Today’s installment is about thinking sideways! We’re going to talk a little more about how to increase your networking worth on LinkedIn through Broadsiding
I was looking for information on health services in Ontario. Rather than go through the impenetrable maze that is the government, I looked up individuals on LinkedIn who might know more, explained my situation, and sent off a few requests. While I didn’t get what I was looking for, I changed the conversation towards learning and development with a few contacts, to see what might come of it. The end of the process netted me a few contact points that I hope to explore further.
Broadsiding is known by many other names or concepts. The idea is to approach a contact not from its most immediate point, but perhaps through other avenues. Doing some research, do you find people in an organization who share an interest, or a point of confluence?
Join LinkedIn groups (This should be a no-brainer!) and contribute, contribute, contribute. Even if it’s just a post every so often, or your own blog post, throw them out there and see what you can do! Networking may not be about approaching a problem directly, but finding the six degrees of separation between the people who can help you the most, and the people who help them!
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Monday, April 11, 2016
The Three Things You Can Do Better on LinkedIn
Networking on LinkedIn is a little old-hat, isn’t it? Receive a contact request, accept it, and the person is instantly shuffled off into the ether of your digital rolodex, never to be seen again. Send a contact request, and face the same thing from the other side. It’s a sort of choice paradox redux, wherein the sheer number of your contacts decreases the value of each of them.
What’s in it for you? How can you make your social networking experience on LinkedIn easier, from start to finish? How can you make yourself more visible to your contacts? Let’s walk through three things you can consider before you click “Connect”.
Keep Things Simple
Brevity is a tricky thing - As you might see from my blogs, it’s a difficult thing for me to work on, as well. The idea of brevity in this case is a little more complex than it sounds. Let's take a look at some things you can do to keep things simple:
Do Your Research
When you want to connect with someone, or someone wants to connect with you, take the time to look up their LinkedIn page. it’s a small step that can get lost in the noise, but looking through their LinkedIn page gives you a good idea of whether or not their addition to your contact list will help you.
When sending a contact request, target it as much as possible. If you’re looking to expand into a certain field, look up companies with positive reviews on Glassdoor for a particular position. Send targeted contact requests to people within those departments or in human resources for the organization (Hiring managers or related personnel).
Research the company, even if it’s as superficial as going to their webpage, LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter accounts. Is there anything new or interesting happening that you can use as a lever to open a discussion?
When you get the inevitable follow-up, be prepared with questions to ask, whether they’re general to the position and challenges, or specific to the organization’s processes: Don’t. Waste. Their. Time.
The more targeted and specific your contact request, the less likely it is to be turned down.
Use The Message Box
When receiving a contact request, nothing turns me off more than a blank message. Who are you? How did you find me? What do you want? I feel like Liam Neeson in Taken.
If I don’t know anything about you, and you’re not willing to volunteer, why are you sending me a contact request?
All this to state a very basic principle:
Use. The. Message. Box.
You’ve got 160 characters to explain who you are, what you want, and why. Start with their name. Don’t worry about yours, they already know it. What do you do? What do you want to do? What do you need from them - Contacts, an informational interview, job opportunities? Ask and ye shall receive, but don’t leave the message box blank.
All the research you’ve done should be boiled down into that little white box. If you can’t boil it down, either the request is not worth your time, or you won’t get accepted.
Embrace the box. Use the box. Be the box.
Next time, we’ll talk about my other two points in this series, Embracing Broadsides and Providing Bite.
What are some strategies that have worked for you? What are your biggest gripes and pleasures about networking through LinkedIn?
As always, I’m happy to hear comments and start a discussion on LinkedIn or through Twitter. @LnDGuru.
Have a great day!
Friday, April 1, 2016
The Zen of The Single Task: Strategies For Single Tasking
In my last blog post, we explored the importance of single-tasking: The idea that you should spend time on individual tasks instead of having multiple tasks running in your head at the same time.
