How to follow up politely?
Following up is hard -- you don't want to make the other person feel bad/make them feel like they made a mistake or come out sounding too aggressive
I would love a template on how to follow up politely
e.g.
- After an interview and haven't heard back
- Needing someone to do something and they haven't
- Requesting something from someone and they forgot
Discussion
(2 comments)- 1
5 months agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course HeroI love this question! The core principle to remember here is to put yourself in their shoes (i.e. have empathy) and then weave that into the words you say.
For example, let's say my tech lead said he would build some API for me, but he's now 2 days late. Tech leads are really busy, so I would say something like this:
Hey [Tech Lead], sorry for the extra ping (I know that you're super busy), but I wanted to follow up on the status of API X? If we don't get it by Monday, we'll probably miss the next milestone. If you can't make it, just let me know and I'll talk with our manager to figure out a backup plan.
In this message, you can see that I'm being very polite and appreciative of their situation, but I'm also making it clear the damage they're doing to me and the team by falling behind (just stating facts, not rubbing it in their face). There's also a lot of tentative language, and I'm trying to remove as much of the burden from them as possible (you can see that I take ownership of covering for them if they can't make it).
All of these tactics (and far more) are covered in our Effective Communication course: [Course] Effective Communication For Engineers
- 15 months agoEng @ Taro
Here are some tactics:
- For an interview, it can depend on how much leverage you have. If you have other offers, you can hint that you have other offers (if you actually do have offers) or that you are actively interviewing.
- You can set up a meeting with someone to work through a technical problem and pair program with them. It's possible the person just psyched themselves out with the task, and they are procrastinating on it because there's a lot of uncertainty in the task. It can help them a lot because you can clear up any uncertainties as well as to show them how to do the task effectively. This is useful when you have more experience than someone.
- You two can figure out an ETA for when a task should be done. You'll be able to set up an anchor point for when to at least expect the task to be done. It forces the other person to think about their schedule and where they can slot in a task among their other work.
