Avoid Being a Ghost in Business Communications

Do you "ghost" in business email communications? Ghosting, as you know, is that thing people do when you send them an email, or other communication, and they don’t respond.

In personal communications it is understandable that some people just hate the idea of the proliferation of emails, that silly expectation that we are supposed to reply within minutes or else are considered to be committing some kind of irredeemable offense. We are already trapped into the dopamine cycle enough as it is. So why worsen it?

What about business? Should you bring your quirky personal habits to work? Or should you adopt some kind of a business etiquette, a courtesy, a sympathetic view of the world that says, in justice, other business people deserve an acknowledgement that you have received their message and are thinking about it, or that you received it okay, or that you are simply saying thanks for the information.

Otherwise the sender will wonder whether you received it – hence the ghost sentiment.

Like you, I feel the tyranny of the high volume of emails we receive daily. It’s a true problem. For real junk mail, I don’t care what you do. But for your business communications aren’t we supposed to be “authentic”, “open”, “sensitive”, “communicative”, and “responsive”? You could easily add a host of other signals we are supposed to send. We can do better.

Ways to help:

• Say: “Thank you. Got it.”
• Say: “Thanks, I’ll work on this and get back to you.”
• Say: “Thanks. Understood”.
• Say, “Thanks. Noted for action.”

I can’t see any other way out of it. We either play the game professionally or we signal our eccentricity and amateurism. What do you say?

Our great team assists clients daily with this and other business communication challenges. We help principled leaders excel!