By Dr. Daneen Skube
Tribune Content Agency
Q:With Omicron spreading like wild fire our company is still going to be remote for many months. I’ve noticed over the last two years how difficult it is to read co-workers and managers nonverbal communication via phone or video. Are there tools you teach clients to help reduce misunderstandings during remote work?
A: Yes I teach clients during remote work to frequently use verbal paraphrases to ensure they’re not misunderstanding during phone or video conferences. If we repeat back in our own words our best guesses as to what others are saying we make sure we’re on the same page as people we work with.
As convenient as remote work is the problem is seeing someone’s face on a tiny screen makes it impossible to read nonverbal cues. Only hearing a voice on a phone means we can only make guesses about what someone is thinking and feeling.
When we’re in person our intuition about the feelings and thoughts of others is usually that we are unconsciously reading their body language. We study the faces and bodies of our team to see how they are reacting to us and ideas. Without this critical data we end up floundering in work meetings.
The other issue is human beings have a tendency to fill in no data with negative assumptions. If a co-worker falls silent on the phone we believe he hates our idea. If we cannot read a reaction during a video chat we make up that our co-worker is upset.
If on video chats or phone conferences we frequently say, “Let me see if I understand what you’re saying,” everybody wins. If we misunderstood information people have a chance to correct it. If we’re correct, people we work with feel validated and important to us.
Remember a paraphrase does not have to be accurate. You do not get a prize for being right at work. You get a prize for correctly understanding others. A paraphrase is always just your best guess on what you’re hearing. Being wrong is just as important as being right since in both paraphrasing situations you learn about reality.
It’s impossible in our workplaces to navigate decision making, collaboration, and brain storming without accurate data about other people. Before we all went remote we may have taken for granted how useful face-to-face interaction was in gathering this data.
We can adapt to remote work without losing accuracy but only if we add new interpersonal skills that emphasize double checking our assumptions.
If anyone in your meeting objects to paraphrasing simply add, “I’ve learned it’s easy for me to misunderstand others and it’s important to me to work hard at listening to you. This is the only tool I know to see if I am tracking what you are telling me.” People then feel flattered and important and will support you paraphrasing.
A marvelous feature of human beings is our creativity and adaptability in the face of new circumstances. A permanent gift of our two-year pandemic is just how fast and effectively we can all adapt to challenging situations and still remain productive.
You’ll find when you return to face-to-face interactions your habit of paraphrasing will be automatic and still benefit you. In the meantime, you’ll reduce misunderstanding those tiny little faces on your laptop!
(Daneen Skube, Ph.D., executive coach, trainer, therapist and speaker, also appears as the FOX Channel’s “Workplace Guru” each Monday morning. She’s the author of “Interpersonal Edge: Breakthrough Tools for Talking to Anyone, Anywhere, About Anything” (Hay House, 2006).
