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How to Reconnect Professionally -- Painlessly!
Featured Author:
Linda Griffin
Linda Griffin jumped into the corporate world right out of college. When she made the transition from techie to leader at IBM, she learned that traditional management training didn’t adequately prepare her for the daily challenges of inspiring, empowering and motivating team members. As a leadership and career coach, she now shares what she learned during her successful 30-year career. She helps first time managers, team leaders, and supervisors deal with the expected, the unexpected and the “you can’t make this stuff up” issues that leaders encounter. Linda has an MBA from the University of South Florida and completed training at Coach Training Alliance.
Check out her blog, Career Shock and add her to your Excelle network!
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Linda Griffin | Excelle
I received a LinkedIn message the other day from a former employee who has been laid off. I had sent him a connect request a couple of months ago and asked how things were going. He accepted the invitation but didn’t take the opportunity to re-connect and open a dialogue. In this new message he apologized and said that he wished he had taken the time to respond earlier. Now he was wondering if I could help him out in his job search.
I recommend maintaining a strong relationship with your professional network. That way, you don’t put yourself in the awkward position of asking for help from someone you haven’t spoken to in months or years. The reality is that it’s easier said than done. I’ve been in the position where I’ve felt embarrassed to reach out to someone due to the length of time that has passed since I spoke to them. Despite my best intentions, urgent projects at work and family projects at home sometimes put my networking activities on the back burner. There are many reasons why we may lose contact with someone. They move away, we change jobs; one of us stops the hobby or common interest that brought us together. My response to my erstwhile employee was ‘what can I do to help?’ because I’ve felt his pain.
If you find yourself in the awkward position of needing to revive a lapsed connection, here are five steps to help you do it:
1. Decide to take action.
Instead of beating yourself up for not staying in touch, give yourself permission to be human. Don’t assume that the person won’t want to hear from you. I recently had an old college roommate find me on Facebook. We hadn’t kept in touch since we graduated many moons ago but I was delighted to hear from her.
kbtordai
3 months ago
708 comments
Great article! I have lost touch with a lot of previous co-workers and/or friends and I sometimes want to kick myself for letting the connection go. You have given me a boost of confidence to get back out there and reconnect!