Hi. If you are reading this, I have recently invited you to become an HR Ghost. This note is for you. I hope that the following perspectives from current (beta) HR Ghost members will help you to decide whether you wish to join them.
*******
Firstly, a brief intro to the structure of the Ghost Lounge. There are ten online “rooms” (L&D, AI, Wellbeing, Leadership, OD, etc) based on the encrypted Signal app. There is one daily centrally curated content prompt, written by me, and pinned to the top of the chat. Members who have something to say respond once; everyone else reads. 90% of each room is anonymous people leaders (who join for free). 10% is visible external experts (£10/month membership fee). Rooms are open from 0600-2200 GMT to enable moderation – read-only outside this window. Contributing takes 2-3 minutes a day. Simple. Deliberate. Anonymous.
Find out more about more operational details at: www.ghostlounge.co.uk
*******
I write things in there that I’d never share with my name attached.
“As a people leader, you need to choose your words carefully. Your thoughts do not exist in a vacuum – they carry weight. As the board colleague providing strategic direction, as the leader of 4,000 colleagues, as the public voice of the employer brand. It can feel like I am suffocating, wondering what I can and should say. I have long stopped sharing half-formed opinions that I am still trying to work through. The Ghost Lounge is the only place where I can share a hesitant thought without anyone knowing it was me. I regularly write unfinished things in there that I would not say in my own leadership team… unfinished is not what my role calls for. Without my name, without anyone about to reply, and with my post disappearing after a week, I am free to say exactly what I think. Without the self-censorship that follows me everywhere else.”
***
Three minutes here is more valuable than thirty minutes on LI
“I have been on LI for years, following the advice: building my network, engaging, commenting, enjoying the dopamine when an occasional post goes viral. But somehow my voice was being slowly eroded, lost in the fractured game of chasing engagement. The Ghost Lounge does something that I had forgotten was possible. It asks one question and then leaves me alone. I write for three minutes and then I am done. No notifications or replies, no wondering whether people think it is a “great post” – although I am sad to say that you do have to get used to the gentle absence of dopamine. The Ghost Lounge offers space to contemplate (sometimes for hours) rather than the immediate pressure to reply with something acceptable before a post disappears from the feed.”
***
Nobody is selling anything in the rooms.
“Many HR communities end up being funnels for someone’s eventual sales pitch. The external vendors in the various spaces are always dropping me DMs, as if the shared membership somehow puts them at the front of the queue for my attention. While the external experts in the Ghost Lounge might be visible – and I understand that they fund the initiative – as I am anonymous, they can’t sell to me. DMs within the Ghost Lounge are prohibited. In any case, they are as interested in exploring the conversations that matter as I am. It is a restful place, entirely free from “pick me” vibes.”
***
The prompts offer time to sit with my thoughts.
“The thing that I did not expect is how the daily question / prompt stays with you. I must admit that I do not pop into the rooms at any kind of regular time, but it is always surprisingly early. I like to read the prompt and sit with it for a while. Not all of them hit home, but more often than not they tend to linger – not in an annoying “I need to get back to that person” kind of way… more like “hmmmm, I wonder.” The prompt is the sort of question that a thoughtful peer would ask you over coffee. Paul works with the experts to co-create the prompts, so they nearly always make me pause for thought. The considered responses from other HR Ghosts suggest that they do the same.”
***
Nothing about the Ghost Lounge exists outside the rooms.
“I am protective of the time and energy I give to anything professional. I have passed on a lot of community invitations because joining anything creates a social tail. There is zero Ghost Lounge social media presence to react to. Because Paul is highly selective with his direct member invites, he does not want a passive stream of (potentially unsuitable) applicants. I am not asked to amplify anything in the name of growing the initiative. Much as I want to mention it to my peers, the no-referral policy forbids me. I am an HR Ghost, I remain silent. I have not once had to explain it to anyone, and there is nothing public to engage with. The privacy I want inside the rooms is held up by the silence outside them – the two go together – neither would work without the other.”
***
No one is building a following inside the room. You can feel the difference.
“The Ghost Lounge is ephemeral. Pseudonym GhostTags rotate every three months, so no one has the chance to be seen as an influencer, even when they are anonymous. While the content disappears every week, my imaginary name disappears every quarter. It is impossible to track the changes for anyone apart from Paul. A different way to take part in a private space, clean and refreshing. No reputation to maintain, nothing to live up to. When the GhostTag change happened for the first time, I did miss certain familiar names, but I realise that the Ghost Lounge is about the ideas rather than the people behind them.”
***
I write in the room maybe twice a week, on the prompts that move me.
“There is no pressure to perform in the Ghost Lounge and while I want to contribute to the room and share my thoughts as honestly as others are sharing theirs, I do welcome the fact that listening is equally part of the experience. I will never write something mundane as I know that this degrades the experience for others. If I feel something deeply, I get typing. The lack of vanity metrics means that my thoughts are allowed to just… exist.”
***
I read unguarded peer thinking that I would never hear otherwise.
“There is something about reading a response and knowing it came from a global HR leader (because only a small number receive invites) – without ever knowing exactly who. These are people whose names I would recognise on a panel, and whose public thought is polished – the sort of thought that is hard to disagree with. But in the Ghost Lounge, they are different. They can post about the grey areas, the bits where they are unsure. Not every contribution will change the world, but you know that working through their honest thoughts is as much for them as it is for the audience. You would be surprised as to just how much depth there is when HR Ghosts all answer the same question from their point of view. Vanilla it is not. It sure beats the regurgitated wisdom from most HR conferences. Reading unguarded thought is more than half the value.”
***
The rooms are read-only at the weekend. That matters to me.
“No prompts on a Saturday. No prompts on a Sunday. Three or four planned breaks a year when the whole thing pauses (giving Paul a rest) announced in advance. The Ghost Lounge respects the fact that I have a life. A small thing that makes a large difference, particularly when I want to give my brain a rest on the weekend.”
***
I almost did not join because I thought it would be another community to keep up with.
“I am picky about what I join. I had passed on several HR community invitations before this one. They all sounded like more chat, more notifications, more low-grade noise pretending to be insight. I said yes to the Ghost Lounge after a few days of sitting with the invitation, and only because the more I read about it the less it sounded like the other things. There is no chat. There is no networking. If you are someone who enjoys the back-and-forth of a comments thread, this is not for you. But if you have started to find professional communities tiring without quite being able to say why, it is worth thinking about. The absence of all the usual things is the point.”
***
I joined because of Paul, not because of a community.
“I knew Paul as an HR Ghostwriter for many years. Long before the HR Ghost Lounge existed. He spent over a decade handling other people’s words with discretion. Read his blogs from 2015. You will see. If there is one person in HR that I would trust to hold a room of senior people’s anonymous thinking, it is him. I would not have joined an anonymous community run by anyone else. Paul is the curator of the space, with a long professional history of being careful with what people share with him. It is why the Ghost Lounge works.”
*******