← Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques
Think Fast Talk Smart: Communication Techniques
211. Small Screens, Strong Signals: Mastering Modern Communication
00:26:15
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- [00:01]
Podcast Host
Before we get started, I'm excited to share that our June newsletter is now available. Not only does it contain our new book reading list for the first part of 2025, but it also has an expert article on how to participate in and moderate panels. You can find our newsletter on LinkedIn or at faster, smarter IO under resources.
- [00:29]
Matt Abrahams
If you think about your communication over a week, or even a day, or even an hour, think of how many different types of virtual communication you use. Texting, slacking, emails, virtual calls. We need to make sure that we are as efficient and as effective as we can be when we are communicating virtually. I'm Matt Abrahams and I teach strategic communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast Talk Smart, the podcast. Today I'm excited to speak with Andrew Brodsky. Andrew is an expert in workplace technology, communication and productivity. He teaches and conducts research at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas, Austin. His latest book is Ping the Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication. Welcome Andrew. Your work is so relevant and of the moment. I appreciate you being here.
- [01:25]
Andrew Brodsky
Thanks for having me on the show. I've been a longtime fan of your work, so I'm really excited getting to talk.
- [01:30]
Matt Abrahams
Thank you for that.
- [01:32]
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- [02:32]
Matt Abrahams
So, shall we get started?
- [02:33]
Andrew Brodsky
Yes, let's go for it.
- [02:35]
Matt Abrahams
Excellent. So your latest book and work focus on virtual communication. I'm curious, what counts as virtual communication for you? Is it just Zoom Meet or teams? Or is it something even more than that?
- [02:48]
Andrew Brodsky
For virtual communication, it's simply defined as anything that involves communicating through some kind of electronic device or computer. So that is of course, zoom teams those video calls, but it goes all the way down to text messaging, instant messaging, email, and now phone calls are virtual because they all happen via our smartphones or voiceover ip. So anything that happens electronically. So basically not face to face interactions and not snail mail where you're writing letters and sending them via the post office.
- [03:21]
Matt Abrahams
I'm not even sure younger folks know how to do that latter part anymore. When we communicate virtually, we have choices about tools and channels, etc. Do you have advice and guidance for which tools are better, for which certain communication goals? So do I use a text to let my boss know I'm going to be late? Do I send an email? What's advice and guidance on these different channels?
- [03:44]
Andrew Brodsky
I wish I could say that there was just one best mode, although that would make for a very short book. The key general advice here is you want to think about what are the core things you're trying to do here and what mode serves that best. For instance, if we're considering meetings versus email, are you relaying information? Do you want to have a back and forth? Once you get the basics down, you start to think more into the granularity of what you're trying to achieve, interaction, and then the dynamics that are going on in each one. For instance, let's talk about brainstorming. So brainstorming, many people think, is better in person. We can bounce ideas of each other. We got a nice whiteboard in front of us. But generally what research shows is that the earlier stages of brainstorming are better done separately and electronically. And the reason is a fewfold. When we're sitting in a group, only one person can talk at a time. That's productivity loss right there. If you're all trying to generate 2020 ideas, it doesn't really work well in a meeting with 10 people because you don't have time to say 20 ideas out loud. But if you're all typing them down separately, that is much more productive. When we have a group of people staring at us, we're afraid often of saying something really non conforming because they'll judge us. But when we're sitting behind our computer, typing that fear, that presence of the other people's less salient. And lastly, when we hear an idea in person during brainstorming, our mind kind of sticks on that idea and it's hard to come up with divergent thoughts from that. So basically, research shows that early stages of brainstorming, you get more and more novel ideas when you do it separately and virtually. But then later on, when you're trying to decide an idea or tweak an idea, that's when you want to meet as a Group because that's when you have that back and forth, that's when it's good to work off of each other.