While it’s great to suggest this gently to everyone online, I’d like in today’s blog post to explore some ways you can refocus on individual priorities when your workday is spinning out into multiple tasks, competing priorities, and general stress.
Let’s go with the Three R’s of single-tasking:
Recognize
The only way you can deal with stress is to recognize it.
The only way you can deal with stress is to recognize it.
The only way you can deal with stress is to recognize it.
Am I getting through yet? Our day is composed of many small, varied stresses. Dealing with multiple e-mails, having ten browser tabs open, answering phone calls while checking e-mails, eating lunch at your desk, responding to e-mails while in meetings…
Good God, sometimes you must wonder how you can cope.
Coping isn’t the hardest part of stress. The hardest part of stress is recognizing it. In the last blog post, I recommended keeping track of your stress on a day-by-day basis, hour by hour as necessary. Find your symptoms - Do you find yourself going to the office coffee machine often? Do you distract yourself and take microbreaks? Do you get a lot of chatter in, and distract other people to make things easier?
Once you’ve recognized your symptoms, it’s time to…
Respond
Simple. Effective. Repeated. These are what your stress responses should look like. I’m going to go through three self-responses to stress. Chances are, you find yourself doing these already, but my guess is that you don’t use them regularly enough. Use them multiple times a day, and you will find yourself remarkably less stressed!
1) Belly breathing.
We’ve all heard the advice “Breathe in, breathe out”, but I’m going to ask you a basic question: Are you doing it right?
Belly breathing, or the practice of breathing from your diaphragm up, is much more effective at calming a stressful time. Train yourself to do it - When you find yourself clenching your teeth, speaking in rapid-fire sentences, feeling a flutter in your stomach, or getting fidgety, put one hand on your chest, and one hand on your belly. The hand on your belly should move, the hand on your chest shouldn’t.
Good. Now, count to five on the inhale, count to five, then count to five on the exhale.
This takes time. Time you could be using to do other things. But that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? You can use those three to five minutes to make a small dent in your work, or you can take those three to five minutes to focus on your breathing, lower your blood pressure, and give your brain a moment to do what it does best.
2) Clenching
Stress can be a physical response. You feel it in your neck, your jaw, your arms, your back. Anywhere and everywhere.
So, let’s get rid of it by getting rid of the buildup. Clenches are incredibly simple.
Starting from your toes, clench every muscle group as hard as you can for the count of ten. Toes, calves, thighs, butt, abs, back, shoulders, arms, hands, neck, jaw, eyes. Everything you can think of. Clench them hard, breathe through your belly, and count to ten. It’s especially effective if you can lie down while doing it.
3) Self-Talk
Whether or not you can believe it, the thoughts running around in your head contribute in a significant way to the stress you experience.
Programmers call it rubber-duck debugging, the process of going through their code and explaining the logic and process to a rubber duck, like you’d find in a bathtub. Saying it out loud means that they can hear and correct their thought process
When you experience the stress and anxiety of your workday, I need you to step back from your desk. Whether that means standing up and turning away from your monitor, finding an empty meeting room, or just going for a walk around the office, get away, and ask yourself a few questions:
- What am I stressed about?
- Why is it stressful?
- Am I helping? - Are you responding the way you need to, or is your response making it harder for you to get things done?
- What are some things you can do right now to help yourself?
Beyond the admittedly abstract practice, self-talk allows you to self-debug. Going through your thought processes to determine what you’re stressed about, whether your stress level is appropriate, and what you can do to fix it, will dramatically lessen the stress you feel throughout the day.
Refocus
Done de-stressing? Great!
Now your job is to figure out “what next?” Prioritize, and either tell yourself verbally or mentally what to do next, or write out a to-do list with as few items as possible - You don’t want to reload on your stress by seeing a vast list of things undone.
Take a minute and do these things throughout your day, and you will find a calm order to your life that may have been missing before!
