The Thammasat University Library has acquired a new book that should be useful for students interested in business, communications, technology, new media, sociology, and related subjects.

Can You Hear Me?: How To Connect With People in a Virtual World is by Dr. Nick Morgan, an American communication theorist and coach.

He earned a Ph.D. in English literature and rhetoric at the University of Virginia.

Dr. Morgan argues that five problems in virtual communication are lack of feedback, empathy, control, emotion, and connection as well as commitment. By communicating through e-mail, phone, or videoconferencing, people lose the ability to empathize and connect with audiences. Feedback is also much more difficult to obtain than in live in-person meetings.

So most online communication results from in a loss of focus and commitment. Face-to-face conversation turns out to be a far superior method of communication than online encounters. Leaders who rely on online communication without understanding its problems are less effective and impactful.

The TU Library collection includes other books about different aspects of virtual communication.

Dr. Morgan notes: “Every form of virtual communication strips out the emotional subtext of our communications to a greater or lesser extent.”

Among practical fixes for these issues is to be aware that most people tend to lose attention or do other things while also communicating in the virtual world. During conference calls, people continue with activities that they probably would not do in face-to-face meetings, such as e-mailing, texting, composing Tweets, surfing the web, posting on Facebook, preparing dinner, feeding pets, or even attending more than one conference call at a time.

The absence of human emotions makes virtual communication ineffective and unproductive, due to miscommunications and misunderstandings. Missed opportunities and lost connections are also common.

Decisions are generally made emotionally, and when emotion is removed from human communication in audio conferencing or webinars, good decisions become much more difficult. Virtual communication is a new language requiring a new set of rules and codes of conduct. As Dr. Morgan writes, “We are a little blind, a little deaf, and a little less human in every virtual setting.”

In a 2019 online interview, Dr. Morgan offered some advice about communicating virtually without the use of body language:

The book is primarily intended for business people who spend a good deal of time in the virtual world, whether it’s communicating via email, Slack, or other text-based systems, or communicating via audio conferences, or even video. But since so many of us now live in the half-face-to-face, half-virtual world personally as well as professionally, most people who have a digital life will find this book useful… Most fundamentally, we humans communicate in two ways simultaneously.  We speak content, and we signal emotions, attitude, and intent through our body language.  The virtual world makes it hard to get those emotions, attitudes, and intent through body language.  So we only get half of our usual communication stream, and we find what’s left hard to understand. 

We can begin by accepting the less-than-perfect nature of virtual communication. Don’t try to make virtual communication into something it’s not or try to make it carry freight it can’t. Do the less important things via virtual meetings whenever possible. Save the emotional stuff for face-to-face meetings because it’s emotions and attitudes that are conveyed mostly through body language.

Second, schedule regular face-to-face meetings to reinvigorate your team. If you are kicking off something important, are celebrating a big win, or have significant issues to discuss, bite the meeting bullet and bring everyone together. Trying to solve disagreements or rev people up via a digital phone line is pure folly and engineered disappointment. Our emotional investment in a phone call is simply less than in a face-to-face meeting, and the lack of visual and tonal information makes it much harder to get key messages across.

Third, never go longer than ten minutes in any format without some kind of break. The breaks will allow people to reengage. You can either stop the meeting entirely or just urge everyone to get up and stretch. People don’t need a long break, just a chance for a quick change of pace. Keep your text-based communications short, too.

Fourth, get regular group input.  What most people do during long phone meetings is put the phone on mute and take care of other chores while half-listening. You can keep the group involved by going around the phones asking for input. In a face-to-face meeting, you’re able to tell how people are doing by monitoring their body language. In a virtual meeting, you need to stop regularly to take everyone’s temperature. And I do mean everyone. Go right around the list, asking each locale or person for input. If you’re really gutsy, let people know they’ll be quizzed; research suggests they’ll remember more if you suggest that they’ll be asked about things after the meeting.

Fifth. have a Master of (body language) Ceremonies, or MC.  The group can’t run itself without the virtual equivalent of body language. You need someone who’s in charge of making sure that each person talks and that everyone is engaged.

Sixth, identify your emotions verbally.  Lacking visual cues, we have a very hard time reading other people’s feelings, so make yours clear verbally and train other people on the call to do the same. Say, “I’m excited about everything we’re accomplishing!” Or, “Bob, I’m concerned that you don’t seem confident in the third quarter numbers. How are you really feeling about them?” You’ve got to put back in what the digital links are removing.

Seventh, use video to bring the group together. Face-to-face meetings allow a group to share emotions easily. Such sharing keeps them together and feeling connected. Sharing your emotions is much harder to do in a virtual meeting. So do the small talk—but make it video small talk. Get the group to send each other thirty-second or one-minute clips of what they’re up to or what the weather’s like where they are. Something personal really adds a sense of connection back to the group. Put some of that money you’re saving on travel to good technological use. It’s not a perfect solution, but it will help.

Finally, embrace the technology; don’t fight it. And don’t fight the last war. The virtual world we have created is not going away. We need to learn new ways to cope and behave in the virtual space. Just as we have to learn how to be savvy citizens of the “real” business world, now we need to learn the rules and tricks of the virtual business world…

(All images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)