Laws of Digital Body Language: Collaborate Confidently
Digital body language requires the mastery of a new way of communication. We need to understand the four laws of digital body language:
- Value Visibly
- Communicate Carefully
- Collaborate Confidently
- Trust Totally
This article will cover the third law: Collaborate Confidently. It focuses on Teamwork in a Digital Age. It is about the freedom to take conscious risks while trusting that others will support your decisions.
Collaborating Confidently means managing the fear, uncertainty, and worry that define workplaces – and understanding that even when things get crazy, employees are there to support one another and work together to avoid failure. It means empowering people to respond with care and patience instead of pressing them to respond to everything immediately in a 24/7 workplace.
Collaborating Confidently means prioritizing thoughtfulness while reducing groupthink behaviour. It might mean allowing the one remote member of a team to moderate a live meeting, creating a sense of inclusion, and also reducing the bias we tend to have towards teammates who are not physically present in the room. It might mean using the virtual chat tool in a video meeting to collect team opinions and then calling on the people with different ideas to speak up, instead of listening to the loudest people (who agree with each other) first. It might mean designing a structure for work requests in email so that no one is left speculating wildly about the meaning of an exchange that end with the letter K. It might even mean something as straightforward as making sure that team members always have what they need to move forward.
Collaborating Confidently decreases the chance of getting simultaneously trapped between being over-attentive and under-attentive, for example when you obsess over minor stuff in one email while racing through others and overlooking important details. It frees us up to overcome our habitual fears and uncertainties and move forward to action. It allows us to quit obsessing over Did she really mean this? and Is he angry at me but just isn’t saying so? and Are they giving me the runaround? Instead, we assume the best intent from others, knowing that no one will succeed at someone else’s cost, or by misdirection, or by forcing the upper hand.
Collaborating Confidently requires us to put aside whatever fears and anxieties we might have about what others might think or say and speak up! We all have a colleague who needs everything right now. All their emails have URGENT! in the subject line, and if that weren’t emphatic enough, they text you a few minutes after emailing, and then, if you haven’t responded in a few hours, the phone rings, and guess who it is? You might have even dropped a deadline or two of your own to help them finish something – they were on an important deadline! – only to discover that the deadline was in their own head.
Maybe you know their counterpart – they have the opposite problem. They are habitually un-urgent. they agree to complete a large piece of work, but when you sent them multiple follow-up emails, they don’t answer, even when the deadline has come and gone. Are they stressed out or overburdened? You have no idea, but as you await a response that never comes, you end up missing your own deadlines.
People like these make collaboration difficult, especially in a digital workplace. Often, negative workplace behaviours like these are based on fear and anxiety that mutate into chronic delays, passive-aggressiveness, and the erosion of trust. In a world entrenched in teamwork, we need to focus on getting beyond negative, fear-based workplace behaviours to uncover the best ways to collaborate. We Collaborate Confidently when we state our needs clearly, including when and why we need anything, leaving no room for misinterpretation (or fear, or anxiety).
Why is it so hard to Collaborate Confidently in the digital workplace?
In traditional office settings, it was easy to pop by a colleague’s desk for a short conversation – “Do you have a minute?” – or share a meaningful look across the room. These were once ingredients of a larger culture in which our social relationships at work served to strengthen trust and mutual understanding. This spontaneous, drop-in quality is largely missing in today’s work environment. In some cases, we never get to meet our colleagues face-to-face. We may even have dozens of them, spread across different departments and time-zones/countries.
Team members are more likely to say something like, “Sorry, saw you called, didn’t listen to the voicemail, could you send a video meeting invite instead?” or they may flat-out tell you they’re just too busy to schedule a meeting. Thoughtfulness, we hardly knew you. Everything has to be done this second, and the fact is, most people’s brains – and schedules – just don’t work that way.
Collaborate Confidently – The Principles
1. Stay in the Loop
Collaborating Confidently is about keeping all parties informed and up to date while checking in constantly to ensure ongoing clarity in all components. It begins by understanding what other departments do – and establishing clear norms on how they interact with one another.
A brand marketing and digital strategy executive at a global investment banking, securities and investment management firm created a task force comprised of employees and departments that were equipped to address a broad range of topics, including legal, compliance, employment law, employer relations, technology, information security and operational risk. Asked why there were so many experts in the mix she responded: “So we can get to yes faster, or, if we have to get to no, at least we all are comfortable with why we ended up at no.” At the beginning of any project, she advises asking: ” Who is going to need to know all the things we are thinking about? Where are the risks? Where are people going to really need to understand the processes, the requirements, and the regulations?” She advocates identifying and prioritizing the right people who can make a project better, as well as those who can anticipate bottlenecks, or call out the BS.
