Can You Hear Me?

How to Connect with People in a Virtual World

Nick Morgan

• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781633694453
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Meetings & Presentations
• Index: Business

Communicating virtually is cool--but it's often a bad connection. Communication expert Nick Morgan explains what's lost in virtual communication, how to guard against its risks, and how to ensure that the human richness of our messages gets through.

• Clearly outlines the problem and what's lost in virtual communications.
• Provides fuller understanding of the dynamics and risks of virtual communication than practical/tactical books, a kind of theory of virtual communication.
• Cites/highlights much recent research to support his argument.
• In addition to the theory, provides practical techniques to become a better leader and communicator in a more virtual world.
• Book will be well-written, as are Morgan's earlier books.
• Book will contain lots of engaging stories illustrating the slings and arrows of virtual communication, which many of us have experienced.

Audience: Broad general management audience including anyone who leads, manages, or works in virtual teams, participates in or leads virtual meetings, and who communicates using email, Skype, Slack, and other social media.

Announced first printing: 25,000
Laydown goal: 5,000

PART ONE

THE FIVE BASIC PROBLEMS WITH VIRTUAL COMMUNICATIONS

THE LACK OF FEEDBACK

WHERE’S THE EMOTIONAL CLARITY?

You look at your opposite number on the negotiation team. He’s sitting across the big wooden conference room table from you, and you’re waiting for him to say something. Over the past four weeks, as the complicated negotiations have gone on, you’ve gotten to know him well. You know his tells, his nearly invisible body-language signs about what he’s really thinking underneath that impassive exterior.

Finally, he says it: “I think we should go ahead.” But something is nagging at you. You know his body language well enough now to pick up on subtle discomfort. You know that he’s not entirely satisfied with the deal. So instead of saying, “Great, welcome aboard,” you pause.

“Is there anything we haven’t talked about that is making you uncomfortable?” You know there is; you want to give him a chance to voice his reservations.

And so he does. Later on, when you’ve ironed out the problems that were indeed still there, just beneath the surface, he confesses that he had been about to put the deal on hold and let it quietly die. He had grown to like you in the month you had been negotiating together, and he was uncomfortable with sharing what seemed like minor problems. But added together, they had become one big deal killer. If you hadn’t given him the opening, he would have been ready to leave the table. Your reading of his body language saved the day.

What is that sensory feedback, and why is it so important to us humans?

There are two kinds of feedback: implicit and explicit. The implicit kind is illustrated by the example just above. It’s the sensory feedback that our unconscious minds give us 24-7, the sights, sounds, smells, touches, and tastes of our world of experience. In addition to the five senses that we’re all keenly aware of, neuroscientists debate a number of others, such as thermoception, proprioception, nociception, equilibrioception, mechanoreception, chemoreceptors of various kinds, hunger and thirst, and others we’re just learning about.¹

Explicit feedback is the running commentary that drives individuals, teams, and organizations to get things done from day to day. In the real world, the two kinds of feedback mix in a way that usually feels effortless. Our words are conveyed to other people—and theirs to us—with a welter of largely unconscious sensory data that automatically goes with the words. We smile, frown, draw back, lean in, laugh, and cry. Our senses are at work all the time, creating both context and emotional meaning for our daily lives.

Put us in the virtual world, and almost all these senses are deprived. Now, when the multichannel sensory system that is the brain is deprived of one or more of those senses, the neuroscientists tell us, it hates the vacuum. So, the brain fills the empty channels with assumptions, memories, and fake data. The result is, not surprisingly, all the misunderstandings we’re so familiar with in the virtual world. The email that conveys a sarcastic tone the sender didn’t intend. The phone conference that left everyone believing that the project was dead in the water. The videoconference that made you feel less comfortable about joining the team. Trolling. And so on.

Put us in the virtual world, in short, and we’re short-changed on the implicit feedback that is so important for getting us through our days. Remember, in evolutionary terms, we humans are fragile creatures and so have developed extraordinary prediction skills and pattern-recognition abilities. We put those two skills together to keep ourselves alive. Take away the data that allows us to predict and to recognize, and we feel lost, unsafe, and confused. That’s the virtual world in a nutshell.

But the issues go further. Explicit feedback relies on implicit feedback much more than most people realize. So, when we’re asked what we thought of that presentation, that meeting, or that town hall session, we can offer a mix of explicit and implicit feedback. The mix allows us to soften the harsh messages and toughen the soft ones. We may only say, “It was fine,” but our body language—the implicit feedback—conveys that we really thought the session was a disaster. Or the reverse. We can deliver some tough words but soften their impact with a touch or a smile that says, “It really wasn’t that bad.” And there are, of course, a whole host of shades of meaning possible in between.

The manager who is used to offering minimal explicit feedback because she conveys a strong connection to her team nonverbally may find herself struggling in the virtual world, where she suddenly has to articulate everything that she previously could leave unsaid. If she fails to do so, then she risks leaving her team confused about her intentions and their performance.

Take out the implicit feedback on which the explicit messages depend, and you get confusion and alienation. Let’s further explore the difficulties inherent in feedback in the virtual world. We’ve identified the basic problem: explicit feedback relies on implicit feedback to provide the emotional connections that make human relationships matter, that help people function effectively through the daily ups and downs of organizational life, and that help them endure.

Explicit feedback lacks the unconscious context of human emotional exchange

All too often online, feedback becomes trolling and rapidly descends into hate on all sides. Why is that? Why does this honorable form of human commentary from one person to another rarely work online?

