4 Steps to Master Digital Communication

24:38I'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've got your computer. You've 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.

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26:14You 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'd 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.

26:46We actually do small talk talking about your kids. Where are you from? Oh my gosh, your backyard. They'll look at the ocean out here, whatever it is. 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 ship 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 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.

27:35Right. 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 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?

28:11And small talk is one of those. There's a research study of negotiators, and they've 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 perform 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.

28:54And 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?

29:33Research 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 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.

30:10And it's easier for someone in a virtual meeting to talk for 20 minutes and not realize no one's paying attention. Right. 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 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. 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.

30:42I 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.

31:14I 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. If you've ever had that experience where you're writing an email to your boss or really important client and you've spent like hours and hours just writing, rewriting, editing the message, you understand this idea of over crafting 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 you in terms of email effectiveness.

32:22If 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 or 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.

33:05So 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 Robstar, they had students wear a t-shirt where they had a big picture of vanilla ice on it.

33:45And 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 100 emails, instant messages every week. Do you remember anything about any individual message you had or any individual meeting?

34:25Chances are, unless someone did 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. That's really good. No, I don't remember any of them. One weird thing I'll just add everybody in 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.

34:56But 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? Not at all. There's these weird norms that are associated with communication. So we were talking about voice notes, for instance.

35:30People 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.

36:06We 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.

36:43Because 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 want to get back to you ASAP.

37:22You 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 wanted to get back to me as quickly as possible or, you know, they didn't want to interrupt me by calling me.

37:55Giving those alternative reasons can eliminate the downsides of using these potential negative cues. I make a lot of 30 second to one 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.

38:29I 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, et cetera, et cetera, which was awesome. I, uh, 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? In most cases, I agree. So the higher effort on average is going to show that you care.

39:10Although now that you just said this on your show, you're about to get video messages from pretty much everybody you know. I get a lot. Which you may begin to appreciate less. Now, you know, one of the things that I talk about is that it's often good to actually talk to the 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.

39:51And they never say, hey, would you prefer a 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 really they may hate it they may feel self-conscious looking at themselves on the camera a lot of people gets 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 the terms they like, so they're more willing to do it.

40:57And two, it shows you care about them because you're asking them what their preferences are in those situations. It's really good. That's really good. What about Zoom fatigue? When it comes to what your family eats and drinks, you know your choices matter. You're the expert because you know what fits your life. And getting it right starts with good information. That's why America's beverage companies are sharing more information about our ingredients at goodtoknowfacts.org. No spin, no judgments, just the facts straight from the experts for more than 140 beverage ingredients. Visit goodtoknowfacts.org.

41:37I mean, just overall, companies got Zoom fatigue, a person that does, like, what are your recommendations? 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 it's a great segue to this idea of we're staring at ourselves we get anxious you know one of these drivers of zoom fatigue is we're staring at ourselves a lot during the call we 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 got one person relaying information at 20 people, and other 20 people aren't engaging in the meeting, that probably shouldn't be a meeting in the first place.

42:49The 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 little length that really gets disengaging. And lastly, the biggest question, cameras on or cameras off? Right. 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.

43:27And 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.

44:05but 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, 10s or 100s of times.

44:45And, 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.

45:16I don't have to worry about what I'm presenting to you during that situation. 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 Andrew has his in the book 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.

45:49And 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 that, 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 of things, everyone just nonverbal to a guy like me. So if you wanted to engage me as a client, as a friend, as a, I'm not the most 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.

46:32You 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 a 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.

47:10Even 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, um, between winning and losing in, in zoom world. Now, we'll 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, uh, you know, whether it's email, text, phone, virtual voice notes, videos, et cetera.

47:43One thing I'm conscious of is if I'm trying to upgrade my connection with this person, uh, 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. Um, uh, someone just bought a very expensive sports franchise and, um, 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 interests 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 to humans talking without the verbal, without the video, excuse me, just verbal talking.

48:40And 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. You see what I'm saying, everybody? Do you believe in that? Or am I like just crazy on that. 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.

49:15This 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 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. Moving up to those richer modes gets us to know the other person. So we build that trust. But it also makes it clear there's a human being over here. And it makes your help feel more valuable to that person. It makes us feel more connected.

49:48It 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 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.

50:31So the mode matters a whole lot more when you're early on in those relationships. As of later on, do whatever's easiest, whatever works best. But early on, getting richer definitely is beneficial. 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? It 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.

51:07So 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.

51:50And then you copy and paste an email and it 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 You don't want people to be asking that question about you.

52:26All 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. 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.

53:03And 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 Ping, 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 Myland Show.