Posing the simple questions “Who can derail this?” and “Who will need to approve this?” can avoid leaving out important individuals who could later slow down your efforts. She considers all stakeholders beyond the immediate team, including people who may not be making the decision but who will be implementing it. She also asks all departments involved to break down proposals and issues into laymen’s terms. Engineering, management and legal all speak different languages. To ensure these disparate voices understand one another, each is expected to express their ideas using clear, jargon-free language.
A team leader at a pharmaceutical company designates “project team members” and “project advisors.” Team members are involved in decision-making and maintaining day-to-day activity, while project advisors provide expertise on specific subject matter and are only included on meeting summaries (keeping them in the loop) or in one-on-one conversations. Project team members who cannot attend a meeting are responsible for appointing a proxy who can make decisions for them. Assigning these roles have reduced her 30-person brainstorming meetings into 6-person discussions. Things now get done much more quickly and efficiently.
2. Win with Consistency
To battle today’s erosion of confidence at work often caused by changing priorities, it is critical to be consistent in our messages. How can we best build and earn confidence through consistency? The answer: fight thoughtless deadlines; eliminate chronic cancellations; and practice patient responses.
a. Fight Thoughtless Deadlines
The word “deadline” can be traced back to the American Civil War. Back then, prisoners-of-war camps had boundaries known as “dead-lines” – prisoners who crossed them would be killed. In short deadlines were serious. In some places they still are.
In a manufacturing plant a missed deadline can cause chaos for countless stakeholders along the supply chain. In other settings there is less at stake in missing a precise deadline, and deadlines are understood to be rough – calibrated as “noonish,” “ASAP,” or “first thing in the morning.” These requests may or may not feel urgent. Particularly in creative industries that involve iteration and innovation, it’s understood that deadlines may not be met if the idea just hasn’t reached completion. The problem arises when one team or one person’s missed deadline causes a delay down the chain for someone else.
When people are collaborating from different places and time zones, observing disparate working hours, overcoming language barriers, and more, meeting deadlines becomes much more difficult for all. It is important for managers to have a system in place that creates realistic deadlines, clarifies the consequences of missing them, and considers contingencies for when (inevitably) something goes wrong.
Be thoughtful about deadlines. When setting major deadlines with her management team, an executive at a hospitality company division always prefaced her scheduling meetings with a caveat: “I’m thinking out loud and believe the deadline should be December 1. I haven’t finalised the deadline. I want everyone to give me their opinion.” This allowed her team to speak up about any potential issue instead of remaining silent out of the mistaken belief that she had already made up her mind. In addition, she welcomed email from employees who didn’t speak up in meetings. Email gave these employees the psychological safety they needed to contribute to the conversation, helping them accept her final deadlines even when their opinions didn’t change anything.
b. Eliminate Chronic Cancelations
Cancelling meetings is a real problem in the workplace. It’s getting worse too, since we are so overscheduled and overworked (at least we think we are). It’s easy to book time on someone else’s calendar – why don’t we just do it now, and bow out later if we have to? Chronically cancelling meetings can have company-wide repercussions, including lowered morale, lost team brainstorming time, and a general loss of confidence in leadership.
An internal marketing team at a large insurance services firm worked three weeks on a one-year strategy plan for the chief innovation officer, only to have him cancel the meeting just hours before its start. The meeting was eventually rescheduled, but the cancellation (after all that work) made the team feel devalued and unseen. It also signalled ambivalence – if the meeting were actually important, it would have happened. Almost worse than the meeting getting cancelled was the curt email announcing the news with no explanation.
While you will inevitably have to cancel some meetings, when you do, there is a right way to do it. He should have sent a direct note saying I’m sorry and explaining why the meeting was cancelled. He should also have been respectful in how he communicated his reason, such as I understand how important this is … or Let’s reschedule this as soon as possible…
c. Practice Patient Responses
Today’s communication channels are asynchronous, meaning that multiple messages can show up at the same time, throwing a spanner into the very concept of “sequence.” We forget the truism that in the long run, less haste ultimately equals more speed. Missed or crisscrossing messages can undo collaboration confidence by creating misunderstandings, which lead to broken commitments or cancelled meetings. This can also lead to widespread inaction or, worse, chaos.
