I was once trapped on a video call that was supposed to take 10 minutes but stretched to an hour. I couldn’t get a word in to wrap things up. My stomach growled as the tuna sandwich I’d made sat uneaten on my desk. I kept wondering: Is there a way to sneak a chomp?
Then we finished and exchanged goodbyes.
“Finally,” I said aloud. The other person had not yet hung up.
It seems like everyone has a tale of a cringey exchange on a messaging or video platform. Or they’ve endured a Zoom meeting where dead-eyed participants called to mind a supermarket fish counter.
Even though the pandemic forced us all to get more comfortable online, virtual communication can still be awkward. Apps like Slack and Microsoft Teams can strip away our nonverbal and social cues, so we are more prone to misunderstanding, said N. Sharon Hill, a professor of management at the George Washington University School of Business.
Video calls can be uncomfortable, too, said Andrew Brodsky, a professor of management at the University of Texas at Austin and author of “Ping: The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication.” Seeing yourself onscreen can result in what’s called “mirror anxiety,” he said, which is the stress that arises from viewing your reflection for long periods of time.
I asked experts how we can make these encounters a little less awkward.
Do some preparation.
First, let people decide how they’d like to communicate, Dr. Brodsky said: “Taking a couple of seconds to ask the other person, ‘Hey, how do you want to do this?’ can eliminate awkwardness.”
Head off fumbling at the beginning of a video call by joining the meeting few minutes early, said Matt Abrahams, a lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business. That gives you time to compose yourself and make sure everything’s turned on.
A hard-won lesson, he added, is that “it’s always embarrassing for the professor of communication to have his darn Zoom on mute when he is teaching.”
Be aware of eye contact.
Video calls often feel discomfiting because you don’t know where to look, Dr. Brodsky said. Research suggests, however, that participants are perceived as more likable and trustworthy when they gaze at their webcam instead of their monitor, he said.
“Eye contact matters in person, and it matters in video calls,” Dr. Brodsky said.
If the call is just you and another person, Abrahams added, you can head off awkwardness by saying, “‘I always find it really difficult to stare at the camera. So pardon me if I look away sometimes.’”
Pause before hitting ‘send.’
Several studies show that people on the receiving end of written communication like emails and texts tend to interpret the message more negatively than the sender intended, Dr. Hill said. So err on the side of pumping up the positivity, she advised.
Before sending that message, Dr. Brodsky added, ask yourself: “If this email — or text or direct message — was forwarded to my entire department, would I be OK with it?”
You can also appoint an “accountability buddy” to vet your tone, Dr. Brodsky said. “I often use my wife for this,” he said.
Skip the ‘jargon monoxide.’
When you’re using modes like text or Slack, don’t use complicated insider lingo that could sow confusion, Abrahams said. This tendency was termed “jargon monoxide” by Hayagreeva “Huggy” Rao, a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
And because there’s a big difference between “have a lovely birthday” and “have a lonely birthday,” check for typos, Dr. Brodsky said. His research found that typos make you look less intelligent, and they can amp up the perceived emotion — in angry emails, for example, typos make you seem angrier.
There are ways to cover yourself. Dr. Brodsky cited a study that found that, when you have typos, including “Sent from my iPhone” in your email signature helps you retain your credibility. “People say, ‘Oh, it’s because they’re on a mobile device,’” he said.
Don’t hesitate to ask for clarification.
Instead of making assumptions about what a message sender meant, just ask, Dr. Brodsky said. He once had an adviser who ended every email with an ellipsis.
“It would be, ‘Great work, dot, dot, dot,’” Dr. Brodsky said. “And I’m like, ‘Man, he hates what I do.’”
Finally, he asked his adviser about the ambiguous punctuation. His response: “It means, ‘I want to continue the conversation.’” Rather than a reproach, the ellipses, it turned out, were an invitation to keep talking.
And if you’re the recipient of a blunder, a little humor can smooth things over, Dr. Brodsky said. I once made plans to meet a new co-worker and texted that I understood if she was “too busty” to grab a coffee.
“No, I’m comfortable with my body,” she wrote back.
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