Blogger’s note: almost 5 years ago I ran this series of blog posts on LinkedIn and EI. Judging from recent events and behaviors, I, and you, can benefit from a refresher. One a day for the next 13 days will follow. Earlier, many of you commented positively. It’s worth repeating IMO.

You press that mental pause button

You pause, you breathe, you cool, you edit, you cool again, you think if you even have to reply.

Yes, you breathe deep before you knee-jerk react to a comment or an article on LinkedIn.  Yes, LinkedIn is an open, self-policed forum of ideas and co-assistance. Yes, sometimes on LinkedIn it is hard to control your passion about a topic or an opinion. But you must exert that self-control, because you will likely say something that will stick, that you wish you hadn’t.

Part of emotional intelligence is realizing there is a huge audience on LinkedIn, diverse culturally, industrially, educationally and all the adverbs you care to insert in this string, and not everyone will appreciate your immediate response. You may draft the response, and then I suggest you let it “cool” and then come back and review it again, make changes with a cooler head, and let it cool once more. Then do you really have to offer a counter argument, or has the storm blown over and everyone else has moved on to something else while you still stew on that now-old topic?

Be cool. No need to get into a war of words on LinkedIn. Believe me, in my LinkedIn writing, criticism comes easily.

Walk away from the bully when it is appropriate.

And no politics on LinkedIn, OK? No one wins that war of words here nor is it appropriate in a business community of professionals aiming to help one another, rather than tear one another apart.

So pause and refresh your mental jets. You will be respected more as emotionally intelligent than emotionally belligerent.

And remembered for it.