A bit of a personal situation in today’s post – I had to remove a connection, and wanted to work through the issue with you. Users are always asking “what would you do in this situation”, and I figure you’ll get a chance to see what I did;-)
Removing connections
First off – if you want to remove a connection, follow the advice I gave last year in “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do – Removing LinkedIn Connections“.
It isn’t difficult – except if you’ve never done it before and haven’t noticed the links.
Connection philosophy
Everybody knows my stance on making connections – connect to people you know and trust.
How you interpret that to mean “know” and “trust” is up to you, but given that your best connections are with people that might be referred to as “VIP”s, more knowing and trusting seems better to me than less.
When something happens
I’ve probably disconnected with a handful of people over the years, and it usually revolves around deciding that I no longer know or trust them enough to want to remain connected. Do I really want to see updates from people that I don’t have a good relationship with?
(and yes, I know some of you are thinking that it’s good to keep tabs on people you might consider frenemies, but it’s probably more likely that they’ll be watching you than you watching them, isn’t it?-)
One more step…
And so, I was a bit disappointed to receive a call about an event that I should know about, and didn’t I want to register and attend? “Sure”, I’m game – and thought it was one specific industry event that I do recall and would plan to attend, and thought I missed an announcement of…
No, I wasn’t disappointed to get the call to attend, but to realize that the registration material didn’t actually show up by the end of the day. On checking into it, I realized that the event wasn’t the one I had in mind, but another event.
An event I was previously “dis-invited” to after receiving a personal invitation. (That event is referenced in this post from last fall – apparently I haven’t fully gotten over that situation;-)
So while I was taken off the list of “invite these people”, the “we’re calling because we don’t have anyone coming to our event” crew pulled my name back into the mix to remind me of it… (Because my name was clearly scrubbed after the call)
Do I really need that?
And so no, I decided I didn’t really need to connect to the individual that leads this organization and reminds me of that situation… So I disconnected.
What’s the most interesting situation around someone you’ve disconnected with? (no names please;-)
To your continued success,
steve
—
Steven Tylock
http://www.linkedinpersonaltrainer.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevetylock