THE ED MYLETT SHOW - 4 Steps to Master Digital Communication

Episode Date: April 24, 2025

Is Virtual Communication Costing You Influence? Let’s be honest—no one ever taught us how to communicate in a virtual world. We all just sort of fell into Zoom calls, emails, DMs, and voice notes, hoping for the best. But in this episode, I finally sit down with someone who gets it—Andrew Brodsky. He’s not only a Harvard-trained expert from the University of Texas, but he’s also the first person who’s broken down how to actually win in virtual communication. And trust me, after this conversation, you're going to look at how you communicate online totally differently. We talk about the unspoken messages behind your emails, the body language you think you're sending on Zoom, and how charisma—real, compelling presence—can still be felt even when you're not in the same room. Andrew lays out a game-changing framework called PING (Perspective-taking, Initiative, Nonverbal, Goals) that helps you understand not just how to communicate better—but why the method matters just as much as the message. This one hit me personally. I’ve made my career speaking, influencing, and connecting—but I’ll be the first to admit, I’ve been terrible at texting and emailing. I’ve lost influence in moments simply because I chose the wrong channel or misunderstood the tone. And I bet you’ve done the same. That’s why this episode is so critical. You’re going to walk away with a whole new toolkit for handling everything from business conversations to personal relationships—all through the lens of better, more thoughtful communication. So whether you lead a team, pitch clients, or just want stronger relationships—what you learn here can immediately shift how people perceive you and how effective you are. And if you're wondering what’s next with AI, or how to manage Zoom fatigue, we unpack all of it. Bottom line: if you want to succeed in this virtual world, you need to be more intentional about how you're showing up—digitally. Key Takeaways: Why email often comes across colder than intended—and what to do instead How to build charisma and trust in virtual meetings When to use voice notes, video, or text—and why each choice matters The 4-part PING framework to level up your online communication Strategies to reduce Zoom fatigue and make meetings more productive Why over-crafting your messages might actually hurt your credibility How to ask others about their communication preferences to build stronger connections Go grab Andrew’s book PING: The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication—because this conversation was just the start. Let's all level up and max out how we communicate in today’s world. Thank you to our Sponsor: AG1: DrinkAG1.com/EDMYLETT 👉 SUBSCRIBE TO ED'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL NOW 👈   → → → CONNECT WITH ED MYLETT ON SOCIAL MEDIA: ← ← ←  ➡️ INSTAGRAM   ➡️FACEBOOK   ➡️ LINKEDIN   ➡️ X   ➡️ WEBSITE      Get my exclusive Monday Motivation training in GrowthDay, the world’s #1 app for advanced mindset and personal development. Visit https://growthday.com/ed. This show is sponsored by GrowthDay.    Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Must be 19 year old or Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you or someone you know has concerns about gambling, visit connexontario.ca, T's and Z's apply. This is the Ed Myrtle Show. All right. Hey guys, welcome back to the show. This week's a topic 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 gonna talk about today is virtual communication. So that's everything from email, zoom,

text messaging, all of it. We're gonna do about everything virtual communication, which I've never been taught how to do and my guess is you haven't either. 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 profession. This guy's got

his act together and this book is awesome. The book is called, Ping! The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication and the guy who wrote it is with me here today, Andrew Brodsky. Welcome to the show brother. Thanks for having me on. This term 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'll give you my term when you're done.

But 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 separate or maybe charisma and how could someone become more charismatic virtually any hack or info from you? 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 they're maybe between your two monitors or your cameras 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,

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. But wanting to keep down. Do you want me to keep down on my other Zooms? I wanna keep going back and forth with you on this.

On my, 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. So here's the bottom line line and then I'll let you jump. Keep going. 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 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 mean I jumped because we decided we were gonna do it that way. So go then. I love when we kind of go back and forth. 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 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. Thus 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 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, acknowledge them because we often think, I know I'm paying attention,

so they probably realize it. Don't assume that. When we're virtual and we don't see what the other person is doing, we often come up 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. 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 curt 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 texter 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 the main reason why I wanted to write this book right now is there 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 gonna 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 and 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 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. What's Ping? What's that framework? to be able to put this out there. What's Ping? What's that framework?

Yeah, when I read a book, I love having a framework. So I want one 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,

we're looking 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, it's annoying because it's a productivity sink, but it's also really useful because it builds trust. And thinking about how to add back in whatever is 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 in 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 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 email, you know that emails should be better sometimes. If you've ever had one of those 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 pink framework, I pile the recommendations into it in the book to make them easier to remember. 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. 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?

