot during the call. Recommend. This is a big question I get, especially now from a lot of executives. There's a few things. First is, does this even need to be meeting in the first place? There are so many meetings that really should have just been an email. You know, you got one person relaying information at 20 people, and the other 20 people aren't engaging in the meeting. That probably shouldn't be a meeting in the first place. The second thing is, how do we set up our meetings? So research shows that shorter meetings with fewer participants tend to be a lot more engaging than these longer meetings with more participants. So it's better to have, you know, a couple of short meetings spread out as opposed to one long meeting, because that's the length that really gets disengaging. And lastly, the biggest question. Cameras on or cameras off?
- [44:22]
Ed Mylett
Right.
- [44:23]
Andrew Brodsky
Everyone has strong feelings about this. You know, there are some people who say cameras must be on every meeting. There are others who say cameras must be off. You know, it's no. Makes no sense. And the science on this shows that it depends on your goal in the situation. Cameras are great for building trust, for showing your. Or for showing the illusion you're engaged, at least because it looks like you're paying attention even though you may not be. And this gets to this idea that we trust those that we know. If we don't know what someone looks like, we don't know their mannerisms. It's harder to have that feeling of trust because there's so much, so many unknowns. So video on can build trust. It can make it seem like you're engaged because it looks like you're looking at the other person, even though who knows what you have up on your screen at the time. But there is zoom fatigue, and there's been a whole bunch of studies that have shown this effect, that it can be tiring being on camera and doing these kind of meetings and turning cameras off reduces the fatigue, it reduces the stress associated with those meetings, and it can give people more focus, better productivity afterwards. And so if you're thinking about it this way, if it's an early stage meeting, you're meeting someone new, or you showing engagement is really important, you're going to want your cameras on. But if you've got an established team and you know, one incremental meeting is not going to build trust that much more because you've already met, you know, tens or hundreds of times and, and you realize that just because there's cameras on doesn't actually mean they're paying better attention to you. Then in those cases having cameras off can be better because it can save everyone that extra energy. They don't have to spend time getting camera ready, they don't have to worry about how they're looking during the meeting. And like as we're talking now, if I was looking at my other monitor, it looked like I wasn't paying attention to you, which can really undermine and create this extra stress with cameras on. Whereas cameras off I could be taking notes, I could be looking at my other monitors. I don't have to worry about what I'm presenting to you during that situation.
- [46:28]
Ed Mylett
That's great. I love hearing your perspective. You know, I'm old school everybody I guess I don't know how you can be old school yet in virtual meetings. But like I'm a major cameras on guy. I'm also have my own version and, and Andrew has his in the book of, of zoom etiquette. But not only when I'm engaging with you do I expect you to have your camera on. I expect you to be looking into the camera, not looking at your phone, not you know, looking around the room, not getting up. And the reason is I think that's a sign of engagement and respect to the person and I think we've lost a lot of that in the virtual world. I cannot get over how often I'm on a zoom where I'm the speaker, let's say and there's 20 people and someone's literally getting up and using the restroom or grabbing their phone and I'm like, this isn't, let me tell you what happens when I do that. I think this is an undisciplined company or this is an undisciplined person or they don't respect me or they don't respect themselves. Also the way you dress, I get dressed for work, you a couple things, everyone just non verbal to a guy like me. So if you wanted to engage me as a client, as a friend, as a, I'm not about social, not as a friend, as a client or an investor or a business partner. And you show up to that call dressed not professionally, it tells me you don't respect me. You take the zoom in your car as opposed to your office. It tells me you don't respect me. This just got squeezed into your schedule. Can you imagine making a pitch to a guy like me to invest in your company and you're in sweatpants in your car. I've had someone do that multiple times to me. And I'm like, you have zero chance of engaging. If this is the President of the United States, would you be in sweatpants in your car? So maybe I'm old school, but I got to tell you, you're probably going to want capital from a bunch of old school people. And so to me, that's etiquette in this world. Look into the camera, nod, give nonverbal cues, encourage the person communicating, write notes down. Even when you're not, write notes down. As Andrew's been talking, if you watch the zoom, when he makes a point, I write it down. One, I want to remember it, but two, it lets you and him know I'm listening. And you lose a lot of that in person. So these are all really, really important things. And it is the difference, in my opinion, between winning and losing in in zoom world. Now, we only got a few more minutes, but you talk about the different levels sort of in the book of richness, of communication. It's such a good part of the book. And you know, whether it's email, text, phone, virtual voice, notes, videos, etc. One thing I'm conscious of is if I'm trying to upgrade my connection with this person, upgrade my influence over this person, whatever it might be, is I will use the different versions of communication to ratchet up the richness. So, meaning I will try to move them from text. I'll give you the perfect example. Someone just bought a very expensive sports franchise and we have some mutual friends, very expensive. And so it started by a connection with text. But I want to know this person because we have mutual business interest together. I, I slowly started to try to move that from text to phone as quickly as I can because I. Not as quickly, but in an appropriate window of time because I believe live phone call is like the lost art form of all time. Two humans talking without the verbal, without the video. Excuse me, just verbal talking. And so I'm cognizant of almost moving up the pecking order if there is one to phone call with somebody because I believe that's the deeper connection level. Do you sort of believe in that strategy overall to use the different types to eventually land to the one you're most in? And that phone call may eventually to get on a zoom to do a deal? Do you see what I'm saying everybody, do you believe in that or am I, like, just crazy on that?