- [05:36]
Matt Abrahams
So what I'm hearing you say is the biggest determinant of which channel you use is what you're trying to accomplish. If you're expecting some back and forth or you really rely on somebody else's response, maybe the more interactive approaches are better. But if you're really trying to do things like ideate and brainstorm, it might make more sense to do that. More isolated, where you don't need that real time connection.
- [06:01]
Andrew Brodsky
Exactly. And those are some key examples of thinking about when one versus another might work better or worse.
- [06:06]
Matt Abrahams
Yeah, I think so many of us just want to get the message out that we don't really think about the channel and how that channel can impact what we're trying to do. So that's a really key bit of advice. Your new book has the subtitle the Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication. So I gotta ask, what are some of these secrets? Let us in.
- [06:25]
Andrew Brodsky
When it comes to books on business or improvement, I really like when there's a framework to organize all this stuff because it helps me remember it.
- [06:32]
Matt Abrahams
So.
- [06:32]
Andrew Brodsky
So I think the best answer for this is to think about the framework that I introduced in the book, which is the ping framework, which should be easy to remember because the book's titled Ping. The Ping framework stands for P Perspective taking. And that's the idea that when you're interacting virtually, you're often much more self focused. So whether you're just looking at text on a screen or even if you're doing video, there's just a little square of the person you're looking at and it's not the same as when they're standing right in front of you.
- [06:59]
Matt Abrahams
So.
- [07:00]
Andrew Brodsky
So we end up looking at things through our own perspective. And we tend to be much more overconfident than we should be about our communication because we're not taking the other person's perspective and realizing that it's different than us. They might read our emotions different. I is initiative. So it's thinking about what is missing from a given mode and how can I add it back in? One of the examples that I often talk about with my students and executives is about when it comes to small talk. So I know it's been a topic on your show previously, but the thing about small talk, many people hate it for good reason. It takes up time, so it's a productivity waste. But on the other side of that, small talk is useful for Building trust. We trust what we know, we trust who we know, and it creates warmth. Research has found that for instance, in negotiation studies, when they had participants negotiate over text based communication, there was much less small talk than when there was in person. So what they did is they had some of those participants who are engaging in a text based negotiation have a quick phone call where they just schmoozed for a few minutes and then they went to text based communication to negotiate. And those negotiators ended up doing a whole lot better than those who didn't engage in schmoozing beforehand. So taking that initiative just have a short phone call before for some intense interaction can be really useful then N Nonverbal. That's the idea that we send a lot of different nonverbal behavior over virtual communication than we do in person. And it's important to be aware of that. Typos can send emotion, time of day can send signals of power. There's a whole bunch of different things that happen virtually that just don't happen in person. And those are really key for making sure that our messages are interpreted as we intend to. And then lastly is G for goals. There's not one best mode. It depends on what your goal is in a situation. For example, cameras on versus cameras off calls. The idea here is people have strong preferences on it, but research shows that it depends what your goal is here. So if your goal is you want to make a strong impression for someone you don't know well, you want to show you're engaged, videos on is really good for that. But if you are trying to save energy, if you're trying to focus, video off is better because research has evidence showing zoom fatigue or video conferencing fatigue. This idea that being on camera is really exhausting because we're staring at ourselves analyzing nonverbal behavior. And there are all these things that happen when we're not in person that can drain energy from interactions. So if it's a new interaction, maybe videos on are better. But if it is someone you know really well, strong impressions already built, they know you're going to be engaged, then you might as well turn that video off because it'll help you to save energy. Bringing it all together. The Ping Framework P Perspective Taking I initiative and Nonverbal G goals. Throughout my book, I tie each of the recommendations into that framework to help make it more memorable and more usable.
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Matt Abrahams
I love a good framework and I love one that I can remember. And ping is very memorable. You spend in your book a lot of time talking about richness. What does richness mean in the context of communication, and why should we be concerned about it?
