What’s New in Business

I’m on LinkedIn: Now What?

I’m on LinkedIn: Now What? By Jason Alba, Happy About, 2008
Do you have a LinkedIn account and now you’re wondering how to use it? I’m on LinkedIn: Now What takes you through the basics of LinkedIn and how to get started using it to the ways you can make it work for you.

Under getting started you will learn what LinkedIn is, how to create or update your profile, managing your account and settings and how to connect with others. Did you know that if you ask three people to connect to you and they all say no you could lose your account? Be specific about who you ask to link to and if you’re going to send a request to someone who doesn’t know you well you might consider sending an e-mail to them telling them why you want to be linked to them. If you are the one receiving invites from people you don’t want to link with because you’re not comfortable being linked or you are not sure who this person is who’s asking you can let the request lapse without a response so you don’t jeopardize their account by saying no.

Making it work for you covers searching, understanding degrees of separation, recommendations, jobs and hiring, services and LinkedIn groups and answers.
Using this section of the book you can see how you and others can use this site to check out potential employers or employees, how you can block certain people from your information (you may not want your current boss to know you are job hunting) and how to establish yourself as a resource for others or use others to find answers to questions you have.

The last section deals with personal branding, shady practices, netiquette and complementary tools and resources. After reading this I realized a number of ways I could better utilize the tools within LinkedIn. Now I just have to implement them.

Vital Friends: The People You Can’t Afford to Live Without by Tom Rath, Gallop Press, 2006.

There are many people in our lives who make a difference for us. They help to mold us and also help us to succeed in all we do. There are eight roles that people play for us and we play for them. More than one person plays some of the roles and some people can play more than one role in our lives.

The eight roles are:

builder
champion
collaborator
companion
connector
energizer
mind opener
navigator.

Tom Rath explains the need for each of these roles in our lives and gives examples of people who play these roles for others and how they accomplish this. Many of the quotes from people about how others fulfill their needs will resonate with you.

Tom Rath shows each of these roles in action, and shows us how to develop others to do this for us and how we can do it better for those around us. He teaches us how to strengthen or cultivate the people we need to provide these roles for us.

The builder helps us to become all that we can by helping us to focus on the things we do well. The champion is always on our side and often toots our horn when we don’t acknowledge accomplishments in our lives. The collaborator works with us on projects to accomplish similar goals. The companion allows us someone who helps us relax and refresh. The energizer helps bring positive emotions and enthusiasm to all we do. The mind opener allows us to see other viewpoints and possibly change our minds on issues. The navigator helps give us direction, paths or crossroads to follow. They also help us to focus by helping us to debate the pros and cons of an issue.

No one is an island and Vital Friends helps us to develop the support that we need to have around us to achieve the most in our lives that we can. Learn how to develop yourself and others in becoming better at all of these roles or in finding someone else who provide that role for us.

Also available as an audiobook.