With A Little Help From My Friends (Part 1)


One of the tenets of networking is that you seek to help someone first before you request their help.  

And the help you give could be a small thing like an introduction, a referral or even a “like” or comment on a post!  Little things mean a lot sometimes.

One of the things that I like to do to help is to give a shout-out in my LinkedIn posts.    
  
Whitney Johnson is a “Thinker, Author, Speaker, Advisor, Coach.”  Ms. Johnson is the author of a book called “Disrupt Yourself.”  You can follow Ms. Johnson on LinkedIn, or you can check out her web site here and subscribe to her newsletter. 

In one of Ms. Johnson’s newsletters, she invited her readers to participate in a networking initiative.  If you wanted to participate, she would pair you up at random with someone on her newsletter distribution list.   The pair would contact each other by phone or Skype, introduce themselves and then seek to help each other by offering advice or making an introduction.  

Ms. Johnson’s networking initiative and the title of her book “Disrupt Yourself” got me thinking. 

There are people in my network who I haven’t ever talked to (we just “connected” on LinkedIn and that’s about all).  There are others who I talk to regularly via LinkedIn messaging or meeting in-person.   

Here is my novel idea: If you are in my network and you are interested in networking over Skype, I would love to do so…please message me! 

I recently had the pleasure of hearing Christopher Leabeter give a workshop at Jeff Waldman’s SocialHRCamp on May 14, 2016 called “techKNOWLEDGEy – You Really Should Know This."  Chris is a “Career Services Guru and Freelance Web Developer.”  Chris works at Lighthouse Labs, and you can check out the Lighthouse Labs’ web site here. 

I am a Human Resources Job Seeker who would like to work at a technology company or a company that wants to build a positive workplace culture.  Chris’s presentation got me thinking that I don’t know a lot about technology.  To remedy this perceived gap in knowledge, I’ve taken two courses on lynda.com, and I’ll be reading a book by Obi Ogbanufe called “Technology Made Simple for the Technical Recruiter.”  Thank you, Chris, for giving me some food for thought about how I could learn more about technology terms and concepts!

I thought that “With A Little Help from My Friends” from The Beatles is an appropriate title for this post. 



I am receiving some nice encouragement from friends.  With your encouragement, I feel supported and am encouraged to “pay it forward” and provide a helping hand to my friends.

All this love and support becomes a virtuous circle. 

Originally Published on LinkedIn:  May 23, 2016
Image Credit:  iStock



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Comfort Zone

Image
Yesterday I did something that was out of the ordinary for me.   I signed up for an 8 week improv class with the  Bad Dog Theatre Company . The idea for attending such a class was suggested to me when I attended  DisruptHRToronto  (a networking event) where I heard a speaker named Lori Pearlstein on December 1, 2016. Ms. Pearlstein owns a company called  Playworks .  Ms. Pearlstein’s company provides improv classes to corporate clients and helps people to improve their public speaking, team building and brainstorming skills. I thought to myself that improv is something that I would like to try. As is usual with me, I filed the suggestion away in my head perhaps to re-visit in the future. I was talking to a friend of mine and we were talking about food preferences. He noted that I could be more adventurous when it came to food. Point well-taken.    I wrote a LinkedIn post called “ Ham .”...
Read more

Human Nature

Image
Yesterday (June 19th) was very hot and humid in Toronto, and Environment Canada issued a heat alert. Today promises to be another hot and humid day with the humidex expected to rise to 40 degrees Celsius. When it’s hot in Toronto, we wish for winter and cooler weather; and when it’s winter, we wish for summer and warmer weather.  I suppose this wishful thinking of thinking the grass is always greener somewhere else is a part of human nature. When we’re working, we think wouldn’t it be nice if we had more leisure time, and when you’re in transition (like me), you think wouldn’t it be nice if we were working? When I was working at Combined Insurance, that’s all I thought about was work.  Never thought about stopping and reflecting on things.  In transition I’ve seen the other side (the leisure side), and I know that when I find a job, that I’d want more of a balance between working hard and pursuing leisure activities (maybe going to see a Toronto Bl...
Read more

Positivity...Let me count the ways

Image
In a previous post “ Always On My Mind ” I mentioned to job seekers to “stay hopeful and positive.” I would like to expand on how exactly job seekers (or anyone else for that matter) can “stay positive.” First I’m reminded of a  FISH! Philosophy  tenet of “Choose Your Attitude.” We can choose to have a positive attitude in a number of ways. Be nice to yourself   We can’t always feel positive (or up or cheery) all of the time. Sometimes we feel down.  I suggest that we accept that we feel down at this moment and that this feeling won’t last forever. We can think to ourselves that things will feel brighter tomorrow. Give yourself permission to feel down at this moment and take comfort that tomorrow is another day.  We can do some basic things to take care of ourselves: get enough rest, drink lots of water, eat healthy, get some exercise, etc. Other than these things, we can participate in activities that...
Read more