Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Andrew Brodsky on How to Be Seen Without Being Always Available | EP 617
Thu, 29 May 2025
In this episode of Passion Struck, Dr. Andrew Brodsky—organizational psychologist, UT Austin professor, and author of PING: Mastering the Art of Virtual Communication—explores how presence, intention, and clarity have become the most undervalued skills in our increasingly virtual world.Drawing from his groundbreaking research and insights from PING, Brodsky reveals why performative busyness is sabotaging genuine connection, how hybrid work is rewiring the way we engage, and what leaders can do to rebuild trust, motivation, and real collaboration. If you’re navigating digital communication, managing remote teams, or simply craving more meaningful connections in your workday, this episode will shift how you lead—and how you show up.Click HERE for the full show notesExplore More: The Ignited Life NewsletterIf today’s episode sparked something in you, you’ll love The Ignited Life—our free Substack newsletter created to fuel your growth between episodes.👉 Subscribe now at TheIgnitedLife.net.Catch more of Dr. Andrew Brodsky: https://abrodsky.com/Together, John and Andrew explore:The difference between physical, emotional, and psychological presence—and why they matter.Why hybrid work may amplify disengagement if not intentionally designed.How “performative busyness” is eroding real productivity and wellbeing.The silent epidemic of disengagement—and how to detect and reverse it.Research-backed tools for leaders to foster presence and connection.If you liked the show, please leave us a review—it only takes a moment and helps us reach more people! Don’t forget to include your Twitter or Instagram handle so we can thank you personally.How to Connect with John:Connect with John on Twitter at @John_RMilesFollow him on Instagram at @John_R_MilesSubscribe to our main YouTube Channel and to our YouTube Clips ChannelFor more insights and resources, visit John’s websiteSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic of this episode?
Coming up next on Passion Struck.
Chapter 2: How can communication assumptions affect productivity?
You should pause and question your communication assumptions and decisions. We lose so much time just going with the flow. We always do a meeting for this, so we'll keep doing a meeting. The conversation is already in email, so we're not going to switch to phone. The problem with that approach is that you often end up in the suboptimal choice of communication medium.
And when you actually stop and take a strategic approach to communication, Not only can you improve your productivity, you can improve your relationships, and you can improve your overall well-being because you can make yourself happier, you can disconnect more, and you can find ways to thrive in a world of communication overload.
Chapter 3: What is the impact of hybrid work on engagement?
Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles, and on the show, we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself.
If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now, let's go out there and become Passion Struck. Welcome back to episode 617 of Passion Struck.
If you're new to the show, I am your host, John Miles, and I'm so glad you're here. Passion Struck isn't just a podcast. It's a movement, a community of high performers, changemakers, and intentional seekers who are committed to designing lives of deeper purpose. resilience, and connection. And if you've been with us for a while, thank you for continuing this journey with me.
Your presence here matters more than you know. Now, before we dive in, some quick updates. The Ignited Life, my new substack, is officially live. Every week, I go beyond the podcast, sharing tools, ideas, challenges, and stories to You won't find anywhere else.
It's also a place where you can check out the passion struck merchandise collection here designed to reflect the mindset of living intentionally and unapologetically. You can check it all out at either the ignited life.net or as always go to passion struck.com. Our YouTube is booming. Full episodes, exclusive clips, and behind-the-scenes content are being posted every week.
Just search Passion Struck with John R. Miles or hit the link in the show notes. And one quick look ahead. Next month, we launch a brand new theme, The Art of Connection. where we explore how to build deep, authentic relationships in our leadership, our lives, and within ourselves.
And we're kicking it off with none other than Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn in a soul-stirring conversation on presence, attention, and the heart of human connection. It's one of the most moving episodes I've ever recorded. You won't want to miss it.
Now, this month, in honor of mental health awareness, we've been shifting the conversation, not just talking about mental illness, but exploring what it really takes to design a mentally sustainable life.
We've covered everything from emotional intelligence with Joseph Wynn to spiritual grit with Biette Simpkin to workplace mattering with Dr. Zach Mercurio and the art of adulting with Gretchen Ribbon. And just this past Tuesday, I welcomed Dr. Judith Joseph for a groundbreaking conversation on high functioning depression and reclaiming joy.
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Chapter 4: How can we improve virtual communication?
Has this been something you've ever thought about how our virtual communication has impacted our feeling that we matter or our ability to make other people feel that they matter?
When it comes to virtual communication, one of the big topics I focus on is how engaged we feel in our interactions. How engaged do we think other people are with us in those situations? And how do we feel like we can have that authentic human touch? And what a lot of this research finds is that in many cases, it's better to use richer modes of interaction.
