PING

Andrew Brodsky is here to tell you that, yes, that meeting could have been an email.
And that email? Maybe it should have been a voice memo (really!).
And your camera -- it's okay to turn it off, probably even better.

Many of us give far too little thought to how we communicate virtually at workjust going with the flow when we see another Zoom has been added to our calendar or accepting the late night email chains as normal. And this has its consequences: from employee burnout in back-to-back-to-back Zooms, to lack of connection with our colleagues or customers, to potential for embarrassment or misunderstandings with the wrong message forwarded or a tweet gone viral.

Despite our increasing reliance on communication technology for our work, until now, there has been no guide for navigating it. Which brings us to PING: The Science and Strategies for Mastering Virtual Communication. In this accessible book for workers of all stripesremote, hybrid and those who work fully in person, yet use communication technologies to do their jobs, Brodsky dives into the big questions we all have: Which communication modes are the best for which situations? How can we interact most productively and authentically? How do we build relationships at a distance? How can we increase workplace inclusion using these technologies? And finally, how can we best deal with conflict via virtual communication?

Brodsky is a world leader on remote communication research at The University of Texas. His interest in the subject comes from his youth: when he was a teenager, he was diagnosed with a serious blood cancer, which left him severely immunocompromised and often spending long stretches of time in isolation. While he has encountered his share of problems with remote communication, he also appreciates its power, which he highlights in this book. Rather than bemoan the ills of email, Slack, Zoom and the like, he shows instead how we can harness these tools to our benefit with a series of smart strategies.
With wit and whimsy (look out for some Vanilla Ice references), stories and quotes from top business leaders, and his cutting-edge social science research on remote communication tools, PING will become an indispensable guide for today's modern workplace.

Andrew Brodsky is an Assistant Professor of Management at McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. This year, he was selected by Poets & Quants as one of the "World's 40 Best Business School Professors Under 40". He received a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Harvard Business School and B.S. from The Wharton School. Brodsky has conducted research, led training, and consulted with organizations around the world such as Amazon, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Dell Technologies and Novo Nordisk. His research has been covered in media outlets such as The Economist, Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, NPR, and CNBC. He lives with his wife in Austin, Texas.