> I guess most top executives are people persons so not seeing things like body language or using body language takes away an important skill set of theirs.

This might also be a trust thing. Studies have found that in-person social interaction leads to increased levels of trust among the group, but remote social interaction doesn't have this affect. The higher you go up the management chain, the more trust is required to perform your job effectively. ICs usually work under well-defined, measurable conditions: you can determine from their work product whether an engineer, salesperson, or designer is being productive. Executives do not work under these conditions, and arguably the job of an executive is to define those metrics. To get everyone rowing in the same direction requires an immense amount of trust and collaboration amongst the high-level leadership of the company, and it seems like it'd be challenging to achieve that virtually.