Digital Body Language
By Erica Dhawan
St. Martin’s Press, 267 pages, $38.99
Thirty years ago, communication in your workplace revolved around face-to-face communication, with the occasional memo for organizing deeper thought and/or mandating action. Even before the pandemic turned many of us into remote workers, communication had become much more heavily digital, with email, text messages, and connectors like Slack holding sway, even with colleagues a few yards away let alone collaborators in other locations. “These days, we don’t talk the talk or even walk the talk. We write the talk,” notes communication consultant Erica Dhawan in her book Digital Body Language.
Face-to-face communication counts on body language to help interpretation. Our facial expressions, positioning of arms, posture, and tone of voice are critical. They are thought to make up 60 to 80 per cent of face-to-face communication, “the silent language,” in the words of anthologist Edward Hall.
They, therefore, need to be replaced by a digital body language that can serve the same purpose. That will mean slowing down in our written messages and using more, not less words, as well as emoticons and exclamation marks. It will mean using the chat function more on Zoom and “liking” other people’s messages when that is possible.
You will have to consciously fight time pressures and the constraints of handhelds to connect with others and give them positive signals, replacing the traditional cues used to show appreciation, notably a smile. Quick, curt emails can send negative signals you don’t intend, particularly hasty responses to barely-read emails from colleagues. “Reading the emails in our inbox with care and attention is the new art of listening,” she says.
Putting effort into digital body language will help reduce poor communications or miscommunication. She also argues it will increase engagement, since the loss of non-verbal communication has been leading employees to feel disengaged. “Disengagement happens not because people don’t want to be empathetic but because with today’s tools, they don’t know how,” she writes.
Start with email, since it’s the prime communications medium today. Individual messages, she observes, have become Rorschach tests, like the inkblots used to illuminate thought processes, preoccupations, and personality. Often they provoke anxiety in recipients, because of brevity, passive-aggressiveness, slow responses, and the level of formality.
On brevity, she says at Morgan Stanley there is a running joke that the more senior an individual is in the hierarchy, the fewer characters needed to express gratitude. A person starts with “thank you so much” and after a promotion or two that becomes “thanks,” before moving on to Thx or TX, and perhaps ultimately T. Too busy to say thanks – and, perhaps, take the words to send a clear message in the email.
Those cryptic messages lead recipients to overthink things or fill in missing words and absent meanings. She recommends in such situations asking clarifying questions or picking up the phone to get additional context.
Passive-aggressiveness might show up in phrases like “as per my previous email,” “I’ll take it from here,” or “am I missing something????” Your response depends on the degree of power and trust in the relationship. If you have a high degree of trust in the other person and the power differential is not significant, pick up the phone and call. Otherwise, be specific and polite in your responses and use formal channels. If you can, stay in a place of reason, assuming good intent. In your own messages to others, show empathy and encouragement. Replace “Do this” with “Could you do this?”
The sounds of silence in email come through slow responses or messages lacking in expression or emotions. You get an email, “Dinner soon?” and then after you agree hear nothing back but notice the other person has lots of time to post on Facebook. Your anxiety rises. Dhawan urges you, however, to not jump to conclusions. Unless an ASAP response is critical, remember the other party may have a lot on their plate. If you follow up and after two requests hear nothing back, switch to another communications channel.
The formality of your emails will to some extent reflect your own style. Some people just use their name, other people might add in the words sincerely or respectfully. If it’s a new relationship, she suggests following the formality level of the person who has more power. If it’s a longtime trusted relationship and the formality changes suddenly or gradually, ask yourself why or consider checking in with the other correspondent. If it’s a longtime relationship with an obvious power differential and the formality changes, take the lead of the more powerful person, mirroring the change.
Punctuation and symbols are the new measure of emotions. Exclamation marks, which have traditionally been used sparingly in written communication, have become widespread and she encourages that trend. Traditionally they were used to indicate urgency, excitement, and emphasis. “Today, exclamation points, arranged throughout texts and emails, convey friendliness. They have become so obligatory to emails that you risk coming off as brusque or cold if you fail to use them. An exclamation point at the end of an email’s opening sentence establishes a heartfelt sentiment that resonates through the rest of the message,” she says.
Women use a lot more exclamation points than men, apparently replacing the nods, smiles, and laughs of female friendship. But she warns against getting carried away. Exclamation marks can be interpreted as shouting!!!! Using more than one can get tricky.
Emojis are essential – an array of little faces are available with a wide emotional range to replace what’s lost when we move from face-to-face conversation to written communication. “Today for even the most skilled communicator, emojis have become an essential shortcut,” she writes.
At the same time, don’t use them to replace words, only to accentuate what is said. Adapt their use to your audience. Remember they can be misunderstood. A four-person team she was on for an international research project had had one woman who responded to a colleague’s ideas every time with a smiley face emoji. The person receiving those emojis began to wonder if the sender was being sarcastic. Dhawan notes that young women need to be careful because overuse of emojis can imply incompetence at work, according to one study. So use emojis – but think before you do.
Question marks also need to be treated with care. A question supplemented by three question marks – or more – conveys urgency, impatience, and possible panic. In general, the more question marks in a message the more intense the emotion likely is behind the question.
Using ALL CAPS can have a similar impact. Limit it to urgent situations with your team. Otherwise, you will be assumed to be yelling.
Timing is the new measure of respect in a digital writing world. “In a digitally reliant world, the slights pause between messages takes on an almost operatic meaning,” she warns.
Of course, the reality is that a non-immediate answer to an email or text usually just means the other person got tied up or their battery died. Research indicates it takes 90 minutes for the average person to reply to an email and 90 seconds for the average person to respond to a text message. Each communications medium carries its own expectations on timing so keep those guidelines in mind, particularly during business hours, or you’ll be considered rude.
When phone calls aren’t scheduled in advance, she recommends placing them at 20 minutes after the hour or 10 minutes before the hour, when the recipients are usually finished with conversations that started at the hour or half-hour. Weekdays during normal hours, particularly mornings, are the best times to send an email that will get a reply. On weekends or afternoons expect shorter replies.
She urges you to add profile pictures to your emails on Outlook or on Zoom. Keep them clear, professional, and warm. But use them, because they convey more of who you are. And that’s vital, in an era when digital body language builds trust and connection.
