Latest news with #AndrewBrodsky
Harvard Business Review
6 days ago
- Business
- Harvard Business Review
Are You Optimizing Your Virtual Communication Practices?
Whether your organization encourages working from home or the office, much of your business is no doubt conducted virtually — over email, on Slack, or via Zoom meetings. But few of us think very carefully about how to most effectively use these tools or which to employ when. And few teams and companies have established best practices for virtual communication, which can hurt collaboration, sales, engagement, and performance. Andrew Brodsky, a professor at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin who has researched these issues, outlines practical ways to be more conscientious and intentional about our communication choices and patterns. Brodsky wrote the book Ping: The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication.
Telegraph
04-05-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
‘That's great! Good work!' The AI spambots taking over email
An estimated 350bn emails are sent each day. British office workers receive as many as 10,000 per year, according to one study by Warwick University. Your typical journalist would probably see five times as many. Inboxes are bursting – and now AI bots are being added into the mix. AI chatbots, writing tools and automatic replies are flooding the email products used by hundreds of millions of office workers. With the emergence of tools such as ChatGPT, Google, Apple and Microsoft have started piling their email products with AI widgets in an attempt to outmanoeuvre their rivals and drive new growth. To do so, they must convince their users and customers that these tools are actually worth using. From Apple's Writing Tools AI to Google's Gemini prompts, tech giants are seeking to make boring emails more productive and convenient for internet users. But glitches and AI hallucinations – where the bots make up facts – have threatened to dent trust in the technology. Communications experts, meanwhile, are sceptical that shoehorning AI into emails will make workers as productive as big tech claims. 'When someone realises they are interacting with a chatbot, especially when it wasn't disclosed, it can really backfire,' says Andrew Brodsky, assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin and author of Ping: The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication. Difficult to disrupt Technology giants have long attempted to reinvent email, which is one of the earliest forms of digital communication, pre-dating the World Wide Web. However, despite the rise of corporate chat tools such as Slack, sending emails has been difficult to disrupt. The basic format remains strikingly similar to what it looked like in its early years and it has remained essential to almost all white-collar workplaces. AI prompts in email are not entirely new. In 2017, Google added Smart Reply to Gmail, which can offer up one or two line answers such as 'that's great' or 'many thanks'. However, these answers have grown more sophisticated thanks to the advent of large language models (LLMs): technology that allows AI chatbots to provide detailed answers to prompts in plain English. On Gmail, for instance, users can choose to bring up the company's Gemini chatbot and ask it questions. They can ask it to draft an email in different styles, making the text more formal, longer or shorter. Gemini can also summarise the contents of long conversations or email threads. Microsoft's Copilot, meanwhile, can generate emails or provide 'coaching' on writing style to users. Apple also offers AI-generated Smart Replies in its Mail app and has a product called Writing Tools that can rephrase and draft emails for users. In an advert for its AI technology, Apple showed its bot rephrasing an off-the-cuff email from a worker to his boss, changing 'holler back' to a more professional 'please let me know your thoughts, best regards'. The world's tech giants pushing these tools claim these AI functions will save people valuable time. A 2024 study of 1,300 Microsoft 365 users found those using Copilot saved 11 minutes per day – or the equivalent of a whole week each year. In one case study, Google claimed that staff at one customer, billionaire Mark Cuban's online pharmacy business Cost Plus Drugs, were saving up to five hours per week using Gmail's prompts. Not all users are convinced, however. On Microsoft's community forum, users have raged against Co-pilot, with one calling it a 'flop in AI productivity'. On Reddit, another says it 'struggles with even the simplest tasks'. Brain rot The Telegraph's own use of Gemini in Gmail had mixed results. Often, the bot would seek to fill out snappy emails with verbiage and replace plain speech with jargon. Asking Gemini to add a calendar reminder for a call at 8am Thursday, based on an email chain, inexplicably resulted in a diary note for 11am Friday. However, other tasks, such as digging out useful information buried in old emails, yielded useful results and reminders. All instances of Gemini in Gmail warn users that the answers it gives could be incorrect. 'Double-check it,' its built-in chatbot warns. Apple's addition of Apple Intelligence to its Mail app has been met with some alarming reviews from users. Several have reported that the AI falls for obvious phishing or spam emails, sometimes labelling them as 'priority'. Jeff Hancock, a professor of communication at Stanford University who has been advising companies on their use of AI, says the reaction to AI tools among workers has been mixed. Bosses are eager for their workers to use them to boost their productivity, but many workers find the technology frustrating. 