Studios and music publishers have to be careful about acknowledging receipt of an idea or a script.  Lawsuits abound over the similarity of a work with one submitted on spec (the song “Nine to Five” comes to mind).  But the vast majority of us have no reason to answer with silence.  Perhaps it’s the explosion of spam, which has undermined our openness to communication disguised as an offer to post a link for viagra.  But, like all social norms, standards for civility and politeness demand our support and participation.  Silence is nowhere near as polite as “No thanks.” 

Carol,nnnI’ve just found your post in a bit of a roundabout way. Glad I did! I’m not a friend of ‘The Silence’. It has too many negative meanings and cultural nuances to mean anything positive. It used to be ‘no news is good news’, but now we live in a world of 24/7 non-stop communication and yet there are those who lack the time to communicate. I don’t get it.nnnHow can we expect young people to answer questions, engage meaningfully, or share their thoughts if we’re modeling that someone else is not worth of our time to do so? nnnI’ve read posts/articles about people being too busy for email so they filter everything out and only respond to ‘certain’ ones. Now that emails are easy to find I know that PR reps, agents, and many others in business are seeing so many unsolicited emails that taking time to respond does interfere with their ability to get work done. Same with phone calls.nnnI was just talking to my dentist about her teenage son turning off voice mail on his cell phone because if he answers it then he’ll talk, otherwise the person should just text him.nnnThe social media message is Engage, Engage, Engage but no one wants to return calls, reply to email or speak face to face. It’s quite the conundrum.nnnThank you kindly,nn Saran n

I am just going to use the example of professional silence rather than the personal. And it’s only on one of my absolute pet peeves: people sending me direct messages instead of emails, texts or phone calls. Whenever someone sends me a direct message (which I rarely read) I simply ignore it. I receive in excess of 400 emails a day, and a direct message generates YET ANOTHER EMAIL. So, I simply avoid the annoyance and filter those and ignore them altogether (thanks Gmail for your filtering capabilities). But that’s the only time when I will engage in silence. The rest, I completely agree – silence is NEVER the answer.

I (we) have been in the entertainment business for a long time, and I guess silence is a microcosm of our society as a whole. We are afraid to actually connect with each other and say “No, thank you”. nnUnfortunately I’ve seen people who invest way too much of themselves in the business, not handle rejection with class or maturity. There is a component of fear therefore, in the mindset of not returning a phone call, or email, etc. nnThen there’s also the time factor – when you audition 100 people for 3 roles, how do you find time to call the 97 and tell them they didn’t get the part? And are you going to have time to play counselor when/if they have some sort of breakdown? Or file a restraining order against 97 people?

Excellent point. Common courtesy is always relevant.

It just seems funny to me that every business book I read these days is about engagement with consumers. Where is that engagement is business?

Here's an excellent example of the right way to conduct business (courtesy of Owen JJ Stone aka @OhDoctah ) http://iqmz.com/2010/01/forget-2010-to-me-its-1…

Yes, I have found this to be more and more true and find it very rude. Especially being that in today's society it is even easier to say no. Most people have smart phones or email. I think that one problem is that people are afraid that if they say no, someone will ask them “why” and they don't want to have to deal with that. But the thing is, if someone asks you why, you DON'T have to deal with it – you already said no, so they can close the book on your project. I wouldn't feel it being rude if someone didn't respond to a why (I don't ask people why, anyway, unless I think they misunderstood something about my proposal or if there is something I can do to tweak the price).

The worst is the people who are not using you, but keep dragging it on as if they were because they are “too nice” to say no. I have had a few of those. I will follow up for weeks because they keep telling me that they haven't made a decision or that they want to use us but are waiting for whatever to happen, or various other excuses to not say “no”.

If I were to contact someone out of the blue and offer them a proposal for a design, I would not expect a response, in that situation I would expect that silence means no. But if YOU contact ME then it is just plain rude to make me take the time to write up a proposal and not respond when you receive it. It takes me half a day, at least, to prepare a proposal for someone (something I am looking into, since all of this wasted time goes to rude tire kickers).

These days I find myself changing the way that I communicate with people. If I don't hear from someone after one follow-up then I file the email thread – if they then want to go with me it is their turn to contact me. The only people that I continue to follow up with are people who have given me more reason to do so.

Great post. I follow up once and then move on. As Iggy stated, it's their loss if they choose not to respond. I need to make sure I am not wasting my time. On the flipside, I am someone who aims to respond as I believe there is value in letting people know it's a 'no', to me it's just plain good manners.