It's Better to Give Than to Receive

How do YOU feel when you unexpectedly get a kudos, compliment, shout out or endorsement out of the blue? Admit it...it is the smile and boost that just made your day. Especially if it is from someone you haven't heard from in a while or that you had no idea that you were influencing or helping.

No doubt I am preaching to the choir on this one...but the key is to not randomly give cookie cutter compliments but to be thoughtful and specific about these acts of random kindness and appreciation.

What if there were ways within your professional network you could sprinkle these compliments or give someone else some well deserved visibility for the work they do?

Well wonder no more here are a few hidden gems on the LinkedIn platform that is only a few clicks away!

...More

As with most functionality on LinkedIn there is hidden capability in plain sight. We are all so busy going through our tried and true motions that we don't exercise our curiosity and poke around.

So let's go back to the homepage and have a look at the main box where we post.

If we click on ...More a pop up box appears with an additional menu

A whole new world of opportunities just opened up and giving you easy ways to recognize, promote, or help others in your network. Two quick and easy ones to leverage are:

• Celebrate an Occasion

• Share a Profile

In both cases, don't forget to @ the person as well as their company. You may also want to use related hashtags (#) as well as their company hashtag (#). It will boost your post to give maximum exposure to the person you are highlighting.

Skills & Endorsements

Another way you can demonstrate a more private show of support and appreciation for folks in your network is to hop onto their profile and endorse them for certain skills. It is ridiculously easy to do and something you should consider doing regularly not only for your teammates but even for your key clients.

This accomplishes a few things...

• It ups their profile views

• It pays them the compliment that you took the time to check out their profile

• It ups the importance of key skills that they are proud of and validates that someone else agrees that these are also things they are good at

Recommendation

We should also spend a couple of minutes on recommendations. I don't know about YOU but these seem to only show up when we ask for them and when we have just left our last job. I know a lot of folks have strong feelings one way or another on these especially when it seems to only revolve around "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours".

So I propose we do away with the stigma and view recommendations more like we do Amazon, Yelp and all other applications we use daily

In the digital buyers journey, when we go on-line to purchase something on say... Amazon, one of the things we do regularly is to scan through the recommendations. Did others like the product and did they have a good customer experience? How many times have YOU bought something recently that had a 1 star rating and no recommendations listed? I'm betting you didn't. So why would we think our customers and partners are not thinking the same things about us?

So I say - pay it forward and don't wait or hesitate! What greater compliment could you pay to a colleague, partner or customer than to expound on the all the reasons why it's great to do business with them...without them asking or expecting it!

In closing...

I think we are all feeling a little cabin fever these days and missing the moments when we could drop by each other's desks to pay compliments or lift each other's spirits in person. I am not naive or unrealistic enough to think that all of the suggestions will suit everyone's taste or comfort levels but I wanted to remind us all that they are there for the taking. If, for some reason, none of these resonate with you, why not just drop someone an email, text or LinkedIn message saying "hi...how are you?...I don't need anything...I just wanted to check in".

So rather than bemoaning all that we have lost...let's focus forward on all the tools we DO have available to us. Hopefully these are a few ideas to get you started . After all don't YOU think "it's better to give than receive"?

Leadership Questions of the Week for YOU:

• When was the last time YOU got a kudos, compliment, endorsement, recommendation or message on LinkedIn unexpectedly and it simply made YOUR day? When was the last time YOU gave one?

• How often do you leverage these tools and capabilities? Were you aware of all of them?

• Of all the suggestions above which one is YOUR favorite that you want to do more of or would tell others to use?

• What are YOUR thoughts on the stigma around recommendations? Does the Amazon example resonate with you and encourage you to do more?

• What ideas, tools or thoughts did I miss that I can learn from or do better?

Thanks for reading and remember…YOU make a difference!

Please continue the conversation by liking…commenting or sharing this article. You can also follow me on twitter @marciedwhite