Not Responding? Not Cool

Lonnie Pacelli is an Accenture/Microsoft veteran with four decades of learnings under his belt. He frequently writes and speaks on leadership, project management, work/life balance, and disability inclusion. Reach him at [email protected] and see more at ProjectManagementAdvisor.com.

  Communications Management  

My wife and I frequently travel to the southwest, where we have many friends and family members. During our time there, we contact several of them to get together for lunch, dinner, or coffee.

This is very important to us because we like to keep up with what’s going on in their lives, and build upon relationships already established. Most everyone responds fairly quickly, even if it’s with, “Sorry, we’re out of town and won’t be able to get together.” We certainly understand these types of responses.

It’s the non-responses that bug me.

Each non-responder is someone we’ve always had good relationships with, and had good times when we’ve met with them. During our last trip, we knew at least two of them were busy with work and life, so we would have gladly accepted a response of, “We’re just too busy right now.” It was getting no response at all that just didn’t set well.

Before we get too deep, I’d like to make clear I am talking about requests from a known source who has a reason to make the request. Anything that looks like spam or phishing is open season for not responding. (Add to that a huge pet peeve of mine—those who practice linkpitching.)

I’ve also noticed that non-responders don’t fall into a specific demographic. Non-responders span all ages, gender, …

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