- [10:16]
Andrew Brodsky
Richness is this idea about how similar is a mode to face to face interactions. And that's generally how it's defined. But you can think about it as a single dimension. There are different components that make up richness. The two main ones are synchronicity, whether it's real time or not, and cue variety. How similar are the degree of cues or nonverbal behaviors to those that are in person? And just because two modes seem similar in one dimension doesn't mean they aren't. For instance, email and instant message both have a similar type of cues available. You can use emoticons, text, but they differ in terms of expected synchronicity. People tend to respond to instant messages quicker, hence instant messages. But the thing is, even small differences on richness have a huge impact on the outcomes of our interactions. Thinking about video calls and in person interactions, fairly similar, except you can't see the bottom half of the person, which in many video meetings is probably a good thing. What also happens is with video calls, there's a very slight lag due to data transfer speeds over the Internet, whereas in person there's no lag because you're just talking to each other. Some studies have found that even that slight lag in video calls can make conversations run a little more awkwardly. There can be more silences. We can interrupt each other more because we're both waiting for the other person to finish, or we thought they finished, but they didn't. Even these lags in the milliseconds can end up changing the conversational dynamics. And there's a variety of other ways that richness also plays into interactions. As an example, when we're interacting virtually, it can feel awkward to use richer modes of communication. So if you're reaching out to help someone or to reconnect with an old colleague, there's this idea that people would just rather do it via email. And research shows email just feels awkward. What authors who studied this found is that richer modes like telephone or video end up being more effective. It builds trust more because it's richer. And then when participants rated it after the fact, they note that it's not actually any more awkward. So we think it's gonna be awkward before the fact to move from email to just calling someone or having a video meeting. But in reality, it works out better and it's not any less awkward. That said, especially in the work context, try and precede a call with an instant message or email. That way you're not interrupting whatever the other person is doing. So you can still get the benefits of that mode without necessarily having the interruptive effect of forcing them to talk whenever you decide.
- [13:04]
Matt Abrahams
Thank you for defining richness and for giving some useful examples and insight into what it is and how we can consider using it. I want to dive deeper into what you just said about alerting people in advance of reaching out. In your ping model, the nonverbal piece, you've got a lot of ways of looking at nonverbal that I don't think many of us think of. You even use the example of the time of day you set. A meeting can be a way of establishing power. Can you share your way of looking at nonverbal communication when we're virtual? Most of us who study nonverbal communication think about what do you do with your body and your voice. But there's also the use of time, the use of space. Can you share some of your thoughts on that?
- [13:47]
Andrew Brodsky
For Namurbo communication, one of the most illustrative examples to think about this is one that Hayley Blunden from American University actually led a research project with me on, and it's on email typos. In this set of studies, we've had three findings. First, email typos generally make you look less intelligent. The second finding was that email typos can relay emotion. It's like putting your fist up in the air, where your fist up in the air can make you seem happier or more proud or more excited, but it depends on the context. So in angry emails, typos made you seem angrier. In happy emails, they made you seem happier. And then we had a third finding, which was in the context of emotional messages, there was a decreased penalty on intelligence for typos. So put simply, typos make us look less intelligent. But if there's another reason, such as emotion, the other person says, oh, it's because they're emotional. This matches other research studies show that having sent from my iPhone in your email signature decreases the penalty of typos because they assume it's sent from your iPhone. Knowing someone's from a different culture reduces the penalty for intelligence, for grammar errors, because English might not be their first language. So the key kind of theory behind all of this is this idea that in virtual communication, there's often missing information. As recipients of it, we're searching for reasons for this missing information. Whatever is there is what we attach it to. If it's clear the person was emotional or rushed or whatever else we use that information to fill in the gaps in our understanding and assume it's because of that. The problem becomes that the person on the recipient side who's making these guesses is often guessing incorrectly. So realizing how other people interpret our messages and making sure we add in extra information to make sure they don't have to fill in those gaps can be one of the most useful things that you do.
- [15:51]
Matt Abrahams
Wow. That's a lesson in attribution theory, but also in some practical things. You've just totally changed my perspective on something. One of the first things I do when I upgrade my phone is I remove the automatic signature that says sent from iPhone because I felt like that was not useful information. But based on what you just said, maybe what I should do is change it to say sent from iPhone, while likely rushing so that everybody who gets one of my typos attributes it to that and not to the fact that I'm not as intelligent.
