It’s a pleasure to write for this series on a topic that I feel has huge implications for building more impactful mentor relationships, both formal and informal, as well as making and keeping connections that will dramatically build your professional network. The topic is about being as responsive as possible to emails or any other types of direct messages that you receive from your colleagues, clients, customers, or collaborators.
My name is Dawn Wright and I am the Chief Scientist of Esri. Over the last 15 years I’ve been responsible for helping Esri to better understand and liaise more effectively with the scientific community. This has included the mentoring of some of our closer Esri customers and collaborators, as well as Esri staff. On the broader topic of approaching mentorship, there is no better primer, in my view, than what Lisa Berry provided as the first blog in this series. Please check it out if you missed it, or review it once again.
Esri Chief Scientist Dawn Wright pictured with her dog Riley.
I would like to focus here on the singular skill and discipline of responding… to emails, professional texts, professional direct messages, chats, or even tags on platforms such as MS Teams, Esri Community or wherever you have corporate social media accounts. I’m referring here to your professional life, although I try to hold true to these principles with friends and family in personal correspondence as well. I am truly shocked by how many colleagues, clients, collaborators and the like “drop the ball” or “go dark” on a regular basis. This is also referred to as “ghosting.” One true-life example from a colleague:
Sorry that I did not get you linked to <name of customer/user> earlier. With thousands of emails in my inbox I do miss whole threads at times (a sad reality)!
Please don’t ever let this be you! A mantra that I hold to is that a person is successful to the degree that he/she/they are able to handle their email (or other professional correspondence). This is a vital professional discipline to master.
Responsiveness leads to reputation.
And as I’ve told so many mentees, you need to guard your professional reputation (and that of the organization you represent) like your life. For me, this comes in part from hard-learned lessons over 17 additional years as a college professor, with hundreds of students depending on me each term. It is certainly important for our geospatial industry and our workplaces, especially with how quickly technologies evolve, along with the people creating and using them.
As Chief Scientist, Dawn works as a 'team of one,' serving across all divisions of Esri, and as requested by certain distributors, pictured here with Esri Germany at their headquarters.
4 Mains Reasons Why This is Important
- Lost Access to Opportunities: Networking requires two-way communication, often including professional opportunities of many kinds. But opportunities rarely come to those who cannot be reached, and will certainly go to others if the opportunity is competitive. When someone “goes dark,” that person may automatically be removed from consideration for future networking, partnerships, or job opportunities. This can be a significant momentum killer, affecting not only yourself but your colleagues’ ability to move forward and/or upward on a project or deliverable. You may in fact be hindering them from doing their job.
- Erosion of Trust and Credibility: Professional success relies on teamwork, which in turn relies on trust. “Going dark” erodes that trust because, again, it essentially stymies collaboration and momentum, not to mention signaling a lack of accountability and respect. Even if "going dark" is caused by stress or being busy, others may misinterpret it as apathy, low accountability, or an inability to properly manage and deliver on the demands of our profession.
- Ineffective Conflict Management: Many who “go dark,” may do so to avoid uncomfortable conversations or conflict. However, this creates more problems than it solves, leading to misunderstandings, stalling resolution, and perhaps leading to long-term professional consequences. And by failing to respond in uncomfortable situations, or even straightforward ones such as a job offer, or outreach from a recruiter, people may be burning bridges that might be needed later in their careers (back to item 1). Who knows? The person ignored today could be a key decision-maker or your manager of tomorrow.
- Unintended Burdening of Colleagues: Oftentimes if someone is having difficulty getting a response from you, they will seek out your colleagues to assist them in getting that response, asking THEM to send YOU additional emails, phone calls, or direct messages on their behalf. This is ultimately unfair to your colleagues, who have their own workloads to handle, especially if it takes quite a bit of effort on their part to reach you. In worst case scenarios, they can be dragged into project work that never involved them in the first place.
Tips for Success
The tips below have served me well over my 40-plus-year career, and a career in which I’ve never had a dedicated administrative assistant! If you have an assistant, please buy that person chocolate immediately! If the issue of responsiveness is not a problem for you, congratulations and keep up the great work! But if not…
- Always seek to answer within 24 hours on business days.
- Always use an auto-reply when out of the office, whenever possible.
- Never let an Inbox of any type grow into the double digits, much less triple digits, much less quadruple digits. Once answered or handled, ALWAYS file responses in appropriate folders. You’d be surprised how much valuable “history” is lost when email trails disappear because someone cannot retrieve the important background context, let alone recall. We are only human. Let the technology help you, including with appropriate AI organizing tools that flag missed messages or label ones needing more urgent attention from key senders.
- Consider giving a short response, as a first response. For example: “Swamped right now but I’ve seen your message and will get back to you as soon I can, hopefully within a week. Thanks for your patience.” This acknowledges that the person’s request is seen and valued, while allaying any fear or frustration at not receiving an immediate answer.
- For social media, I use Chrome where it is easiest to have all of my social media accounts in different tabs within one window. In this way, I can easily go from account to account in order to quickly respond to direct messages or tags.
- Having said all of this, don’t forget to BE RESPONSIVE TO YOURSELF. Taking the time away from the rat race helps you to recharge, gives you great new ideas, and helps you to just plain feel better. This will hopefully lead to more eagerness on your part to get back to responding to every appropriate message that comes your way from managers, colleagues, clients, users, impressionable students, GIS career hopefuls, community members, and more.
Final Thoughts
In a professional, relation-driven world that is heavily dependent on networking, the ability to consistently and reliably respond to communication is considered a vital skill and its absence is seen as unprofessional, unreliable and discourteous. Occasional delays due to "digital overload," are certainly to be expected as we all struggle with this. But people who habitually "go dark,” are truly risking the health of their careers, as this behavior creates long-term barriers to opportunities, destroys trust, and stymies conflict resolution. Sadly, it can ruin your reputation. So to help build the best reputation that you can, and that of your company, organization or agency... RESPOND!