While it’s great to suggest this gently to everyone online, I’d like in today’s blog post to explore some ways you can refocus on individual priorities when your workday is spinning out into multiple tasks, competing priorities, and general stress.
Let’s go with the Three R’s of single-tasking:
Recognize
The only way you can deal with stress is to recognize it.
The only way you can deal with stress is to recognize it.
The only way you can deal with stress is to recognize it.
Am I getting through yet? Our day is composed of many small, varied stresses. Dealing with multiple e-mails, having ten browser tabs open, answering phone calls while checking e-mails, eating lunch at your desk, responding to e-mails while in meetings…
Good God, sometimes you must wonder how you can cope.
Coping isn’t the hardest part of stress. The hardest part of stress is recognizing it. In the last blog post, I recommended keeping track of your stress on a day-by-day basis, hour by hour as necessary. Find your symptoms - Do you find yourself going to the office coffee machine often? Do you distract yourself and take microbreaks? Do you get a lot of chatter in, and distract other people to make things easier?
Once you’ve recognized your symptoms, it’s time to…
Respond
Simple. Effective. Repeated. These are what your stress responses should look like. I’m going to go through three self-responses to stress. Chances are, you find yourself doing these already, but my guess is that you don’t use them regularly enough. Use them multiple times a day, and you will find yourself remarkably less stressed!
1) Belly breathing.
We’ve all heard the advice “Breathe in, breathe out”, but I’m going to ask you a basic question: Are you doing it right?
Belly breathing, or the practice of breathing from your diaphragm up, is much more effective at calming a stressful time. Train yourself to do it - When you find yourself clenching your teeth, speaking in rapid-fire sentences, feeling a flutter in your stomach, or getting fidgety, put one hand on your chest, and one hand on your belly. The hand on your belly should move, the hand on your chest shouldn’t.
Good. Now, count to five on the inhale, count to five, then count to five on the exhale.
This takes time. Time you could be using to do other things. But that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? You can use those three to five minutes to make a small dent in your work, or you can take those three to five minutes to focus on your breathing, lower your blood pressure, and give your brain a moment to do what it does best.
2) Clenching
Stress can be a physical response. You feel it in your neck, your jaw, your arms, your back. Anywhere and everywhere.
So, let’s get rid of it by getting rid of the buildup. Clenches are incredibly simple.
Starting from your toes, clench every muscle group as hard as you can for the count of ten. Toes, calves, thighs, butt, abs, back, shoulders, arms, hands, neck, jaw, eyes. Everything you can think of. Clench them hard, breathe through your belly, and count to ten. It’s especially effective if you can lie down while doing it.
3) Self-Talk
Whether or not you can believe it, the thoughts running around in your head contribute in a significant way to the stress you experience.
Programmers call it rubber-duck debugging, the process of going through their code and explaining the logic and process to a rubber duck, like you’d find in a bathtub. Saying it out loud means that they can hear and correct their thought process
When you experience the stress and anxiety of your workday, I need you to step back from your desk. Whether that means standing up and turning away from your monitor, finding an empty meeting room, or just going for a walk around the office, get away, and ask yourself a few questions:
- What am I stressed about?
- Why is it stressful?
- Am I helping? - Are you responding the way you need to, or is your response making it harder for you to get things done?
- What are some things you can do right now to help yourself?
Beyond the admittedly abstract practice, self-talk allows you to self-debug. Going through your thought processes to determine what you’re stressed about, whether your stress level is appropriate, and what you can do to fix it, will dramatically lessen the stress you feel throughout the day.
Refocus
Done de-stressing? Great!
Now your job is to figure out “what next?” Prioritize, and either tell yourself verbally or mentally what to do next, or write out a to-do list with as few items as possible - You don’t want to reload on your stress by seeing a vast list of things undone.
Take a minute and do these things throughout your day, and you will find a calm order to your life that may have been missing before!
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