- [50:12]
Andrew Brodsky
The more we get to know the other person, the better. And this matches a tremendous amount of research and studies on the topic. Hearing the other person's voice, it helps us humanize them. This is why so many people engage in, you know, flaming on the Internet or bullying on the Internet is we don't see the person, we don't hear the person. If, you know, online, I feel fine, but making fun of you or ignoring you, if you were talking to me in person, if you asked me a question, I wouldn't just turn around and walk away and pretend like I didn't hear it.
- [50:42]
Ed Mylett
Great point.
- [50:42]
Andrew Brodsky
So moving up to those richer modes gets us to know the other person. So we build that trust. But it also makes it clearer there's a human being over here, and it makes your help feel more valuable to that person. It makes us feel more connected. It makes us care about the other person more. So that's really useful as early on in the relationship to move up later on in the relationship. It matters less. There's a theory called channel expansion theory, and the key finding in this is that if you know the topic well, you know the technology well, you know the person you're interacting with well, the mode matters less. As an example, if I get a text or email from a stranger, there's a good chance I'm going to misinterpret what they're saying. But if I get an email from my best friend or my. My wife, I know exactly what they're saying. I can read between the lines because I have all that information to fill in the gaps there. So the mode matters a whole lot more when you're early on in those relationships as a. But later on, do whatever is easiest, whatever works best. But early on, getting richer definitely is beneficial.
- [51:51]
Ed Mylett
That's exceptional. Yeah. All right, last question. This has been so good. So good. This topic has to get explored more. What about AI? How's it going to impact all of this? And what do you recommend to somebody in terms of using it now? Feels like that would be, even to me, almost more disconnected, but what do I know? So just AI is in the book. I just want to give you the floor on that to kind of finish.
- [52:14]
Andrew Brodsky
Yeah. So AI and communication, My view is for important interactions, you do want to make sure the words are your own. The reason being is 99% of the time, someone may not know you're using AI to communicate. They don't know you're just typing something into ChatGPT and pasting it, or during even a video call, you're reading from a script. Potentially the problem is that 1% of the time or more, depending on how good you are at using it, they may realize it because it uses words you don't use, like proficient or elevate. Or maybe you talk to someone about something in person or on the phone. They talked about how their whole family had a stomach bug the past weekend and it was pretty horrible the whole weekend. And then you copy and paste an email in that said, I hope you had a great weekend, exclamation mark. And then it's clear suddenly that you didn't write that email. And if they think you used AI that one time to communicate with them, they're going to question every single virtual interaction you've had with them in the past and think, well, is it AI they've been using this whole time? And then they're going to question, if I am just communicating with AI, why am I even communicating with this person at all? What value are they adding here? And you don't want people to be asking that question about you. All that together. It can be great to use AI to brainstorm, to edit, to make sure you don't have those typos. It can be good for low stakes, repeated interactions. But for those really important ones, you do want to make sure those words are your own. Because AI will never know everything that's in your head. And so you are the one who's going to communicate best. And they're going to be able to tell at some point that it's not you that's behind that screen.
- [54:01]
Ed Mylett
This was great. Gee whiz, this was so good. I hope this helped you all. That's why I told you today I needed someone that carried the heavy lifting on this topic for me, that knows more about it than I do. And that's why typically Thursdays I'm on my own. But I wanted to make sure Andrew joined us today to serve all of you just on a higher level on this topic, because you've all been asking about this topic. So, guys, Andrew, thank you. Incredible job. And that was Andrew Brodsky. Guys, the book is called Paying the Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication. And you just got a little piece of what you could get in the rest of the book. So go get it. God bless you, everybody. This is the Ed Milan show.