Fundamentally, what has changed is the nature of trust. And as trust changes, so do the relationships, precisely because of how we are hardwired to form connections with people. Trust in the virtual world is much more fragile, though perhaps easier to establish initially. But the big difference comes when something threatens the trust.

And feedback depends on trust. In face-to-face relationships where there is trust, one party may do something to screw up, causing friction, anger, and even a bit of mistrust to creep in. But if the connection is strong enough, the feedback begins. The issue will get thrashed out, the perpetrator will apologize, and trust will be restored. Indeed, once restored, the trust may be stronger than ever.

How different it is in the virtual world! Once trust is threatened, it’s instantly broken, and it’s nearly impossible to reestablish it. People simply move on. Since trust was more fragile in the first place, it shatters with very little provocation.

Thus, virtual feedback has some obvious flaws. First of all, there’s much less of it because virtual feedback is simply harder to give than is face-to-face feedback. Second, virtual feedback is less robust and more likely to cause irreparable harm. And third, the resultant weaker feedback has much less meaning.

There’s less spontaneous virtual feedback because trust is more fragile. Why should I enter into the first half of a feedback loop if my trust in you is not very deep and liable to be eventually broken inadvertently even if it isn’t broken deliberately?

Lacking the unconscious stream of emotional information we receive automatically from other people face-to-face, online communication and feedback is much less robust, much less compelling, and indeed much less interesting than face-to-face feedback. But it still can sting.

Why does online feedback hurt so much? We humans are social beings; put us face-to-face, and we share mirror neurons that allow us to match each other’s emotions unconsciously and immediately.² We leak emotions to each other. We anticipate and mirror each other’s movements when we’re in sympathy or agreement with one another—when we’re on the same side. And we can mirror each other’s brain activity when we’re engaged in storytelling and listening—both halves of the communication conundrum.³

All of that leaking and sharing creates trust, intimacy, and connection. It creates receptivity and interest in the other person’s point of view.

We want to achieve this state of human communion; it’s a mistake to think that most humans prefer the solitary life that so much of modern virtual life imposes on us. We are most comfortable when we’re connected, sharing strong emotions and stories, and led by a strong, charismatic leader who is keeping us safe and together.

The virtual world, in contrast, is much less engaging. We humans are much less engaged in most forms of this world because the forms lack the emotional information we crave.

Negative virtual feedback hurts

Beyond trust or the lack of it, another demand has arisen concomitantly in the virtual face-to-face mix we live in today: authenticity. We live in an era when the demand for authenticity trumps a number of qualities that society used to deem more important. Authenticity has always had a measure of importance, but its stock has risen and fallen depending on the times. Right now, it beats out excellence, coolness, and artifice; to jump to the top of the charts or the best-seller list, you have to be ready to open up.

The demand for authenticity makes you more vulnerable to (and more exposed to) feedback. And online feedback is far more often of the trolling kind. The result is the naming and shaming, the Twitter wars, the instant celebrities whose lives are just as instantly ruined by hate-filled outpourings of online denizens who pounce virtually on those who put themselves out there.

And thus we become febrile inhabitants of a world that is deeply reflective of the ironies of our times: we crave feedback, and yet we fear it. It is both wonderful and soul-killing. We are insecure and immune. We have celebrities and politicians who are more loved and more hated than ever before.

We crave recognition and fear it at the same time. We are polarized. We are tribal. We are addicted to the feedback—the recognition, the likes, the retweets, the confirmation of the virtual world—and are terrified that it will turn on us and destroy us.

Trust in the virtual world is not only fragile, but also a weapon. And yet we need to trust, because we are one click away from identity theft, or trolling, or worse: oblivion.

Just try to deprive someone of their mobile phone. The very thought has given rise to a new social disease. As many as 66 percent of adults may suffer from it.⁴ For some, the anxiety is so severe that it can cause panic attacks. But almost everyone in modern society has this problem to some degree. What’s going on?

It’s called nomophobia—no-mobile-phone-phobia.⁵ Researchers have recently coined the term to describe the fear of being without your smartphone. If you’ve ever had a moment of panic when you checked your pocket or purse and your phone wasn’t where you thought it was, if the sight of a low-battery warning freaks you out, if you can’t imagine leaving the house without your phone, if you never turn it off, if you no longer know how to survive three minutes in a grocery store checkout line without checking your phone, you may have nomophobia.

Caglar Yildirim and Ana-Paula Correia, researchers from Iowa State University, have identified four main components of nomophobia: “not being able to communicate, losing connectedness, not being able to access information, and giving up convenience.”⁶ The inability to communicate with friends and loved ones is the most obvious and understandable reason to worry about being without a smartphone. But the phobia goes beyond just concern about staying connected. The questionnaire the researchers used to “diagnose” nomophobia also asked people to respond to statements like “Being unable to get the news on my smartphone would make me nervous” and “I would be nervous because I would be disconnected from my online identity.”

Think about that. Our social media personas have become so central to our lives that the idea of being disconnected from them makes us nervous. Psychologists say that loneliness and insecurity contribute to this problem.⁷ It makes sense—in the age of the smartphone, you never have to be truly alone. You can always text or tweet or post on Facebook and instantly feel the warmth of human connection.

Or the terror of trolling. That’s the Catch-22 of the virtual world and the need for, and dread of, feedback.

But there’s even more going on here. Relying on our smartphones is actually reshaping our brains. Research shows that when we can easily get information from an external source, we gradually lose our ability to remember that information. Think about it. How many phone numbers do you know by heart? If you wanted to know the name of the actor...