DIGITAL BODY LANGUAGE (2021)

Digital Body Language: How to Build Trust and Connection, No Matter the Distance by Erica Dhawan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Body language has been actively studied since the 1960's with the general public becoming more aware of its existence with the book "Body Language" published in 1978. My undergraduate degree was in Communications and I have a pretty good understanding of non-verbal cues so my first reaction to "Digital Body Language" was all this information is intuitive. I already know and do these things. But as I continued to read, I realized there were new concepts and ideas that I could use. There were helpful ways to proceed.

Author Erica Dhawan has provided a complete roadmap for teams to understand the new signals and cues through her guidelines and anecdotal stories. She explains what digital body language is, discusses the four laws that will make a team more successful, and follows up with a discussion bringing awareness to digital communication differences in gender, generations, and culture. The book includes an extensive list of footnotes and the Appendix includes a downloadable link to The Digital Language Guidebook and other useful materials.

Here are some of my personal takeaways:

Reading carefully is the new listening.
Writing clearly is the new empathy.
A phone or video call is worth a thousand emails.
If you follow up twice with no response, switch to a different medium.
The return and importance of the exclamation point.
Older generations almost always end up adopting the vocabulary of younger generations (emojis).
I also discovered I'm a 'digital native' rather than a 'digital adapter'.

Highly recommended and appropriate for strengthening teams in any organization as well as those of us with questions about how to sign our e-mails! 

Thanks to the author, St. Martin's Press, and NetGalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Publisher : St. Martin's Press (May 11, 2021)
Hardcover : 288 pages
ISBN-10 : 1250246520
ISBN-13 : 978-1250246523

Erica Dhawan is the Founder & CEO of Cotential, a global organization that helps companies, leaders, and managers leverage 21st-century collaboration skills and behaviors to improve game-changing performance. In 2020, she was named by Global Gurus as one of the Top 30 Management Thinkers around the world.

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