Professional ghosting.
Remembering we aren’t always someone’s top priority.
And investing the down time in getting better instead.
Many years ago I spoke at a leadership day.
I was excited to get the feedback. And then … nothing.
I emailed them. I messaged on LinkedIn. I called. I left voicemails. You name it, I did it!
Why didn’t I hear back from them?
I’d been ghosted.
Getting ‘ghosted’ is when you never hear back from someone and are none the wiser as to why.
We all know what it’s like to be ghosted, professionally and personally.
Those years ago, I still was finding my confidence in my leadership content.
As a result, I assigned the absence of a reply as meaning something was wrong with me.
When I didn’t hear back from them, I thought the following:
Obviously, they hated my content.
Clearly, they thought it was unoriginal and lacked substance.
Why oh why, did we spend time getting Rachel Service in, they wondered.
In absence of feedback, I was feeding myself by what I had ready to go. My insecurities.
I never wondered what I did right. Instead, I made an absence of feedback mean unhelpful things.
Years later, I heard back from the client who had ‘ghosted’ me.
Could I come in and teach at their new workplace?
All those years ago, unbeknownst to me, their company went through some major changes. They ended up moving to a new workplace and spent a bit of time finding the lay of the land.
It turns out, my thoughts about it were 100% incorrect. I wasn’t rubbish or a bad person, after all. It was just a timing thing. What a revelation.
In an absence of feedback, we make up stories, to balance our dignity.
We tell ourselves that we’ve done something wrong, or the other person wasn’t the right fit.
But usually, if we’re competent, there’s something else at play.
Here’s what was really happening:
Because I wasn’t in their immediate inner circle, I wasn’t privy to the details of their career change.
Because they had a positive experience, they trusted I’d be there when they needed me next.
Because I chose to worry and figure out how to be better at the same time, I started to get better at thinking critically, and started to curate more of a ‘Rachel’ perspective on leadership and share it more widely. They were on my database.
Because I constantly talked about this stuff, and over the years, refined my perspective on it, when they settled in the new job, they thought of me.
When we did map out our latest work together, I realised I was about to send them a $30,000 invoice. That’s about $25,000 more than the first leadership day gig all those years ago.
It turns out trusting people to make sensible decisions at their own pace while you upskill in the background pays off.
Ghosting? More like upgrading, baby.
My insecurity was stealing the show because I was making it about me.
I wanted my priority to be their top priority. I wanted them to align with my schedule, my goals, my priorities. Me, me, me, me, me.
Looking back now, it makes me laugh for two reasons:
In all this ‘me’ business, I’d forgotten what I was there to do: help them.
As if my goals are someone else's priority. Very funny.
This self help teacher really needs to take her own lesson sometimes.
When we make ghosting about us (‘me me me’), we miss the point.
In reality, there can be a number of things that are happening. Here are 10 possible scenarios:
Another priority may have cropped up. In my leadership training example, after my training day, the company went through a structural change, a subsequent change in leadership and my contact got a new job. Their priority? Figuring out their new world.
It might necessitate a big decision. It isn’t something they can make lightly, so they might be taking time to figure out if it’s really what they want. This might include talking to their network, looking at other options to see whether investing time or financial resources with you, to compare it to what you offer.
Your thing might connect to a bigger thing. Sometimes what we do can reveal other, bigger picture things interconnected. That might mean there are things that need to happen, before working with me can be successful.
Making decisions might feel overwhelming. Some people hate making decisions, thinking there’s a magical ‘perfect’ one out there. As a result, they might need to consult with others. Getting validation from people they trust takes time.
Macro factors might have emerged. Their business might have gone through change. A restructure. Budgets frozen. Under-resourced. A personal, unexpected circumstance may have come up. Beyonce might have released a new album. These all put other things on ‘hold’.
You mightn’t be their top priority. Before your job can be done, other jobs might trump the priority queue. Your skill mightn't be the right priority, right now.
There might be other people involved. When you do work of substance, it impacts more than one person. It might impact their family, a bank account, their time, work relationships. Just because something is a good idea, doesn’t mean everyone agrees nor is it the right time. More people involved? More time needed.
It might need to be someone else's idea. Sometimes you aren’t always the best messenger. Sometimes it’ll take a sideways approach from someone who understands the context in more detail than you.
They might have changed their mind. Sometimes connecting with people helps others clarify we aren’t right for them.
They don’t have enough time. On paper, your course, training, meeting, meetup sounded like a possibility. But when they looked at their other commitments, they couldn’t squeeze in more time into what they’d already committed to. I’ve had this happen to me, and I’ve been this person. In one instance, I gave my ticket to a friend because I realised I was actually too tired to take in a colleague's great training, so they could benefit in my place.
We don’t like to think that we aren’t someone’s top priority.
But it’s the reality. And sometimes ‘no news’ is not actually our news to know.
Instead, we can choose a different thought: that their decision is the right one because they’ve made it.
All of us gain something, every time we make a decision. Our loved ones, clients, family and friends are no different.
There are reasons and beliefs we won’t always be privy to. That’s actually a good thing.
When you do work of substance, you’ll get ghosted from time to time.
