Digital Body Language Book Summary - Digital Body Language Book explained in key points

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Digital Body Language summary

Name: Digital Body Language
Rating: 4.4 (226 reviews)
Author: Erica Dhawan

Erica Dhawan

How to Build Trust and Connection, No Matter the Distance

4.4 (226 ratings)

28 mins

Topics

Working from Home Work Culture Networking Simplify Podcast Body Language

Table of Contents

Digital Body Language
Summary of 8 key ideas

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Key idea 1 of 8

What’s in it for me? Become a great digital communicator.

Late email replies, ambiguous texts, awkward video calls . . . In today’s world, where so many of our daily interactions happen from behind a screen, it sometimes seems like we’ve lost our ability to effectively communicate with each other.

And it’s true: without traditional body language to convey – or clue us in to – tone and meaning, what, when, and how to say things is often confusing. But, there are actually dozens of digital cues at our disposal. We just need to learn to tune in.

These blinks highlight the specific dos and don’ts of virtual exchanges in order to sidestep misunderstandings and foster connection. By mastering your digital body language, you’ll save time, worry less, and ensure your voice comes across loud and clear – no matter the physical distance.

If you want to communicate effectively in the virtual age, you need to tune into your digital body language.

Here’s an all too common story.

Laura and Dave were having a fight via text. Back and forth it went – for hours. Finally, Laura gave up and typed, So r we thru? Dave replied, I guess so. Devastated by the loss of her three-year relationship, Laura called in sick to work the next day. That night, Dave showed up at her door, wondering why she hadn’t come to dinner as planned.

You can probably tell where this is going. Laura thought they were through, while Dave meant they were through arguing. Oops.

Laura and Dave aren’t alone in their confusion. We send each other an unbelievable amount of messages every day. And a lot of these messages are taken the wrong way. Take email. 306 billion emails are exchanged each day; the average person sends 30 and receives 96. According to the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the tone of our emails is misinterpreted 50 percent of the time!

Our bewilderment boils down to the fact that we’re cue-less – in the most literal sense. Anthropologist Edward T. Hall had a name for the nonverbal cues – things like eye contact, smiles, pauses, yawns, tone, volume, posture, and proximity – which make up nearly three-quarters of face-to-face communication. He called them “the silent language.”

Problem is, the silent language isn’t exactly visible from behind a screen. And the gap between intention and interpretation in the digital world is only made bigger by the online disinhibition effect. This happens when we let loose and express ourselves with a level of informality we’d never entertain offline.

What does this all say for the modern workplace, where roughly 70 percent of communication among teams is virtual? Or for our personal lives, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, where socialization online is more frequent than in-person meetups?

In these blinks, I’m going to explore our understanding of body language and redefine it for the contemporary world. By focusing on how we say something, as well as on what we say – in other words, by becoming aware of our digital body language – I believe we can increase productivity, boost mental well-being, and ensure we’re our best selves, even online.

Onscreen, your physical body language translates into punctuation, timing, and medium.

Time for another story.

One day, Jack, a mid-level manager, received an email from his boss. It ended with a simple sentence: That’ll be fine. (period). But everything was not fine. That period haunted Jack. It was a microbomb: disapproving and deadly. Jack worried and worried. Why had his boss used a period? Why hadn’t she used an exclamation point?

Valuing Visibly means explicitly showing you’re attentive, aware, and appreciative of others.

A lack of respect in a relationship spells D-O-O-M. In the workplace, it can kill motivation, collaborative efforts, and job satisfaction. And yet over 50 percent of employees report that they don’t receive enough respect from their leaders. Are all bosses really inconsiderate jerks? Or are they just oblivious?

But what if they’re just not showing respect in ways that employees can recognize?

Communicating Carefully involves choosing the right words, tone, and channel.

A recent survey revealed that up to 80 percent of all projects are hurt by lack of clarity and detail – and 56 percent of strategic projects crumble because of poor communication. The result? $75 million lost for every $1 billion spent – and this is just in the US.

This is why my second law of digital body language is communicating carefully. As the name suggests, it involves making a concerted effort to curb misunderstandings by always being as clear as possible.

To Collaborate Confidently, be consistent, stay informed, and exercise patient responses.

We may think of “deadlines” as the bane of our existence, but once upon a time, they truly were: during the American Civil War, prisoners who crossed these camp boundary lines would be shot. Today, luckily, the term holds a little less weight. But while overstepping deadlines in the modern workplace probably won’t get you killed, meeting them still poses its own challenges.

Take a Fortune study that recently reported that 60 percent of employees have to consult with at least ten colleagues per day just to get their jobs done. Traditionally, it was easy to pop by a colleague’s desk for a quick request: Do you have a minute? Today, with numerous colleagues spread across different departments and time zones, it’s a lot harder – and this makes the need for a consistent, realistic framework all the more necessary.

To foster an environment of Trusting Totally, be vulnerable and empower others to take ownership of their ideas.

In 2016, Microsoft released a chatterbot called Tay. It was poised to usher in new levels of human-AI interactions. Almost immediately, Twitter trolls hijacked it and taught it to tweet offensive, inappropriate words and images. Within 24 hours of its nascence, Tay was retired – forever.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella could have blown up at his team’s oversight. Instead, he wrote them an email: “Keep pushing, and know that I am with you . . . the key is to keep learning and improving.” He knew that creating an atmosphere of failure and fear would crush future innovation, so he chose to invest in trust.

The digital workplace can flatten traditional gender biases.

Penelope Gazin and Kate Dwyer were having a tough time. They’d just launched Witchsy, an online marketplace for unusual art products, and were receiving more than a little condescending email correspondence from potential clients and collaborators.

That’s when they brought in a male cofounder, Keith, who was put in charge of PR. Perhaps unsurprisingly, having a male cofounder immediately boosted the women’s business. The kicker? Keith was nothing more than a name on a screen.

Bridge divides by being aware of communication differences across cultures and generations.

Here’s a question for you: Is it Speak now, or forever hold your peace or The loudest duck gets shot? Here’s another: Say one person raised in the West and another raised in China are colleagues. Who’s more likely to brainstorm out loud? and who will think in silence?

We often don’t realize how childhood stories or cultural upbringing influence our communication styles. And so when someone else’s norms clash with our own, we judge them as too flashy or too formal without pausing to consider the circumstances. So what’s going on here?

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What is Digital Body Language about?

Digital Body Language (2021) is your rulebook to clear online communication. Combining cutting-edge research with personal know-how, it demystifies the digital signals that so often stand in for traditional body language.

Who should read Digital Body Language?

Leaders and employees seeking more streamlined digital collaborations
Virtual workers who want to improve their online tone and clarity
Anyone who’s struggled to convey what they really mean from behind a screen

About the Author

Erica Dhawan is an expert on collaboration in the twenty-first century. She is the founder and CEO of Cotential, a consultancy that helps companies, leaders, and managers leverage collaboration skills and behaviors to maximize their performance. Dhawan has delivered over 200 keynotes around the world, hosts the award-winning podcast Masters of Leadership, and is the coauthor of the best-selling book Get Big Things Done: The Power of Connectional Intelligence.

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