'There have been these big investments in AI products. [Companies] have been handing it to employees without any sense of what they should be doing with it,' he says. 'We are not seeing as much uptake as we might have thought.' Many workers worry the AI bots do not sound authentic, or create extra work as they are forced to triple-check drafts. What's more, writing experts question whether the tools are making people more efficient or their emails more meaningful. Brodsky, of the University of Texas at Austin, says AI can be useful for brainstorming for those who struggle with writers' block or helping to edit 'low-stakes' emails. But for many workers, realising a colleague is trying to speak to them with AI 'signals to me that the person does not care', he adds. There are also concerns that outsourcing writing to an AI bot could lead to a drop in critical thinking skills. A study of the use of AI by 319 knowledge workers from Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon, published in February, found that 'confidence in AI is associated with reduced critical thinking effort'. The report added that reliance on automation could leave our brains 'atrophied and unprepared'. John Warner, author of More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI, says: 'We may be engaged in an active de-skilling of ourselves.' If an email requires a well-thought-out answer, turning to an AI chatbot to draft it is probably a mistake, he says. 'Writing is thinking, and if thinking is part of what a response should do, then automating it is probably a mistake.' A Google spokesman said: 'Our goal with integrating AI features, including Gemini, into Google Workspace is to help users save time, communicate more effectively, and focus on what's most important. 'We're excited about the potential of generative AI to assist with tasks like drafting emails, summarising long threads, prioritising messages and suggesting contextual replies.' Google also pointed to a Harris Poll that found 82pc of US knowledge workers aged between 22 and 39 were using AI at work, and 70pc had used it for tasks such as drafting emails. Apple and Microsoft were contacted for comment.
New York Times
14-02-2025
- General
- New York Times
We Still Don't Know How to Be Normal on Slack and Zoom
I was once trapped on a video call that was supposed to take 10 minutes but stretched to an hour. I couldn't get a word in to wrap things up. My stomach growled as the tuna sandwich I'd made sat uneaten on my desk. I kept wondering: Is there a way to sneak a chomp? Then we finished and exchanged goodbyes. 'Finally,' I said aloud. The other person had not yet hung up. It seems like everyone has a tale of a cringey exchange on a messaging or video platform. Or they've endured a Zoom meeting where dead-eyed participants called to mind a supermarket fish counter. Even though the pandemic forced us all to get more comfortable online, virtual communication can still be awkward. Apps like Slack and Microsoft Teams can strip away our nonverbal and social cues, so we are more prone to misunderstanding, said N. Sharon Hill, a professor of management at the George Washington University School of Business. Video calls can be uncomfortable, too, said Andrew Brodsky, a professor of management at the University of Texas at Austin and author of 'Ping: The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication.' Seeing yourself onscreen can result in what's called 'mirror anxiety,' he said, which is the stress that arises from viewing your reflection for long periods of time. I asked experts how we can make these encounters a little less awkward. First, let people decide how they'd like to communicate, Dr. Brodsky said: 'Taking a couple of seconds to ask the other person, 'Hey, how do you want to do this?' can eliminate awkwardness.' Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
The Guardian
11-02-2025
- Health
- The Guardian
Are typos lethal in a work email? Nine digital communication tips from an expert
Andrew Brodsky has been working from home far longer than most of us. 20 years ago, at age 16, he was diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia that required a bone marrow transplant, and he spent the following month in an isolation room where visitors had to put on a mask, full-body gown and gloves. 'I got early experience interacting with people from a distance,' the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas Austin professor says. An early interest in virtual communication took hold, growing into a PhD dissertation and the cornerstone of his business consulting practice. The Texas resident still receives regular immunoglobulin infusions. Owing to his immunocompromised status, he teaches his popular business school classes via Zoom from a home office decked out with color-coded bookshelves and a cleverly placed photo of his dogs, Tater and Minnie, directly behind his camera (more on that later). In his new book Ping: The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication, he lays out the data he has gathered on the science of communicating through screens. He spoke with the Guardian about how to find fulfilling connection in an ever-fractured and disembodied world. At the office, it can be tempting to wander over to a colleague when you spot them at their desk. But now that casual IRL encounters are fewer and further between, people don't always take warmly to an out-of-the-blue approach. 