Only once in a while you get a compliment for your work, from the person hiring you, or from the attendees at your session.
Verbally: face-to-face, phone call, or email.
I excerpted and used them in my LinkedIn profile as testimonials to my work ethic and quality. (Permit me to be a bit proud.)
But this blog post is not about me.
A consultant colleague recently posted an update to his LinkedIn feed saying how pleased he was: the manager who hired him complimented his excellent presentation. His delight about receiving a well-earned thank-you is what keepes him going, among the other smart educational value-add in his work.
It was indeed comment-worthy, so I advised him:
Suggestion: ask the manager for a LinkedIn recommendation, quoting the manager’s comments, as much as you can recollect, back in the recommendation request. Otherwise your proudly happy post will be lost in a few days on LinkedIn as new material layers on and the readers of your profile will not know what a huge compliment it was! Bravo!
He thanked me for the suggestion. I couldn’t let him allow it to go unpublished…
Why?
Too often we let these accolades evaporate into the ether, even when we update our audiences with a post.
Until you actually, formally and appreciatively, ask the writer to commit their thoughts into a formal recommendation on LinkedIn, it’s gone in a day or two, like a perfect snowflake in a snowstorm.
Here’s how asking for a recommendation from a LinkedIn connection is easy. So easy, in fact, that it’s a shame not to make your profile so much more realistic when you collect an entourage of others who say how well you do “why you do what you do.”
I recommend that you adopt this practice asap, or upon your next compliment.
See tomorrow’s blog post for another true-life episode in the amazing world of LinkedIn recommendations.