- [16:24]
Andrew Brodsky
It depends if your goal there is to typos or not, because that also is sending other information as well. You didn't feel the need to sit down at your computer to email them. Maybe sometimes it's a good signal that you're sending it from the go. Maybe other times that's a bad signal. That could be seen as a power play potentially. So you do have to be wary of what other information you're sending from that. But with typos it helps. With other things it may not.
- [16:48]
Matt Abrahams
And that's that nonverbal piece I was thinking about. So people are reading into. Oh, he just sent me a text. She sent me an email about that. Maybe there's some meaning behind it. Maybe she was more thoughtful than he. So not only do we make choices for ourselves, but we have to think about the impact of the choice of channel. What message is that sending? Andrew, this has been a fantastic conversation. I. I am certainly considering changing a lot of my behaviors based on what we've said. Before we end, I like to ask all my guests three questions. One I make up for you, and the other two are similar for everyone. Are you up for that?
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Andrew Brodsky
Yep. Definitely.
- [17:28]
Matt Abrahams
Excellent.
- [17:29]
Andrew Brodsky
We'll be right back to continue our conversation. But first, a word from our sponsors. Their support and yours helps make our show possible.
- [17:38]
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- [17:56]
Andrew Brodsky
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- [17:58]
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- [18:08]
Matt Abrahams
So not everybody has the benefit of actually seeing you as I do, as we're speaking. What's your advice and guidance on what we do with what's behind us when we're virtually communicating? Are there some best practices we should follow?
- [18:22]
Andrew Brodsky
The evidence when it comes to video backgrounds or how you look on video does show that they do matter. Having good lighting, having a good camera, and in terms of what's behind you. So there's been some studies on the virtual backgrounds and they show that having virtual background of a bookshelf or plants tends to be seen as most professional blurred is somewhere in the middle. And then the novelty ones. An example I used in the study was a walrus on ice were seen as the least professional. So you want to use some common sense if you're using a virtual background. But then there's another set of studies about what shows in your actual background. And what they've found is that when there are things that show who you are, so you want to of course have the professional stuff. So bookshelf's always good, maybe some plants. So in my case, picture of my dogs and a couple other little tidbits about me can be useful for creating some social cohesion. In the example in the study, they had things that showed people were parents, a number one dad mug, and they found that for other people or parents, they felt they could trust that person more. So having those opportunities to potentially have conversations to show a window into who you are while remaining professional can be incredibly helpful.
- [19:40]
Matt Abrahams
So the fact that I have a Lego flower that I made behind me gives some insight into some something about me. I'll take that as a positive. The one thing I want to advise people against, and I assume you would agree with this, is you need to be authentic. I can imagine somebody hearing what you just said and said, oh, I'm going to manipulate by putting a number one dad mug and I don't have any kids. We need to be authentic because just like you mentioned around AI that if the language you use influences how people see you, if somebody were to find out that you're not telling the truth, that would be a problem.
- [20:10]
Andrew Brodsky
Exactly. And I've some research too on virtuality and authenticity, and it's a major factor that drives satisfaction the other party. So it's not just being authentic what you say or do, but also being seen as choosing the right mode, making sure that you don't have unintentional nonverbal behavior leaking through when video calls, for instance. People might see that we're trying to be happy for them, but we're actually not because maybe something happened earlier in our day that's really bad. So authenticity is a topic that is not just relevant for in person, but is incredibly relevant to virtual interactions, especially because the person can't physically see you. So they're making a lot of assessments of authenticity to fill in those gaps.
- [20:54]
Matt Abrahams
Really, I want to put an exclamation point. Authenticity is so important in all communication. And what I'm hearing you say is in virtual communication, it's even more important. Let me ask question number two. I'll be curious to hear your answer. Who is a communicator that you admire and why?