We won't always know what the reasons are for getting ghosted. But we can choose to respect someone enough to decide that their reasons are reason enough.
Because their behaviour is their decision.
We all crave feedback to feel sane.
I am no different. I want feedback to know I’m on the right track.
But sometimes there is a drought of feedback we have no control over. In these instances, I have found it useful to ask myself a series of questions that over time, makes my self rumination extinct.
And the tool to do that is to remind myself, it really isn’t about me.
For example, I like to remind myself, is it possible…
This person has things to do higher in their priority queue?
Other things are going on for this person?
They trust my competence enough to reach out when they need something?
And on my end …
When I’m under the pump, do I really, honestly, let everyone know my priorities and give them a timeline or do I just get on with it and mark their email as ‘unread’ again?
Am I really going to waste time worrying about someone else’s to-do list or am I going to focus on what I can control?
A lack of feedback, or response, or text, doesn’t necessarily mean what we offer lacks value.
There might be a million different reasons why. It’s just about finding the right value, for the person who sees it as valuable, at the right time with the right conditions. We can’t control what goes on for other people.
But if we are the right person for the job, when that time comes, they might think of us.
And one way we contribute to that being likely, is by demonstrating that we have committed to ourselves, to our craft, to being the best version of the person we want them to buy from or invest time in, in the future.
We can actually start to broadcast that we back ourselves by communicating what we want to do ‘more’ and showing our work, or our thinking, instead of thinking about the work or what we didn’t do well.
In a feedback drought, instead of brooding, we can choose to spend our down time improving.
Insecurity and self doubt show up when we’re growing. That’s the thing about growth: for all the excitement of change, for a bit, we’ll also be contending with some epic self doubt.
In times of ghosting, to balance this, I now choose to do things that I want to do more of. It helps me channel uncertainty into productive action that benefits me.
For example, I want to do more writing, so I write these newsletters. I want to do more teaching, so I let you know that’s always on the table with my training programmes.
I could spiral. Sure. But while I’m waiting for you to make a decision about me, I might as well make sure the website looks smish, know what I mean?
It’s about me showing you that I am truly invested in what I do.
And it’s a lovely reframe we can all ask ourselves: am I truly invested in what I do? Is there a way to show people that, if they’re thinking about working with us, or collaborating with me, one day?
It’s about proving you believe in what you do by taking action to back it up.
Because when you know you are enroute to produce something you’re proud of, even if you’re flying the plane and building the plane a bit, and you are actively proving to yourself that you can do what you know you’re capable of intellectually, and then you actually do it: when people ghost you, you can tell your insecurity to go and suck it with good authority.
When you know you’ve done everything within your control to be better, you start to earn the right to systematically tear your insecurities down, one by one.
And over time, that really gives the inner critic some facts to contend with.
Action is the tool out of self doubt. And sometimes we need a little ‘oh gulp’ of a ghosting every now and then to be the catalyst. To remind us that something is at stake.
I’ll give you an example.
This newsletter doesn’t happen by accident. It takes me time to tinker with ideas. But I want it to be good so I invest the time to make it good.
And for a while it might not be that good while I find my feet. But over time, I hope it’ll become your non-negotiable, that you can’t wait to read, every week.
With this as my intention, when my insecurity crops up, I have started to create some decent ‘mental-padding’ around negative thinking.
It makes the next time we get a feedback drought a little less painful because my confidence has been slowly growing, on purpose, behind the scenes. Because I’ve been working on earning the right to feel confident about it, ghosting or not.
As a bonus, if and when people decide to return, I trust that I’ll feel proud of what they’re going to experience. Because I’ve been tinkering on it behind the scenes, to make it better.
To feel a little more sane at work, we can stop trying to manufacture a decision that isn’t ours to make.
And in those dark moments, where that unhelpful, critical voice appears, we can choose to try and channel it into a different direction.
We can use it as a catalyst to do things that are truly beneficial to us.
This means when someone does make that decision to invest?
We believe we actually deserve it.
If this idea resonates, try it on this week.
Here are some thought starters to ponder with your team, or family perhaps.
When we don’t get what we want, what are some things that are within our control?
When we want to control other people's behaviour, what are we unwilling to accept that makes it hard to let go of?
Regardless of whether that client or colleague says ‘yes’, what do we want to be sure of in our own craft?
Are there any areas in our craft we’d feel exposed if we got ghosted? How could we fortify those? Is there a project we could create to get on the front foot of that?
If the idea of more than one thing can be true, know that this is often the ‘aha’ moment that transforms people’s experiences of receiving feedback in the workplace. It’s really game-changing.
For example, when someone gives your peer a piece of feedback, and they API (Assume Positive Intent), and remember that the person has their own agency and freedom to make their own choices, we see panic and terror dissipate and replacing it, is genuine kindness and curiosity to learn more.
Imagine what having your team thinking this way could do for a shared sense of purpose, bottom line and impact.
We run workshops to help make this happen. Before we do, we meet with you privately, to talk about what sort of culture you want to reverse engineer.
This gives us a clear scope to help the team focus on the right things in the workshop.