'It doesn't matter if you work from home or if you work from the office – we're all virtual communicators,' Brodsky said. Swinging by your co-worker's cubicle used to be the norm if you had a question or a juicy tidbit to share, but these days it's safer to send an instant message to see if they will be free to chat in a bit. We are wired to sense that all emails require an instant response – a brain trigger that can drain our own productivity. 'When we get an email, we tend to think the sender expects a response quicker than they actually do,' Brodsky says. 'So this creates a whole lot of extra stress on us, because we feel like we need to reply right away.' He recommends designating three or so periods a day to tend to emails, and notes that there is nothing wrong with getting back to somebody later that day unless they specified that the matter was urgent. Likewise, it never hurts to clarify to your recipient that your query does not constitute a five-alarm emergency. 'If you're sending an email and you need a quick reply, put the word 'urgent' in the subject header,' he says. 'Otherwise, say at the end of your email that this can wait till we talk in the next few days.' Is a Zoom background worth a thousand words? One of Brodsky's more intriguing hypotheses is that a video meeting can be more intimate than an in-person one held in an anodyne conference room. Brodsky looked at research showing that bookshelves and plants both work well to help establish a connection. Cozy items such as Christmas trees or a photo of a pet, such as Brodsky displays, can connote warmth and personal dimension. Unsurprisingly, a study about video chat backgrounds and professionalism found that a novelty background such as a walrus on ice or the inside of a spaceship tended to get the lowest ratings. So delete that image of Bianca Jagger raging through Studio 54 on a white unicorn. Is anybody's body clock wired to thrive exactly from 9am to 5pm? Some of us (present company included) get our best work done before the sun rises, while others don't get a chance to buckle down and put together email replies until after their family members are drifting off to sleep. Yet there is a commonly held perception that it is disrespectful of boundaries to bother somebody outside of regular working hours. Brodsky isn't terribly concerned about the time of day that an email is fired off. 'If you were to say: if you could respond in the next couple days, that would be great. That takes the pressure off the next response,' he says. Sign up to Well Actually Practical advice, expert insights and answers to your questions about how to live a good life after newsletter promotion Back when Covid reared its head, a lot of companies went overboard on scheduling meetings, perhaps fearful of losing track of employees' whereabouts. But recent studies show that reducing the number of meetings can lead to higher productivity. That said, Brodsky believes that certain meetings can save time – especially if they entail a conversation among few members. Brodsky hypothesizes about the conversation we're having. 'Each of my answers are five paragraphs long,' he says. 'This interaction, over email, would have taken potentially 10 times as long as this hour-long call that you and I are having.' A dominant theme in Brodsky's book is mastering the theater of productivity. 'The vast majority of jobs don't have objective measures of performance,' he says. 'So in most jobs, there's always some strong, subjective component that's happening on the manager's side. So unfortunately there's this need to be mindful and strategic about your communication and how you present your work.' He illustrates with two fictional examples. One employee sends her manager an elaborate five-paragraph email update about everything she did during the week on Friday. Another worker sends his manager a few sentences via Slack every day. According to Brodsky, research shows that the constant communicator likely seems more productive. Communicating more frequently and casually 'can be useful for showing your engagement when they can't necessarily see you'. Yes, it's exhausting, and you might need to brush your hair. But showing your face in a video meeting and reading your colleagues' expressions can forge a bond and trust. Sorry! The toll of overextension is what you might expect, Brodsky says. Some research 'shows that there's basically this curvilinear effect of after-hours communication on both work performance and your relationships', he says. 'Too much after-hours communication just burns you out.' Not only that, but over-availability can diminish your stock. 'If you're thinking about work outcomes, your relationships with your coworkers and your performance, you would probably think, the more communication you have, the better. But that's not true, because your burnout ends up undermining that, and you also are sort of underselling yourself, right?' Typos are a mainstay of the digital age – we dash off texts, Slacks and emails while we are ordering groceries or pretending to pay attention during meetings. In his research with American University professor Haley Blunden, Brodsky learned a few things. First, the obvious: typos make you look less intelligent. But that's not their only effect; they also convey emotion. 'It's like an amplifier,' Brodsky says. 'Typos make an angry email seem angrier or happy emails seem happier. And if you make one? You can move on.' Ping is out from Simon Acumen on 11 February
