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Strange pause in a Zoom call. Rude, vague email. Context-free meeting invitation. When online interactions are so easily misunderstood, effective communication is essential. As the author of the new book Digital Body Language, Erica Dhawan, MBA ’12 trains corporate leaders to engage fluently in this new era of remote work with clients ranging from the US Army to Pepsi to Deloitte.
Her mission is deeply personal and rooted in her memories of being a shy elementary school student in Pittsburgh.
“My family were Indian immigrants, which meant we spoke Hindi at home. When I came to school, I was the quietest kid in the class,” he recalls. “One of the strengths I developed because I was very shy was the ability to observe and decipher body language. During school reunions, I would watch popular girls with their heads tilted, cool kids hunched over. I tried to really assimilate into the world of American body language.”
Fast forward 30 years and using this hard-earned intuition to decipher a digital-first world where visual and written clues are more important than ever. In addition to his writings, he has been giving keynotes to Fortune 500 companies at a rate of 40 to 70 conversations per year over the past five years.
“We are all immigrants to the digital body language world,” he says. “I am determined to create an information and education movement for what I believe are the skills of the new post-pandemic era.”
These skills depend on what he calls connectional intelligence. The concept, which prioritizes deep, quality interactions, contrasts sharply with typical metrics of virtual success: daily Twitter followers, LinkedIn connections or Zoom meetings.
“We live in a digital communications crisis where the response is to connect more rather than intelligently,” he says. People with connection intelligence understand what meetings need to be held and when to look directly into the camera for attention during Zoom: “They know not to confuse brevity with clarity, they know that careful reading is the new listening and clear writing is the new empathy.”
He believes the new ways of working brought about by the pandemic may allow workplaces to become “more geographically inclusive, less visually biased to traditional body language, and more creative in involving anyone, anywhere, to be part of a solution.”
Dhawan has two children and enjoys Bollywood dancing in his spare time. “It taught me that when we connect with others, everything is a performance,” she says with a laugh.
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