So interaction that's more similar to face-to-face. So for instance, instead of sending email, you have a video meeting or a video call because you can actually see that authenticity shine through. But there's actually a twist on some of this research. So in some studies that I did with
managers, negotiators, parents and teachers from international schools in Vietnam, I found an interesting thing here. So I showed that if you are truly being authentic, it's best to use the richest mode available because that authenticity shines through. But there's a whole lot of situations where you want to seem authentic, but you aren't necessarily.
So for instance, something really good happened in your friend's life. Maybe they just got engaged or maybe they just got a promotion, but you're just not happy in that moment because something happened to you. Maybe you had been in a car accident. Maybe you lost your job. Maybe you've been in a fight with your significant other.
And in that moment, it's good for your relationship and it's good for the other person to show that you're happy for them, but maybe you aren't yourself. So those cases are what's referred to as service-acted. This trying to display authenticity potentially for the benefit of the other person, even though you aren't. And this also relates to service with a smile.
So for those of you in customer facing jobs or just really any time at work, you're constantly having to be happy, even though you might not be. And what I found in these research studies is that if you truly want to have a more authentic interaction, it's best to use audio interactions like telephone.
Although email is best for hiding the fact that you're not truly authentic and it avoids any nonverbal behaviors sneaking through as in video calls, email itself is seen as really inauthentic. Why audio is so good is it hides all our facial expressions, many of our nonverbal behaviors that might leak through in person or video interactions, but it's seen as much, much more authentic than email.
So there's this sweet spot here in this type of interaction where you want it to be authentic, but maybe it's just not all there for you. And you can, this way you can hide anything that might leak through while still showing the other person, you put that effort into the interaction and you actually care.
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Chapter 5: What is the PING framework for effective communication?
That's a little bit messier of an answer on that one because there's multiple components of this. There's the getting the right idea, the best idea, and there's also getting everyone on board. So the way you get everyone on board is to give everyone a voice. Getting the best idea, it's possible you may be biased by one person or another who's pushing their own idea there.
So ideally, you're setting norms in a meeting to make it such that everyone's voice is heard, everyone's vote is being considered equally in those situations. And you have a structure such that you don't have one person just talking.
Which is good advice I recommend in the book otherwise about structuring meetings is to do it strategically so that you don't have a video call that drags on for two hours for what should have been a 15 minute decision in the process.
So it's about not just choosing the right mode, but making sure once you're in that mode, taking a strategic approach to make sure that you achieve your goals actually that you're aiming for in those situations.
So I wanted to jump over to something that I have been told I am very good at, but when I look back on my career, I'm not sure that this is something that I should be really proud of, and that is multitasking. And it's so interesting. I had Gloria Mark on the show who wrote a book called Attention Span, and she was telling me that over the past decade, our attention has gone from
Being able to keep it for 20 minutes, then it got into 10 minutes, then it got into four to five minutes. And today it's all the way down to 45 to 50 seconds. And we're reaching this point where multitasking is becoming a way of life almost because we're juggling so many digital platforms to do our work.
yet it has such a negative impact on productivity and focus, which is why I love Cal Newport's book, Deep Work, which I recently did a solo episode on. So how can people who are listening to this avoid what you call frenzied focus to increase their work output without feeling overwhelmed?
You made a lot of great points about attention. One of the ones I'd like to add about virtual communication is it's not just also about focus and losing focus. There's some research to suggest that for each email you send, it can take you about a minute to get back in the zone of work.
And now I know it doesn't sound like much to say, well, it just takes you a minute to get back from email to work. But if you're like many people and you've got hundreds of emails and instant messages or Slack messages each week, that means you have potentially hours you're spending just going from, okay, I sent an email. Now let me refocus on my task.
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Chapter 6: Why is perspective taking important in communication?
So if you're really thinking really hard about this project for a client and you're spending two, three hours really focused on it, being able to take a break for 30 minutes to knock out some emails can be a really good way to give your mind a rest. And beyond that, communicating somewhat more regularly, especially when you're in remote or virtual contexts, is really good for showing engagement.
If you were a manager and you had two employees and one of the employees sends you every Friday, their only communication is they send you a five-paragraph long email talking about what they did for the week. And the other employee is one who, at the end of each day, sends you a few sentence updates, say, hey, boss, I did this for the day.
And just a few sentences, but they send a message each day. Which employee do you think would be more productive? The one that is communicating only on Friday with a five paragraph email or the one that communicates each day?
And here's the thing about this is that they're actually both sending the identical amount of communication because they're both sending effectively five paragraphs of the word. By the second person spreading it out, it seems like they're more engaged because they're communicating each day. It seems like they're working each day.
