Humans rely on body language to connect and build trust, but with most of our communication happening from behind a screen, traditional body language signals are no longer visible – or are they?
Think about the last work email that you sent. Did its sentences end with full stops or exclamation marks, or did you forgo punctuation altogether? Was it peppered with emoji – or just plain text? And was your response prompt, or did you have to apologize for the time it had taken to reply?
Consider your last Zoom call. Did you check your phone or email at least once during the meeting? And did you pause to be sure that the other speaker had finished? Or did you find yourself frequently interrupting their sentences, as you failed to take into account the slight delays in the connection?
According to go-to thought leader on collaboration and a passionate communication junkie Erica Dhawan (right), these are all examples of our “digital body language” – a concept that serves as the title of her latest book.
Like our in-person physical body language, digital body language concerns the subtle cues that signal things like our mood or engagement, and change the meaning of the words we say – be it in text, on the phone or in a video call.
Needless to say, the rise of WFH has only made these issues more urgent, but psychologists have long known that digital communication is ripe for misunderstanding.
For instance, Dhawan cites research from 2005 on how people interpret sarcasm. Overall, around 56% of people correctly detected the sarcasm when it was written in an email – barely better than chance – compared with 79% of people who heard the same words spoken out loud.
And Dhawan’s own research suggests that these kinds of misunderstandings can lead to a major loss of productivity. In one recent survey of 2,000 employees and managers, she found that 70% report poor digital communication as a frequent barrier to their work, leading to around four hours of wasted time each week. “If you quantify that, it's 10% of a normal working week”, she says.
So, what can be done? Dhawan avoids offering hard and fast rules of online etiquette; instead, it’s a question of mindfulness, so that we can be sure that our digital body language is intentional and appropriate to the situation at hand.
And what of emoji?!?
First consider written communication, starting with the use of emoji and punctuation marks, like the exclamation point. Stylists may sneer, but Dhawan argues that they often help to clarify the meanings of the words themselves, much in the same way as a nodding head or a smirk in person.
Whether you’re signaling urgency or excitement with ALL CAPS, impatience and irritation with an “?!?” or mutual appreciation with a fist-bump emoji, you are helping your text to convey the feelings you would have embodied in person.
“Research shows that roughly 60% to 80% of our face-to-face communication is non-verbal language, such as the pacing, pauses, gestures and tone. All of these cues bring energy and emotional nuance to our message”, she says. “In many ways, punctuation and the use of symbols in a digital world are the new means of signaling that emotion”.
So, don’t feel shy about adopting these more informal digital cues, where appropriate – and be aware that others may well be expecting them.
Broadly, your use of punctuation and emojis are part of a bigger set of cues that will establish the tone of your exchanges – whether they feel formal or informal, enthusiastic or bored. Other signals will include your greetings (whether you include a friendly “Hello” at the start of the message or simply dive straight in), and your sign off (an emotionally distant “Regards” versus an enthusiastic “Thanks!”).
It is suggested that one good habit to have is to simply proof-read your messages to ensure that the meaning and the emotional subtext are as clear and appropriate as possible.
And video calls present their own unique problems.
There’s no easy way around that – we must accept that video calls will involve a certain awkwardness.
But Dhawan has many suggestions to improve the experience and enable easier turn-taking. In group calls, people could be asked to raise their hands before speaking, for example. It can also be useful to designate a moderator for the call, who can ensure people stick to an agenda and don’t get distracted.
As you might expect, Dhawan strongly advises against multitasking during these calls or allowing yourself to be distracted by other devices. “It is so obvious if you are busy looking down at your phone, when others are trying to make video eye contact with you”, she says.
You may think no one will notice, but it signals a lack of engagement and enthusiasm. And if you know that there might be an interruption – such as another incoming call – it’s worth warning people in advance, she says, or at least putting a message in the chat box to explain why you have left, just to emphasize your respect for the people who remain in the meeting.
And another thing, we should be especially careful to express our appreciation.
“In the past, the handshake and the smile gave us those signals”, she says – but in online communication, our gratitude is often less apparent, or may not be expressed at all. Measures to remedy this could be as simple as sending a follow-up email, after a virtual meeting, to make it clear that you valued someone’s input, or cc’ing a junior colleague on an email to a client, acknowledging the role they played in a project. We can’t just assume that our colleagues will know how much we value them.
All these are good pointers to follow. As Dhawan succinctly puts it: "What was implicit from body language now has to be explicit in digital body language".