- [21:09]
Andrew Brodsky
I'm guessing there may have been a chance you would have gotten this answer before because he's many people's, but for me, it's Adam Grant. I took his first class that he taught at Wharton. It was just inspirational, the degree to which he motivated students. It was one of the driving factors that drove me to getting a PhD and coming into academia was just seeing the impact he had on students and how he was able to just draw everyone into a topic that many people came in thinking wasn't going to be that interesting.
- [21:38]
Matt Abrahams
So this notion of your passion and connecting that and sharing that and making it relevant to others.
- [21:45]
Strawberry Me Career Coaching
Final question.
- [21:47]
Matt Abrahams
What are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication?
- [21:51]
Andrew Brodsky
Recipe for successful communication, I recommend three things that start with pausing and taking a breath. We're overloaded by communication, especially virtual communication. We've got full inboxes, we've got back to back video meetings. And it's so easy to just keep on going and not take a second to pause. And step two is consider if what you're doing is actually the best. We tend to fall in this trap of the default bias, which is this idea that we just do whatever we've normally done or what's right in front of us. So if we always have a meeting for X, we continue to have a meeting for X. Or if we have an email for Y, we give an email for Y. Or if the conversation is already happening in email, we don't take the initiative to say, hey, let's switch this to a phone call. I think that'd be more productive. And so actually getting out of that default mindset can be incredibly helpful for improving productivity, your relationships, and your overall well being. Because you may find that you decrease your communication load by being thoughtful about what's the most productive mode and when, as opposed to just going with the flow. And lastly, my third ingredient is keep learning. Especially when it comes to technology and communication technology. There's new advances every day. People are changing how they use things. So keeping up with the research, the science and understanding what are the best strategies for what, how is that changing can be one of the best things that you can do. Because communication technology such a dynamic landscape.
- [23:27]
Matt Abrahams
I really like those three things. I'm going to take them in reverse order, staying up to date and really challenging yourself to explore and learn. The new technology makes a big difference. There are things that, as you said, are are getting better all the time. I think about when we all first went to virtual and where we are today, not just in our comfort level with it, but just what we can do. I like to talk about turning habits into choices. Many of us communicate in that default mode and taking the time to make a conscious choice rather than just do what you've always done might make the communication better in your life easier. And then finally taking a pause. We are often rushing in all of our communication and taking that beat, taking that moment can really make a difference. And if we do it in the presence of others to show that we're listening or to show that we're being thoughtful, it can have an added benefit. Andrew, this has been a great conversation. You shared so many useful tips and helped me and I hope everybody listening think a little bit differently about how we show up when we communicate virtually and what tools and channels we choose to use. Thank you so much.
- [24:35]
Andrew Brodsky
Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.
- [24:38]
Podcast Producer
Thank you for joining us for this episode of Think Fast TalkSmart, the podcast. To learn more about virtual communication best practices, please listen to episode 53 with Jonathan Levov and episode 31 with me. This episode was produced by Ryan Campos and me, Matt Abrahams. Our music is from Floyd Wonder with thanks to the Podium podcast company. Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and rate us. Also follow us on LinkedIn and Instagram and check out fastersmarterio for deep dive videos, English language learning content and our newsletter. Please consider our Premium offering for extended Deep thanks episodes, Ask Matt Anythings and much more at fastersmarter IO Premium.
- [25:28]
Podcast Host
I wanted to share with you that over the past few months I've had the amazing opportunity of talking to listeners across the globe about the impact the podcast has had on them. I love learning how people are applying the principles and concepts that we cover on the podcast and the impact that it has had on their lives. It is truly inspiring. Speaking on behalf of all of us that bring you the show, we thank you for your support. We look forward to bringing you new episodes, new techniques, and deeper knowledge, and we ask for your support. It takes time and effort to put this show on the air. To please keep your ideas coming, and if you can, we'd love for you to join our premium. Thank you. And here's to another 200 episodes.