So by increasing your communication frequency, it makes you seem more present and more engaged that you're actually there. So this chunking of communication into about three blocks a day serves that sweet spot where it doesn't cause as much interruption, multitasking, loss of focus, but it allows you to gather any information you need. It can serve as breaks.
And it helps to show that, hey, I'm present, I'm here for any communication that might be somewhat more urgent.
I think that's some great advice. That's what I try to do. I try to do it early in the morning, but not first thing, especially if I'm heavily absorbed in writing tasks, but definitely around lunch.
And then later on in the afternoon, just to make sure that I check in, but that when I'm not wanting to be bothered by it, I just put my phone in a completely different room so I don't get interrupted by it at all.
And I think that's one of the best things you can do. There's some research from one of my colleagues here at UT that shows even when your smartphone is out, but you're not looking at it, it draws some of your attention away and can hurt your performance on whatever you're doing. So just even having it near you makes us think about it a little bit, and that draws away some of our attention.
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Chapter 7: How can we make brainstorming more effective?
We've seen so many of those viral ones go around of executives doing a really bad job potentially laying off employees or other bad behavior over video. So remembering that these things are more permanent and can be shared is really important. But let's bring this down to the individual level. Let's just say you're interacting with someone else.
What are the best things you can do in that situation? And there are a number of them. But the one biggest one that I generally recommend is just asking the other person how they would prefer to interact. There's many preferences that people have when it comes to interactions. For instance, people who have difficulty hearing may really prefer video interactions because it can help them read lips.
People from other cultures may prefer to have text-based interactions because it allows them to more perfect their language because English may not be their first language. So this allows them to better get their words across. And there's a whole lot of different reasons people may want cameras on or off or prefer text or whatever else.
And usually what we do is we just send an email, a video or a telephone invite and say, okay, video call 3 p.m. tomorrow. But we don't take that step to say, hey, what would you prefer? What's best for you? And by doing that, you do two things. One, you include a whole lot more people. Maybe it's a working parent who doesn't want to have their video on because their kid is home from daycare sick.
Or maybe, as I noted, someone with a certain disability or someone from a different culture. So you're able to better include them in your interactions so they don't feel as if they're a secondary party in the interaction.
And beyond inclusion, this is just a good strategy generally to ask people what they prefer and how they feel about things because they're going to like to interact with you a lot more. Because we all have these preferences. Maybe I really hate having my camera on, or maybe I really love it. And if someone else asks me and says, I'd love to meet with you, what mode would be best for you?
I'm going to be much more likely to want to interact with that person going forward because they're abiding my preferences. So this is just a good strategy overall. When you ask people what they like, they're going to be much more likely to want to interact with you.
And I wanted to tackle something that I think is becoming extremely important in today's workforce, and that is communication culture. And it's something that I don't think most companies even think about. I know they're trying now to create more a culture of belonging, but if you want to have belonging, you've got to have connection. And so.
Obviously, company culture plays a role in shaping how employees approach their communications. But what is your recommendation for how companies could incentivize better communication habits through their culture?
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Chapter 8: What strategies can reduce multitasking's negative effects?
And something you write that I think captures this really well is you say, no matter how good AI becomes,
It can't independently engage in the elements of ping, meaning AI is unable to act on information only you have access to in your mind, fully interpret people's non-verbal behaviors by utilizing your personal knowledge of how they normally act outside of virtual communication or innately identify your personal goals. That is where you come in
And the nature of virtual communication is that with all these advances, it will continue to shift in so many ways. Andrew, I always like to ask this question at the end. If there was one takeaway you want someone to get who picks up your book, what would be the most important one?
I see the most important takeaway as you should pause and question your communication assumptions and decisions. We lose so much time just going with the flow. We always do a meeting for this, so we'll keep doing a meeting. The conversation's already in email, so we're not gonna switch to phone.
The problem with that approach is that you often end up in the suboptimal choice of communication medium. And when you actually stop and take a strategic approach to communication,
Not only can you improve your productivity, you can improve your relationships, and you can improve your overall well-being because you can make yourself happier, you can disconnect more, and you can find ways to thrive in a world of communication overload.
Andrew, so well said. And what is the best way for people to learn more about you and the work that you're doing?
My book, Ping, is coming out. You can find it wherever books are sold. So Ping, The Secrets of Successful Virtual Communication. And if you want to follow me, I'm most active on LinkedIn and Twitter, or X as it's now called. You can find me there under Andrew Brodsky, and I'm sure I'll pop right up under that search.
Andrew, thank you so much for joining us today on Passion Struck. It was truly an honor to have you. It was great being on. It was really fun. Thank you. And that's a wrap. What an eye-opening and practical conversation with Andrew Brodsky. His research on virtual communication isn't just timely, it's transformational.
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