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Are You a Business Ghost? It May End Up Haunting You   

Teresa Carey

Ghosted … is this just another trendy pop culture term? Or is there a deserved reason as a leader to dive into it? Recently, I met a “ghosting expert.” Who knew this proficiency even existed? The criterion to be an expert, I learned, is to have experienced ghosting personally, and be well-researched enough to the extent you can educate others on how to handle being ghosted.


If you’re lost, let’s ground this with a helpful definition.


Ghosting is a popular name for abandoning someone you know. It’s an unexpected and hurtful exit from the perspective of the one left behind. As the ghost, you abruptly stop communicating or responding without warning. The key phrase here is, “someone you know.” It doesn’t include those you’ve never met who are trying to connect on LinkedIn, or those who grab your name off an email list, send you a solicitation, and say they can save you thousands.


Have you been a ghost, even an accidental one, in any of your relationships? 


Check yourself. Do any of these situations sound eerily familiar?

  • Someone texts or emails you for the first time in months and in your mind it’s not important enough to rekindle a lost connection, so you ignore it.

  • You’ve started a new business relationship, and you decide after a few encounters there isn’t a fit for a role or strategic services within your firm. They continue to communicate in an effort to kindle the relationship. You choose silence.

  • There’s a squeaky wheel in your organization. You’ve received a few Slack messages or voicemails yet choose to see if their emotion or pursuit will pass. You wait before responding, then never do.


Deserting others in the form of ghosting may leave you with some undesired downsides:

  • Misunderstandings and subsequent missteps - those who are ghosted form their own narrative of the situation, or may make decisions independent of your knowledge or buy-in.

  • A chink in your leadership brand armor – you receive a reputation for being a bad communicator.

  • Culture Karma – the organization starts to adopt a lack of consistent follow-up as normal.


If you’ve been guilty of ghosting, here are a few ways to make amends:

  • Go back to those you abandoned and apologize. Simply say you didn’t prioritize the communication or respond in the way you should have and you feel badly about it.

  • Prevent ghosting by having a “respond to all rule” for those with whom you have a relationship. Even emails that you may not feel require a response, i.e., project updates can simply be answered with “Received,” or, more appropriately, “Thanks for the update.”  

  • Create a list of responses for those you no longer wish to be connected to so you at least communicate clearly and candidly as a compassionate human.

    • “I’m not able to meet due to my schedule. Thank you for understanding.”

    • “Thank you for your efforts to connect. I’m not able to currently carve out the time.”

    • “I appreciate your thoughts on this. Right now, it doesn’t fit with my capacity/the strategy/the priority.” 


Have you ghosted a relationship you either need to regain contact with or bring to closure? As Nitin Nohria, former Dean of Harvard Business School, reminds us, “Communication is the real work of leadership.”  



Ghosting Hand

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