I recently listened to an insightful conversation between HBR IdeaCast host, Alison Beard, and UT Austin business professor, Andrew Brodsky on the nuances of virtual communication.
Turns out, there’s a lot to it!
In the discussion, Dr. Brodsky noted that now that we have fewer face-to-face meetings (yes even with full RTO), we haven’t thought very strategically about how to approach virtual communication. Most just default to “how it’s always been done” without thinking deeper about those implications.
Just one example of this misalignment was of the employee who sent a 20-page deck to their boss and only received a two-word response back: “Got it.”
The leader was thinking, I want to acknowledge I’ve received this and I’ll review it more in-depth later. They assumed the employee knew that.
Meanwhile, the employee was freaking out about their job security, thinking they’d done poorly.
Can you see the disconnect?
We need to be more intentional. Here’s how Great Human Leaders communicate in the age of AI:
- Match the message to the medium: Zoom or email? Slack or phone call? IRL meeting or handwritten note? We have many options for communication, and there’s a time and place for all of them. Great Human Leaders use their discernment to recognize which method is best in every situation and apply that strategically to their communication. For example, think of the headache saved from hopping on a quick call to resolve an issue versus volleying emails back and forth for weeks on end.
- Make the implicit explicit: Great Human Leaders get everyone on the same page. If you’re on a video call taking notes, for example, let the person on the other end of the call know you’re taking notes (and not just looking at your phone). These leaders also establish clear expectations and rules of the road. AND they model those best practices from the top. Because people take their communication cues from their leader. So if you send an email at 2 AM on a weekend, your people will feel obligated to respond. Set response expectations and be explicit about them like, “we respond to emails within 24 hours” or “we respond to slack messages within 2 hours during work hours” or “if it’s urgent we will call.”
- Consider moments that matter: When asked how GenAI impacts virtual communication, Dr. Brodsky answered it best—for the interactions that matter, make sure it’s your own work. If people realize you’re using AI to communicate, they’ll question every interaction with you and think, why am I even communicating with this person if all I’m getting is correspondence with AI? That is to say…don’t under value human connection!
8/19/25