Email or Text? Zoom or in Person?

We can get better at virtual communication, research shows

For Andrew Brodsky, assistant professor of management at Texas McCombs, virtual communication is not just the subject of his academic research. Learning how to communicate remotely is also deeply personal.

Brodsky has had a lifelong immune deficiency, resulting from cancer treatment and a bone marrow transplant when he was a teenager. As a result, he got interested in tools and strategies for cultivating relationships from a distance.

Now, that topic has led to his first book. “PING: The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication” is designed to help others communicate more effectively in an electronic age.

Brodsky’s virtual interactions include his teaching. But despite being one of the only remote professors at The University of Texas at Austin, he has flourished. He’s been named one of the Best 40-Under-40 MBA professors by the business education website Poets & Quants and won the 2024 Joe D. Beasley Award for MBA Teaching Excellence from McCombs.

Virtual communication, he points out, is for everyone: not just people working from home or a coffee shop. A 2019 survey found the average employee spent almost six hours a day looking at email.

“The old way of working in the office was that, whenever you had a question, you went to your co-worker’s desk or office and knocked on the door,” Brodsky says. “Now, it’s seen as kind of rude to go and interrupt them. Instead, you send an instant message or a Slack or an email.

“Whether you’re remote, you’re hybrid, or you’re in the office, we’re all virtual communicators. Understanding how you can do it better is important for being successful in your career and your business.”

When Virtual Beats Live

Many people view face-to-face communication as superior to virtual. That’s not always so, according to Brodsky.

“Bias toward in-person communication results in a lot of unproductive outcomes for employees and organizations,” he says. “People have hours and hours of unnecessary meetings because they assume they need to talk about something in person. Many of these meetings could be handled more productively via email.”

The key, he says, is to strategize which form of communication is most effective for a particular situation. His book covers the strengths and weaknesses of texts, instant messages, emails, phone calls, voice mails, collaborative documents, video messages, and video meetings.

PING is the Thing

Brodsky’s recommendations are based on research in management, psychology, and social sciences. “They’re not just from my own personal experience,” he says. “There’s been a lot of good research about the way we communicate in business, but it hasn’t made it enough into the mainstream conversation.”

To help readers transform research insights into action, he offers a four-part framework he calls PING.

Perspective Taking means thinking about the listeners and how they’ll interpret the communication. Brodsky points to a study in which subjects wrote several sentences — some sarcastic and some not — and had others read them. The writers overestimated how well their readers would correctly understand intent, lacking cues such as tone of voice.

“We all come in with our own assumptions, which can lead to communication being misinterpreted,” Brodsky says. “Make sure to put yourself in the other person’s shoes.”

Initiative is the effort to add personal touches to virtual interactions, such as small talk before a meeting. In one study, email negotiations got worse outcomes than live ones — except when participants had a phone call ahead of time, helping create a relationship and build trust.

“You can add a little bit of small talk into even an email,” Brodsky says. “You just ask a question, like, how was the trip they mentioned, and then say something about yourself. That can be useful for reminding the other person there’s a human being on the other side of the screen.”

Nonverbal cues are present in virtual communications, but they may be different from those in personal encounters. The speed and length of a response, time of day, and use of emoticons and emojis all give cues to a recipient. In video meetings, cues can include dress and backgrounds.

One nonverbal technique Brodsky recommends is language mimicry: following the other person’s lead on cues such as emojis and exclamation points.

“When someone else communicates like us, we feel like they’re a good communicator,” he says. “Secondarily, we trust people who are more similar to us.”

Goals reflect the ultimate purpose of an exchange, he says. “The best mode of communication depends on what your primary goals are in the situation.”

If the goal is to convey information, for example, email might be best. But if it’s active discussion, it might be better to meet by phone or video.

AI and Beyond

Looking ahead, Brodsky predicts virtual communication choices will expand, raising questions such as when to rely on artificial intelligence. AI can be useful for automated replies and for copy editing, he says. But important messages should remain in the author’s own words.

“As soon as someone realizes that you used AI to communicate with them, every message you’ve sent them previously and will send them in the future will be suspect,” he says. “Because AI is so low effort, it makes it seem like you do not care.”

Online meetings might someday use technologies such as virtual reality or holography, he says. Whatever the mode of communication, however, the strategic questions will stay the same.

“How does it change the way we interact?” says Brodsky. “How do we adapt it in the best way possible? It’s not enough to say, ‘This is a great new technology.’ Understanding its implications, understanding how to leverage it properly, is vital.”

“PING: The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication” will be published in February by Simon & Schuster.

Story by Steve Brooks