I used to think virtual communication was about tools.

Zoom fatigue? That’s just screen time, right?
Missed signals? Blame the camera being off, the Slack ping, the calendar glut.
But the more I listen to people like Andrew Brodsky (author of the new book, Ping – The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication, and the more I reflect on my own experience), the more I realize… it’s not the tech.

It’s the texture.

We didn’t just move work online. 
We flattened it… smoothed it out and removed the edges where nuance used to live.
In person, we read silences. 
We glance… we lean in… we hesitate…we tap the table when someone says something we love.
Online? We freeze (sometimes literally).
We compress hours of performance, persuasion and collaboration into minute virtual boxes of faces… no preamble, no decompression, no real sense of who’s “in the room.”

It’s like we’re speaking in grayscale.

And we wonder why we feel disconnected.
Andrew studies this stuff for a living. 
How communication evolves, how remote work reshapes behavior, how relationships shift when we take out the hallway and the handshake.
But what I appreciated most wasn’t the data (though it’s solid)… it’s his honesty:

We haven’t figured this out yet (and there’s nuance in our assumptions).

We’ve made work more “efficient,” but we’ve lost the mess (maybe the humanity?) that makes people feel seen.
We say “let’s hop on a quick Zoom” like it’s a favor. 
But really, it’s a coping mechanism for all the signals that are missing.
What’s wild is how fast this happened.
In just a few years, we rewrote all the rules. 

We built hybrid systems with no cultural blueprint. 

We turned asynchronous into default. 
We made eye contact optional.
And now we’re paying the price in misfires, miscommunications and burnout.
It’s not that we’re doing it wrong. 
It’s that we haven’t paused long enough to ask:

What does good virtual communication even look like?

Do we teach it?
Do we model it?
Or do we just hope that tech will get better and somehow the vibes will follow?

All of this has been a reminder that presence isn’t physical.

That being “in the same room” is less about geography and more about generosity… of attention… of curiosity… of care.
And if that’s true… then maybe the goal of modern communication isn’t flexibility and ease.
Maybe it’s connection.

As an aside, that’s one of the reasons we built ThinkersOne.  

Not just to share big ideas and spark change, but to help teams feel something together. 
Not just information, but intention. 
A shared moment that says: “We’re here, we’re listening and we care about doing this better.”

So here’s what I’m left wondering:

What if our next big productivity gain isn’t another AI tool or workflow optimization… but learning how to really talk to each other again (no matter where our physical location is)?

Before you go… ThinkersOne is a new way for organizations to buy bite-sized and personalized thought leadership video content (live and recorded) from the best Thinkers in the world. If you’re looking to add excitement and big smarts to your meetings, corporate events, company off-sites, “lunch & learns” and beyond, check it out.