#451 Ghosting in Business: Why Leaders Cannot Afford to Disappear
Ghosting in Business: Why Leaders Cannot Afford to Disappear
By Niels Brabandt
Ghosting has long been associated with private relationships. Today, however, it increasingly shapes the professional world, from leadership communication and internal decision-making to hiring, sales, and everyday collaboration. In an era where transparency and responsiveness are fundamental expectations, ghosting has become a defining symptom of organisational dysfunction.
Across industries and across hierarchical levels, individuals report the same scenario: communication begins, expectations are set, and then suddenly the other side disappears. No response, no update, no explanation. For many business decision makers, this phenomenon raises a deeper question: How can organisations operate effectively when silence becomes a standard practice?
Ghosting Is Not a Minor Irritation, It Is a Strategic Risk
Ghosting is not simply a lapse in etiquette. In professional environments, it creates real consequences.
1. It damages legitimacy
When professionals fail to respond, they unintentionally expose how they manage their workload, time, and responsibilities. Stakeholders draw conclusions quickly:
This person cannot prioritise.
This leader is overwhelmed.
This department does not communicate internally.
This organisation cannot be trusted.
In leadership, legitimacy is built through reliability. Silence erodes that legitimacy immediately.
2. It harms employer branding
Applicants and candidates routinely share their experiences, publicly and privately. A single instance of unacknowledged communication can harm a brand’s reputation in talent markets. Companies that rely on ghosting during recruitment often underestimate the silent damage that occurs when professionals talk to each other.
Ghosting suggests organisational chaos, a lack of respect, and an absence of structured processes. In a competitive labour market, those signals are costly.
3. It undermines organisational culture
A culture that tolerates ghosting communicates one message: Commitment is optional.
This perception spreads quickly. Silence becomes the accepted response to internal requests, cross-departmental collaboration, project updates, or stakeholder concerns.
Leaders who allow this behaviour create an environment where disengagement becomes the norm.
4. It disrupts sales and partnership processes
In sales, negotiations often require precision, clarity, and timely updates. When a potential client disappears after active engagement, it signals unprofessional behaviour. Conversely, when a provider vanishes after discussions, the customer interprets it as unreliability.
Ghosting in sales reduces trust and increases reputational risk—particularly when business partners compare their experiences publicly.
Why Ghosting Happens More Frequently Today
Several drivers contribute to the rise of ghosting:
Overload and poor time management
Many professionals simply do not manage incoming information effectively.Fear of negative conversations
Leaders often avoid delivering “no” decisions because they anticipate emotional reactions or legal risks.Digital communication distance
The absence of face-to-face accountability makes it easier to ignore messages.Unclear organisational policies
When companies provide no guidelines for response expectations, each leader improvises, often poorly.
Whatever the reason, the effect remains the same: disappearing is not a neutral decision. It is an action with consequences.
A Professional Framework to Handle Ghosting
Organisations need a structured approach that prevents ghosting and manages it when it occurs.
1. Establish clear response expectations
Leaders must define standards:
Response time for internal requests
Response time for external stakeholders
Mandatory communication in recruiting processes
Rules for project participation and escalation
Professionalism begins with predictable behaviour.
2. Train leaders in time and communication management
Ghosting is often a symptom, not the root cause.
Companies that invest in training, especially in time management, prioritisation, and communication under uncertainty, significantly reduce instances of silence.
3. Institutionalise the “respectful no”
A brief decline is always better than avoiding a decision. Even a simple, legally safe explanation such as “We selected another candidate due to better alignment with current project requirements” is enough to maintain professionalism.
A respectful “no” maintains relationships. Silence destroys them.
4. Use escalation paths when internal ghosting occurs
If a project stalls because one person refuses to respond, teams must have the right to escalate. A clear policy allows work to continue even when one stakeholder is unavailable.
5. Communicate consequences
Leaders must openly state:
Ghosting impacts employer branding, stakeholder trust, and organisational credibility.
Employees who ghost internal colleagues need professional development, not protection.
When You Are Being Ghosted: A Professional Response Strategy
Individuals experiencing ghosting should follow a structured approach:
Send a polite reminder with a clear question or deadline.
Use a secondary channel if appropriate (email → phone call → message).
Document attempts without becoming intrusive or emotional.
Set a firm but professional timeline:
“If I do not hear from you by [date], I will proceed with option B.”Move on without resentment when silence persists.
This approach protects your professionalism, and exposes the unprofessional behaviour of the other side.