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's 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? Great. And I talk about two different types of authenticity. The first is your true authenticity. You actually feel what you need. 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 co-worker 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 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 let 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 nonverbal behaviors

that you might show on 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 wouldn't a video call or in person. Let's break this down. I want to have a 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 gonna 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 out, 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, 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, OK, 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 four and a half minute long voice note 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 gone, shoot, I got to, 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. I don't have three minutes. I got other stuff. So what are your thoughts about voice notes overall? 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. The 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 the technology that you can send videos, personalized videos in email. And this is 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 got to listen to the whole thing. It doesn't work really well. And then later on, let's just say you said something I wanna 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, which 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 ladder, then you want to do text. If it's a former, you want to go richer. 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 rapping 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 are 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 of, and Zoom's not the only one, I'm using Zoom, but virtual meetings like this,

because you might not use them, you use Microsoft, whatever, there's a bunch of them. So, but what are some hacks to make it more connected and less distant? 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 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 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. 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 you kind of just spun me on that a little bit. I just want to interject. 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 where 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, uh, 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 your whole team 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 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. Uh, so that's the idea, like where this relates to brainstorming, 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 of 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. So I'm super fired up. We're creating a bunch of content and doing podcasts today. Guess what I had right before I walked in here.

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Slash Ed Milet to start your new year on a healthier note. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. You know, traditional in-person therapy can cost anywhere from $100 to $250 a session, but with BetterHelp online therapy, you can save an average of about 50% per session. And seriously, you guys, it could be the best investment you ever make. People ask me all the time, what all your guests have in common from the athletes to the entertainers, the scientists, the peak performers? You know what? Most of them been to therapy. And what I love about BetterHelp is it can be done online. And so if you don't vibe with your therapist, you can switch at any given time until you find somebody you connect with.

And therapy can help you with everything from trauma, from childhood you really need to work through, or a relationship breaking up you've been in, real stress, all the way to just something as simple as you want to talk out loud and get some clarity in your life about a couple challenges you've got, or you need a sense of direction. Right now, your well-being is really worth it, so visit betterhelp.com slash edshow to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp, H-E- E L P dot com slash edge show. 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 talks kind of gas 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. We actually do small talk time about your kids.

Where are you from? Oh my gosh, your backyard. They'll look at the ocean out here, whatever it is. We were 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 talk 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. 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. There the frequency, 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'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 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 gonna 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.

Right. They're 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. 25 minutes will 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, cause 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. If you've ever had that experience where you're writing an email to your boss, a 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 spent three hours writing this single email. And the problem with that is that it really is bad for you first off. 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 you in terms of email effectiveness. If you spend too little writing an email or whatever, it's gonna 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 wanna 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 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 ourselves. 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 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. Now 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. But when I get an email, I almost feel like emails are 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 in it, I just 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. 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 gonna leave them a voicemail, so you're gonna 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 is 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 and

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 your 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 don't care about me. But if there's another reason, it's like, I'm shooting this off as I'm walking to the office, but I wanted to get back to 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 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. 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. 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, et cetera, et cetera, 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? 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 get a lot, which, yeah,

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 video meeting invite, I get a telephone call invite, or they just do the 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 homesick from daycare may prefer cameras off because they may be running read lips for instance. Someone who's kid is home sick from daycare may prefer cameras off because they may be running a muck 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, 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 nonverbal 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. And 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.

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My friends are like, 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 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 and we get anxious. You know, one of these drivers of Zoom fatigue is we're staring at ourselves a lot during the call. We reckon that 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. This, 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 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? Right. Everyone has strong feelings about this you know there's some people say cameras 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, it makes no sense. And the science on this shows that it depends

on your goal in this situation. Cameras are great for building trust, for showing your, or for showing the illusion you're engaged at least, cause 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 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 it 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 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. That's great, I love hearing your perspective. You know 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 in 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 say, and there's 20 people and someone's literally getting up and using the restroom or grabbing their phone.

And I'm like, 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. 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 talking 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 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 gotta tell you you're probably gonna want capital from a bunch of old-school people and so to me that, 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 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, et cetera.

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 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. 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 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. 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 making fun of you or ignoring you if you were talking to me in person if you ask me a question I wouldn't just turn around and walk away and pretend like I didn't hear it No, 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 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 gonna 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. So the mode matters a whole lot more when you're early on in those relationships. As a bit later on, do whatever is easiest, whatever works best. But early on, getting richer definitely is beneficial. That's exceptional. Yeah. All right. Last question there. 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. 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, some may not know you're using AI to communicate. They don't know you're just typing something into chat GPT 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

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 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 wanna 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 to carry 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, as 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.