Am I Being Ignored?!

This morning a text was sent to a person who has asked for assistance from my husband at 7:00AM. When no response came, the question arose “I wonder if she no longer requires assistance,” or “Is it too early to call her?” or perhaps, as she suggested the day before, there was another individual that she had planned to ask. He was not sure whether or not he should go over he and I discussed his options. At 7:20 AM she called to say she did not need his help. When my husband said, “I was not sure what to do so we sent you a text,” to which she replied, “Oh, I don’t text, I have an old phone.” How often does this happen with regular communication? We send a message via email, text or verbally and are never sure whether the intended message is the message received!

In order to ensure that the message went through there are a number of things you can do.

1. By email, you can ask the person to let you know they received the email. With no confirmation, you can follow-up and check to see if indeed the message went through.
2. Verbally – You can come to an agreement regarding a process to ensure that the communication took place
3. By texting – If you do not hear back from the person in a reasonable amount of time, call them to ensure they received the message.

Too often people assume they are being ignored or that something is wrong with the relationship when the truth is the message never was received. Try not to jump into your head and spin a story that gets you upset, which brings me to another topic.

Too often today, people in business are overwhelmed with emails, and it becomes a time-consuming task which takes a great deal of time from their ability to get their work done. What tends to happen is if a person keeps getting emails that they should not be receiving, they tend to quit opening them and this can cause problems if they ignore an email that has important information in it. One way to minimize the frustration of getting too many emails is to create a code to put in the subject line which lets the person know a response is required. Your organization can put a policy in place that uses RR (Response required) or NRR (No response required) which lets the person know whether or not their input is required.

Instead of jumping to conclusions or assuming that a communication took place, it is important to take a moment to ensure the intended message is the message received. This can eliminate people getting upset for no reason, improves productivity and develops relationships that work.