The Discomfort We Leave Behind

The Value of No | Essay 2

I've thanked someone for turning down a proposal. I've also experienced the opposite: a conversation that simply stopped without an answer.

Over the years, I've had discussions with potential clients and business partners where we exchanged ideas, explored opportunities, and considered what working together might look like. Then, somewhere along the way, the communication stopped.

The difficult part comes afterward. Do you follow up again? Has something changed? Is the other person still interested? Eventually, you have to decide whether the conversation is over, even though nobody actually said so.

I understand why saying NO can be uncomfortable. After someone has invested time in a conversation, nobody particularly wants to disappoint them. We may worry about hurting their feelings, creating conflict, or closing a door we might want to reopen someday.

In a 2024 study on ghosting, researchers YeJin Park and Nadav Klein found that people sometimes disappear partly because they want to avoid hurting the other person's feelings. Those being ignored often underestimate how much the other person cares about them. In one experiment, that misunderstanding even reduced opportunities for future help.

The study examined social relationships, so it cannot explain why a particular client or colleague stops responding. It does show how easily the intentions behind silence can be misread.

I rarely know why a conversation stopped. Perhaps priorities changed, the opportunity lost its appeal, or someone simply forgot. The absence of an answer tells me very little about the reason.

Of course, nobody owes a response to every unsolicited email or sales pitch. But once two people have spent meaningful time exploring an opportunity, communicating a decision is a reasonable expectation.

And it doesn't require a lengthy explanation. We've decided not to move forward. Even We haven't made a decision yet provides information the other person can use.

Telling someone we won't move forward can be uncomfortable, but leaving them to figure out that decision themselves has a cost. Before avoiding the conversation, ask whose discomfort you're trying to spare.

As Brené Brown wrote in an excerpt from Dare to Lead:

“Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.”