Let’s say you need something important, but from someone you haven’t yet met. You make contact, carefully explain what you need, how important it is, and when it’s needed by. The person responds helpfully and positively. You agree to “get this going quickly” by meeting at the end of the week. Relief.

You send a meeting invite. No response. You follow it up with an email: “Sorry, know how busy you must be, but are we still on?” No response. You’re starting to panic, just a little bit. You send a text, so as not to be too much a bother. No response.

The end of the week comes and goes, so you ring them the following week – it rings out to message bank, and you wonder, should I say (or scream, rather) what I’m really feeling? You decide to stay polite. No response.

You’ve been business ghosted.

A term taken from the new frontier of personal relationships in the digital world, ghosting seems to be happening more and more in business – an opinion unanimous among my clients. They ask me: Why? Is it a lack of manners, empathy, professionalism, or all of the above? Maybe just more jerks in the world? A simple misunderstanding?

It doesn’t matter why. We’re hurt.

We’re hurt by our ghost’s cheerful willingness to help, a seeming plan to start the help, followed by their total and utter silence. What did we do wrong? And what does this mean?

After commiserating (this takes a while) with my clients, I try to remind them of a few coping mechanisms:

1) Get your calendars out

Don’t wait to agree on the next step later, do it now. Get the calendars out and agree on when the call or meeting will take place. If it has to be rescheduled, think dog with a bone.

2) Make your need more “colourful”

Let the other person know how important what you need is, and what you’re going to do with their utterly critical contribution, with a few schedule details sprinkled in.

3) Most importantly, resist the urge to over-interpret

How many times have we been finally responded to, long after we’d given up on our ghost, and the explanation turned out to be a bit more innocent than we liked? Maybe they’re not quite the ghostly jerk we thought?

Alternatively, you may want to chase your ghost a bit, let them know how you feel. It probably won’t help, but it might salve your pain. Send your ghost a quick survey, as this clever fellow did:

Just kidding. Don’t do that to your business ghosts. They may get even spookier.

Business Ghosting? Yuk.