Digital communication has become the norm at work, especially in workplaces where staff are hybrid or completely remote.
That doesn’t mean it works for everyone all the time. Those who find in-person meetings can provoke anxiety favor DMs on Slack or Teams. The problem with this approach is that text can make it far harder to decipher tone and meaning.
Leena Rinne, the vice president of Skillsoft Coaching, told Business Insider that managers should make it a priority to work out the best way for their team to communicate.
Otherwise, frustrations and feedback fall by the wayside, leading team members to feel overlooked. This only leads to disengagement and a lack of purpose, Rinne said, which don’t help productivity.
“How important it is depends on how happy and engaged you want your people to be,” Rinne said. “If you don’t care, maybe it doesn’t matter. But if you care about them being engaged, delivering good work, feeling loyal to your organization, and if you care about those outcomes, it has to be a priority.”
Slack is quick, but not always helpful
Communicating through text, email, DM, and even voice notes has sped everything up. Rinne said it also gives people a chance to think before responding.
“You can be thoughtful about what you say back,” she said. “If you have a big feeling, you’re not on the spot to come up with an answer right then.”
But for Gen Zers, the world’s digital natives, this can lead to a “communication gap,” Rinne said, because “they almost feel awkward talking to people” face to face. “This digital generation has never known life without devices, never known life without digital engagement.”
Many Gen Zers also got their first full-time jobs during the pandemic and missed out on the early years of workplace socializing.
Anxious generation
“They went through some of their most formative years in their houses in the pandemic, when we may have developed social skills,” Rinne said. “They had a different experience from me and many other generations.”
As such, Zoomers are a particularly anxious generation and can develop conflict aversion if they only communicate digitally, Rinne said. They can’t adapt to be agile in “these moments of rumble that happen all the time in a conversation,” in her view.
Rinne thinks people shouldn’t solely use more disconnected forms of communication in general. Younger generations are not the only ones using voice notes and texts now.
“We’re all evolving our communication styles. There might be benefits for this new way of communicating, but there are some big gaps if we rely too heavily on it.”
Communication via these means can be stunted and even misinterpreted. “The connectivity, that human moment, it’s not the same,” Rinne said.
She recalled a recent interaction with a colleague in which she was busy answering their DM in a very straightforward manner. The colleague assumed Rinne was being short-tempered or was annoyed with their question, which wasn’t her intention at all.
At the same time, it’s important to balance these needs and meet team members “where they’re at,” Rinne added, and not force communication styles that simply don’t work for them.
“If you don’t do that, you risk all those things that every organization is complaining about right now, which are the turnover, the disengagement, the quiet quitting — all of those things.”
Middle managers are vital
The antidote to this is working to maintain a high-trust relationship — one where small lapses in concentration don’t erode it.
“Building teams that are psychologically safe gives us a lot more latitude to stumble, either in our digital communication or even in our face-to-face communication where we are awkward and say the wrong thing,” Rinne said. “If it’s safe, that’s fine.”
Middle managers play a critical role in facilitating communication and understanding the needs of their teams. This “messy middle” can receive less investment in leadership development compared to frontline managers and executives, she said.
Companies that are “unbossing” the workplace and aiming to flatten organizations, such as Amazon, may find this strategy risky, Rinne said.
“The whole thing starts to unravel if you cut too far into that level. You better have something that fills in not just the functional skill gap, but the leadership gap of a middle level.
“Everyone left now has how many direct reports that you’re supposed to be engaged with, know about, adapt to be agile in their styles? It’s hard to do that with 10 people — try it with 30.”
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