We all have strengths and weaknesses. You are an expert in your field. Tell us about the skills you possess and burnish, as in “why you” and let others offer their support to tell in a story “how well you demonstrated that why.”

You surround yourself with others’ expertise.

When you sense someone is in need, offer them your help, when and where they seek it. Make it useful and relevant to their immediate needs.

Sometimes their silent cry for help is not obvious. They know they need help but do not know how to ask for it.

Sometimes you can’t directly help from your proverbial wheelhouse, but you can offer them different forms of your help, out of concern, choosing carefully from these ideas:

  • Pick up the phone and call them. Touch someone.
  • Zoom with them privately with the power of facial contact and get to the heart of the matter. Eyeball to eyeball, diction is the seasoning when written words can be inexact.
  • Email or text with them to arrange a mutually suitable time to discuss. Words chosen well can be powerfully liberating.
  • Send them help in words, audio, or video messaging.
  • Offer them third-party material to read to improve your upcoming discussion. There’re too many inputs thrown at us, so one that you curated as having been helpful lessens the time it takes the recipient to wade through and find a reliable website.
  • Or provide them a blog post or video you made on the topic to presage the conversation. If you are a respected colleague, your writing will provide value.
  • If you offer and they accept, the means to the resolution of the issue is at hand, so jump on this opportunity. Knowing when to ask for help with a problem is a giant step and jumpstarts the process of its resolution.
  • Think back to respected colleagues who may have had a similar experience, are subject matter experts, or have a wide, high-quality network to offer from. Be that intermediary.
  • Refer only those you know well to make it much easier to evoke an opening conversation to introduce the two parties as the fulcrum to your colleague.
  • Ask the two newly connected parties to keep you abreast of progress and end the message (as I say): “Let me hear great things coming from this connection.”
  • This is not an exhaustive list. Feel free to add to it in the comments below.

All of this can be facilitated on LinkedIn. Make it your power tool, and thus you will make it one for others. I welcome your stories and successes helping others. So will everyone else reading here.