Ghosting Reflects Leadership Quality
Ultimately, ghosting is a leadership issue. Organisations that allow silence to become a normal response reveal fundamental weaknesses in structure, culture, and training.
Leaders who eliminate ghosting in their teams build trust, fairness, and clarity. Leaders who tolerate it damage their organisation, often quietly, but always measurably.
Ghosting is never acceptable in a professional environment. Clear communication is not a luxury; it is a requirement for credibility. The organisations that understand this principle will be the ones that attract talent, maintain strong partnerships, and build long-term success.
For leaders who aspire to act with integrity and professional excellence, one message is clear: Do not disappear. Communicate.
Niels Brabandt
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More on this topic in this week's videocast and podcast with Niels Brabandt: Videocast / Apple Podcasts / Spotify
For the videocast’s and podcast’s transcript, read below this article.
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Niels Brabandt is an expert in sustainable leadership with more than 20 years of experience in practice and science.
Niels Brabandt: Professional Training, Speaking, Coaching, Consulting, Mentoring, Project & Interim Management. Event host, MC, Moderator.
Podcast Transcript
Niels Brabandt
And suddenly there is no answer. Maybe you know these moments, you are in contact with someone and suddenly they do not answer you anymore. The question always is, how can this happen? Some of you might even know the term and the term is ghosting. And when you now think, I think this became a bit more common in the recent past, I don't think this was big of an issue back in the days.
Probably you're right. The question is, how do we deal with it? And that's why we're here today. Hello and welcome to our newest episode. We are dealing with ghosting. Very important is when ghosting happens, you are not alone here. It happens to many people at the moment.
And the wonder and many of them wonder, why does this actually happen and how can I deal with it? And that's exactly what we are going to talk about today. When it comes to ghosting, it means you send out an email, you were in contact before. It does not mean, by the way, that someone gets a cold email. So let's say you confirm someone on LinkedIn and someone sends you in a pitch immediately. Look, buy these, buy this, send me this, I want to know this. You don't have a right to an answer when there was no tend to get contacted before of course they're sales and I agree sales happens including cold outreach that just happens.
Very important here is when you are in contact and suddenly you don't hear back that's where the not so great moments are. Let's say you apply for a certain organisation and you wonder why is the job offline suddenly? Did they decide for someone else? Why is there no response? I mean, no happens sometimes. Why can't they talk to me? Or you are in a sales process and suddenly the other side doesn't get back to you.
There is no reason if there's no reason for that, you don't know if they decided for someone else, why they did so. That's extremely unprofessional when someone does that. The question is how do you deal with that kind of ghosting? And the first thing of course is when what are the context usually? And the very, very first context of course is sales. You are in a sales negotiation, someone says, Hey, I want to buy this or that service or this and that product. And then it goes a bit back and forth, you have a negotiation and suddenly they decide for someone.
And when, and this is always part of a sales process, you might sometimes lose. And very important is When someone loses, they have a right to get informed and not just get ghosted. And by the way, sales also means when in a leadership context, someone has that, so you are in a negotiation about either a salary raise or suddenly someone says, I have an idea and I want to have this idea placed in our project and suddenly the leader just doesn't get back to them. Extremely unprofessional. It even happens in daily business. People say, We are in a negotiation with a certain department within our organization. And they say, yeah, we get back to you about your idea.
Thank you very much. And you never hear back from them. You get a promise within the organisation which you work and they just say, yeah, I'm not going to answer you. Yeah, sorry, not sorry. And that's of course not great when even in daily business that happens. The question is now, what are the consequences when this happens? Because ghosting always has consequences.
Now, the number one consequence always is the handling of it. When you of course are in a sales process, you can always send a reminder. So for example, you say, Hey, we were in contact. What about this? Always send the reminder. But very important is as soon as you send the reminder on different channels, you call, they don't pick up the phone, or they pick up the phone and then hang up, or they don't answer email. While you were in consentful contact before, that is of course not well handled by the other side.
When someone applies for a job with you saying no happens. I was rather shocked, now I was extremely shocked to be fair, when I just recently read that someone says, oh yeah, we don't say no to candidates when they apply, we just ghost them because otherwise we just get sued anyway. So when you get sued anyway, you're obviously wildly in just process in place. For your recruiting, you need to be aware people have a right to get a no. When you are in contact with people, tell them why something has not happened. And sometimes, of course, the reasons are a bit vague when they say, Hey, we had lots of application, others were just better. That's not great, but at least you had a reason for that.
