One of my readers, Ben, recently asked about disconnecting from an accidental connection, and I realize that this is still one of those “it’s obvious only after you point it out” sorts of situations.
So let’s have a look – how do you remove a connection on LinkedIn?
Hiding in plain sight
The place to start is under your “Contacts” or “My Connections” – you know – that place that lists all of the people you connect to. (no matter what LinkedIn is labeling it this week;-)
Once on this page, look carefully to the right side and up – just under the toolbar section. You’ll find “Remove Connections”.
That’s the spot – and by my reckoning, if you did studies about where the eye lands on any web page, that has to be the least likely location!-)
Now it’s easy…
Yes, just click there and the next screen is just as simple to use – once you know about it.
Select a connection and click “Remove Connections” again, confirm that you want them gone – and they are no longer a connection.
Nay-nay
And no, there is no nay-nay note sent – the action is silent.
Sure, if they check their connections, you will no longer be listed, but there is no overt notification.
It happens
Every LinkedIn user is likely to want to disconnect at some point.
Perhaps like Ben you clicked “connect” instead of “archive” because you were in a hurry. (I’ve done that;-)
Or perhaps you connected to someone long ago but they’ve recently revealed a lack of ethics that made you reconsider holding onto the connection. (That’s happened to me too…)
And maybe you were led astray and allowed the system to invite extra people to connect. (The old “would you like to invite everyone in your address book to connect?” ploy – the system asks and you should absolutely say no;-)
This lets you easily correct the situation.
Once you know where to look!
To your continued success,
steve
—
Steven Tylock
http://www.linkedinpersonaltrainer.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevetylock
Hello, great blog post. Information is very useful and saved me a lot of time which I spent on something else instead of googling :) Thanks and waiting for more posts like this one.
Hello There!
Thank you for the advice – this is a great blog my only regret is I did not discover it earlier!
What if you disconnect from somebody (due to a lack of ethics or whatever the situation may be) but are still connected through another party? Is there any way that you can keep this person from cyber “stalking” you through other people?
Thanks again!
LinkedInCG,
There is no feature like that – your profile is visible to everyone in your network, even the people you’d rather not associate with.
You can control the visibility of your system updates. The most secure position there is to show the updates only to your direct connections. People outside of first level connections can’t keep tabs on you that way.
Thanks for commenting!
steve
Thanks for the post, Steve! You have saved me great amount of time as I have recently added a connection by accident too.