“What do you do when someone ghosts you?”, someone asked me recently, as I was talking about the importance of having lots of conversations.
Unfortunately, this will happen. Every few years, I have a meeting set up (often by the other person), who doesn’t show up and doesn’t respond.
(I can think of 3 instances off the top of my head, although a quick check of my CRM indicates 5 more. The 3 I could remember were in-person meetings from before I tracked this stuff, while my Mimiran account’s “No Show” tag applies to folks missing Zoom meetings.)
So how do you handle this situation?
First, what I should have done is send out a reminder email the day before. 😉
And then when someone doesn’t show up, I email and/or call and/or text as appropriate. Sometimes things happen. I’ve had situation where people have missed meetings because their kid got hurt at school and they were in the hospital. Parent passed away. Stuff much more important than our meeting.
Sometimes people are late because they are stuck with a client call they can’t quite end. Or they’re in traffic. In theory, we should have enough buffer space and planning to avoid these situations, but it’s not always possible. (I noticed I got a lot more patient with this stuff after I had kids, and my schedule wasn’t entirely under my control.)
Sometimes there’s a calendar glitch.
Usually, someone will text apologetically that they’re running late, or, if they miss the meeting, apologize and explain.
(People who are late to meetings habitually are a different story. I get that life happens, but integrity is doing what you say will do, and not showing up when you said you would as a habit shows a lack of respect for other people and a lack of integrity.)
The folks who don’t show up? Don’t mention anything? Don’t even respond when you ask if everything’s OK?
When someone doesn’t show up, I tag them as a “No Show” in my Mimiran account. Most of the time this happens, there’s a decent reason for it, we get it cleared up in 10 minutes to 2 days, and I remove the “No Show” tag.
But if they really just ghost, I leave the tag, remove the “next conversation date”, and delete any open tasks.
And then I move on. I’ve learned that’s the important part. (Assuming you’re not some kind of monster who would justify ghosting.) They didn’t have their stuff together for whatever reason. That’s on them. If you ghost your doctor’s appointment, they should try to contact you, but if you don’t respond, they move on. They have a waiting room full of other patients to see, and so do you.
How do you handle ghosting?