Unlinking
LinkedIn is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. For me, that means that it really didn’t exist as much of an aid to my career, either as a source for employees or as a source for employment. These days, the business world uses LinkedIn as one of its foundational services and I imagine a goodly proportion of career-minded people use it in either direction on a daily basis. I’ve been on LinkedIn since the beginning and do use it once in a while for finding someone or contacting someone I am otherwise not directly connected with. My profile tells me that I have 2,847 followers and at least that many contacts (they will only tell me it’s 500+, presumably to keep us from getting into a silly contest with one another). Every week, LinkedIn tells me how many people have viewed my profile that week. This week it was 152 different people for some unknown reason. I could find out exactly who was peeking into my profile if I wanted, but that would require me to sign up for the Premium service, which I did once, but found rather less than scintillating. It also tells me that 32 people have engaged with my posts, which is interesting because I can’t imagine the last time I actually posted something on LinkedIn. Perhaps the most interesting statistic LinkedIn likes to show me is how many searches I have appeared in. Having people look at my profile or posts seems somewhat voyeouristic, but including me in a search at the age of 68 seems kind of crazy. On one level it should be flattering since it is a way of saying that the business community sees value in my resume and wants to throw my hat into the ring even though my hat is pretty old at this stage.
Now that I have unhitched myself from Facebook, I’ve been regularly wondering if I should do likewise for LinkedIn. In some ways, LinkedIn is the business version of Facebook and given my career status, or lack thereof, it hardly seems necessary at this point for me other than to remind me once in a while that people are still slightly interested in me and what I am up to. I have had one old friend connect with me through LinkedIn and that did result in us doing some business together with me taking on an expert witness assignment he introduced me to. That instance alone was worth about $150k so maybe it would be hasty of me to end my LinkedIn relationship. Also, in my teaching, which I don’t know how long I will continue, I am always looking for people to reach out to as guest lecturers. So far that has almost all been done via my personal rolodex, which has over 6,000 contacts of all sorts, many of which i can barely recall. I spent enough time in my field and was senior enough to build up a good amount of interpersonal relationships. I also feel that for the most part, I was fair and personable with people and did well enough by them that I have built up a fairly large bank of personal due bills or IOUs. these are not things I ever expect to cash in, but asking people to guest lecture is surely one way to use my network when I need someone to help spice up the course material either with specific knowledge or just sound thinking.
One of the things I have found in my expert work is that I will run across certain issues or people that have left my awareness and are suddenly remembered around a particular issue or topic. When I get the chance to speak to them, it is most always a friendly encounter, which I like to think means that I left more good feelings behind rather than bad feelings. I’m certain that is not a universal case because you cannot go through a dynamic business career and please all of the people all of the time. I am sure there are plenty of people out there who associate bad feelings with any remembrance of me. So long as the ratio of good feelings to bad feelings is positive enough, and I am confident that is the case, I am generally OK with that situation.
There are fundamentally three categories of business contacts. There are those people who were your superiors or bosses, that were your subordinates or employees and those that were your peers, colleagues or partners. The dynamics of all three are quite different and they are probably informed as a group mostly by how you interacted as a businessperson. The group I find I care about the most are those who were my subordinates and employees. That is a very genuine and not fictitious view on my part because I think there is no better measure of the man than what kind of regard was had by those for whom he was responsible. It is the essence of leadership and something I took very seriously. Some might think this is an immature desire to be liked by everyone, but I see it more as an indicator of how you managed. If you were an enlightened manager, it comes through and people know if you are taking advantage of them or if you have their best interests at heart. I am most proud of the people I meet these days who say that their best business experience was the time they were working with me. It truly makes me feel that I did right by people and made a difference to them.
I think the way you remember your superiors probably is the best indicator of how you did professionally. If you respected them and thought well of them, chances are that came through and you prospered under their tutelage. I would honestly say that I am split on this issue. I respected about half of those I worked for and, unfortunately, I am not at all sure that there was a correlation between how I did under them and how I felt about them. A few of them seemed to match up well, but I can think of a few where I was very impressed by them and I am not at all certain I impressed them to the same degree. A few others that I had limited respect for did very well by me. So I throw this indicator into the toss-up category overall. And then there are the peers, colleagues and partners. My most important partnership (defined as the one that lasted the longest and performed the best for all of us) was characterized with a high degree of mutual trust and respect. That was my Beehive Ventures partnership, the partners of which I remain very close with. My Bear Stearns and Bankers Trust partners were mulch less so the case. I somehow think that peer relationships, particularly in a competitive corporate environment are very hard since everyone is in competition with everyone else. One of the toughest partners in that group called me “an honest broker” which I thought was high praise, but we are not at all in contact with one another at this point. I think if I took a poll of all my ex-colleagues they would largely say things like that I was aggressive and competitive and, my least favorite descriptor, political. This is all code for the fact that I probably did better than they did and that gets held against me. Once in a while a person threads even that needle and is both successful and much revered. It doesn’t happen that often, but when it does you almost feel like they are the Hubble Gardner’s of the class, the people for whom things come easily.
Of course only some of that translates into a social media network like LinkedIn and it comes in the form of recommendations and testimonials. I have solicited none of these and have precious few. Maybe that’s a message to me or maybe it just says I’m not much of LinkedIn user. Either way, I will continue to contemplate the right time to unlink myself from LinkedIn.