The gaps we all experience in response times bring with them another problem, namely that circumstances can change dramatically before we’ve gotten an answer to the first email we sent. In addition, our need for a response increases with every second we sit there, making us impatient, resentful, and stressed out. This issue is especially relevant for global leaders with teams in multiple time zones.
A shared service leader at a global Parks and Resorts company woke up (in New York) to a flurry of 50 email exchanges about an issue in their Shanghai office. He said: ”People freak out because they haven’t heard back from me yet, don’t read the latest reply with an update before responding, and keep sending emails instead of giving me a call.” As a manager of teams across his company’s Orlando, Shanghai, and Paris theme parks, he gets angry when his team sends volumes of emails without checking first that they are adding genuine value to the infinitely long Reply All chain.
If you can withstand the blind impulse to respond to an email immediately, there is a lot of power and control to be found in the ensuing silence. Unless the message is urgent or time-sensitive, don’t drop everything to respond at once. The collective interest (your own included) is far better served by a measured, strategic reply. Silence allows you to gain perspective, to consider every angle, to review what’s happened and anticipate what might come next.
Digital hastiness can also foster groupthink and undermine team creativity. Six yes emails in a chain makes it harder for the seventh person to say no. A rushed “Does everyone agree?” at the end of the video meeting doesn’t feel like a true invitation for discord.
Take a few additional moments of pause to re-read what you’ve just written. Are you saying what you think you’re saying? For all its drawbacks, asynchronous communication gives us time to process our words instead of just blurting them out. This is a very real advantage. Don’t automatically choose immediacy over a thoughtful response that can be all the more valuable.
3. Follow up Strategically
The proper etiquette for following up is a critical component of collaboration. Are you supposed to follow up on a task using email, text, or phone? Is it OK to ask someone if they received the message you sent earlier that day, or does that come across as pestering and distrusting?
Collaborating Confidently means being able to follow up strategically – knowing when and how without qualms about it.
Some tips to follow up without being a nag:
- Amend the subject line to clarify that the email is a follow-up request and not a new task.
- Don’t cc new people (unless you absolutely have to).
- Suggest another way to communicate (e.g., Can we schedule a phone call?).
Executive Presence in a Digital World
The houses of confident leaders are always in order. Confident leaders never send emails scattered with typos. They don’t forget to include relevant team members in group messages. They establish norms in their digital communications that create guidelines for their teams on how and when to communicate, what is appropriate behaviour on each social channel, and more. They lead by example and follow these rules themselves. Leaders with strong executive presence are present, calculated, and careful. Online, this means double-checking all their written digital communications and treating virtual meetings as if they were there in person.
In digital meetings, executive presence makes itself known in obvious ways – the skill a leader shows by facilitating constructive discussions, for example, or the way they sidestep the common pitfalls of the medium (people talking over or lecturing each other or falling prey to offline distractions).
Leaders can show strong digital leadership by understanding that digital meetings demand more preparation than in-person meetings. You should send out the brainstorming topic before the meeting time so that attendees can begin readying their contributions. By asking team members to bring their top three ideas to the meeting, you will avoid creating incomplete solutions and running overtime. You could ask your team to split into subgroups with their in-person colleagues to discuss ideas beforehand. That way, you can use the call time for ideas that have already been effectively pre-screened and pre-validated.
Even in a digital landscape, Collaborating Confidently involves creating durable commitments among your team. The key is stepping back and asking yourself what seemingly small things will lead to better collaboration. Is it setting norms on the use of digital mediums? Is it responding to messages in full, and respecting others’ time? Is it ensuring that your team’s understanding of “success” isn’t lost in an email chain? Is it, quite possibly, all of these things?
What does executive presence look like online?
- You set deadlines in collaboration with your team.
- You send clear messages with a clear ask, not confusing brevity with clarity.
- You have a background on video calls that is not distracting to the group conversation.
- You acknowledge individual differences among team members and account for those needs.
- You set and enforce norms for team communications in a collaborative way.
- You serve as a facilitator, not a monopoliser, of team discussions.
- You are consistent in your words and your actions in a way that is authentic to you.
References used:
- Dhawan E. Digital body language: How to build trust and connection, no matter the distance (2021)
- T. Frank H.A. Digital body language: How to build trust and win in the online world (2021)