And they didn't get into any detail, sometimes because laws in your country might be that strict that they are very afraid of getting sued. However, very important is you at least got a response. And the response is absolutely fair game. When someone says, Could we clarify XYZ? There is a right to clarification. By the way, if you don't do that, if you just ghost them, it's your legitimation that gets hurt. So when there is Mr. or Mrs.
Miller and suddenly they don't get an answer from Mr. or Mrs. Miller, from Person Miller, then they probably will simply say, yeah, that person's fully overwhelmed with their emails. That person isn't able to handle a usual work desk day. That person isn't able to manage their email. That person isn't able to manage their workload. It is your legitimation that gets hurt.
So be aware that often when you ghost people, that your legitimation gets hurt, not the legitimation from the other side. And by the way, of course, people can escalate it. They can ask for, hey, let's talk, hey, let's chat, here's a voice message, here's a call, here's a WhatsApp message, here's an email in the hope that they get back from you, that they hear back from you. However, when you keep on not getting back to them, they can of course conclude you're overwhelmed with anything and you're not up to the job, which is by the way, a reasonable conclusion. So be aware that this click quickly goes against you. And by the way, when this happens within the same organisation which you work, it is perfectly reasonable at a certain point to say, hey, look, We really need to move forward in this project. We tried everything to reach out to you.
No way worked. No approach worked. I never heard back from you. So we are now going to do ABC. And if I don't hear back from you, I consider this a silent agreement. And that is, of course, the very last option because it is rather a bit straightforward to do that. However, it is the only thing possible to get the project moving.
You cannot simply wait for one person being able to suddenly handle their emails properly for once and you're waiting there for weeks. That is simply not possible. Also, candidates and application process won't wait for you just because you are unable to handle your emails. The question now is how do you implement this in your organisation that things actually become productive? And of course, number one is you have to tell people that when you misbehave and you ghost, you harm your employer branding. And that, by the way, happened to me when I was a young person just out of uni. Someone gave me a cold call and I was on the phone and said, Stop calling me.
What kind of nonsense is this? Hung up the phone. And my boss immediately brought me to his office and said, Look, you are the face of the organisation outside there. And now maybe there was some student guy sitting in a call centre who thought, I might have applied here, but there seemed to be a couple of very unreasonable people there, so I don't think I want to work there. So it's very important that employer branding needs to stay in the place of reasonable acting. Because anything which is aggressive, anything which is unprofessional, anything which is ghosting like will harm your employer branding and you you do not want to have that out there. Very important.
By the way, it also shows what kind of organisational culture you have. When you ghost people, they simply say you have a non-committing culture. And that, of course, and also people will think you can't organise yourself. That is ghosting people is never acceptable. Ghosting people is never professional. It's always back on you, your organization, and you as a person. So the organisational culture reflects on that not too well.
And of course, sometimes you say, I just got so much to do, and that's exactly the point which I make. You need to be professionally trained on time management. And of of course, the awareness that all of this happens outside, that you leave this impression needs to be made. You need to be professionally trained on these matters. And I just last week gave a time management class. So time and awareness about this needs to be placed and only when you know all of this and then you handle it professionally, then you will not ghost and then you will not practise ghosting and then you will also tell people sometimes, Hey, sorry, we chose someone else due to budget. We chose someone else because it was better if it were demands.
No, we chose someone else because of XYZ and then people can handle handle it and they might stay in touch with you in a positive way. And maybe next time it works to work together. And by the way, this can only be made as a decision after you listen to absolutely anyone in a proper way. You cannot simply say, oh, I got this one email and yeah, you applied for this job. Sorry, after one email, I think you're not a fit to XYZ. You cannot read out what Paul is especially when you say something very complex. When you say, oh, yeah, I think qualification wise in this very complex engineering thing, someone else was better qualified and was a better fit for the team and all of that.
So you derive something very complex from a two line email that is impossible and extremely unprofessional when you do anything like that. Always be aware that people have a right to be heard, especially when you were in consent full contact before. And then you can clarify things. And even then you can say, Hey, look, we both talk and we both now say, say, sorry, not a fit, and then we move on. But you're still in good standing. When you say, I'm not getting back to you, it's your legitimation that gets hurt. It's your image that gets hurt.
It's your employer branding that gets hurt. Ghosting is never acceptable. When you do it the positive way, just as I described, everything will turn out well with absolutely anyone and your organisation will also be in good standing with anyone. And I wish you all the best doing so. And when you now say, I think that's quite complicated. I have a couple of questions. Feel free to do so.
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