By Bruce Schatzman
Consulting Partner, Shinji Consulting
I know you're busy. Lots to do. Projects and tasks are piling up; you're falling behind. Then, in the middle of all that chaos, you get an email from someone; maybe an old colleague who wants to reconnect or someone from another team in your company.
The email subject line says "Touching Base," or something like that. You look at it for two seconds as you calculate the relative value of taking a moment to respond. Given your workload, you just can't justify taking the time to respond, so you ignore it. Maybe you read a blog that said "the most successful people learn how to say no to almost everything." In some situations that makes sense, but be careful about when you prioritize your focus over your humanity.
Is ignoring an email or text from someone a good decision? Not necessarily. It depends on a lot of things. Is the sender a self-interested parasite who just wants something from you? Do you barely know this person? Is the email too long to read? Of course, if red flags like that appear, hit Delete.
But many times, there aren't any red flags. You tell yourself "I'll get back to that later," and of course it gets buried under your pile, to be eventually forgotten. You end up "inadvertently ghosting" someone. Is that so terrible? In many cases yes, and there can be unforeseen consequences.
The Disrespect of Ghosting
When you don't respond, you're telling the sender they're not worth 20 seconds of your time. You'd be surprised how many people feel personally disrespected by that. If you're lucky, maybe you'll never encounter that person in the future. But if they fall within your circle of connections, you're taking a risk. Maybe a year later you're interviewing for a job and you notice on LinkedIn that the person you ghosted is a manager at that company. Or maybe that person works at your current company and now you need information from them.
Ghosting happens because people perceive they don't have the time to respond, but this is almost never true. Respond; just do it efficiently. Something like:
Hey Joe, great to hear from you! Wow, it's been a while. I'm really sorry but you caught me at a bad time. I'm totally swamped. Can we chat next month?
Or just be direct if someone is asking you for something. Taking 10 seconds to say no is vastly better than not responding at all. Something like this:
Hi Joe, I understand what you're looking for, but I just don't have that information and don't know where to get it. Sorry I couldn't be more helpful.
Done. How long did that take? Disappointing someone by saying no is far better than disrespecting them by not responding at all. If you think your colleagues shouldn't take thing so personally and just grow up, good luck with that. Unfortunately, that's not how most people are.
Wrap-Up
In summary, respond quickly, keep it short, be direct, but don't ghost people. Your extended network of personal connections will stay much stronger that way.