LinkedIn Recommendations Made Simple

I’ve already had a rant on this blog about the people who do reciprocal recommendations.  Now, I’d like to introduce you to a colleague of mine, Michelle Fischer of Creative Leadership, who has a really nice way of looking at this very subject.  She calls it the art of ‘saying it forward‘ and you can read more about it on her Creative Leadership blog.

In my experience most people only provide a testimonial or recommendation AFTER they have received a request from someone to provide one, what Michelle suggests is that you change this into a positive connection by pre-empting the request and provide a recommendation for someone you like and who’s work you have valued for some reason BEFORE they get a chance to ask.

I have to say, that although I do this quite a lot in many other ways, such as sending a ‘thank you’ note or blog, or by adding links to blogs for people, writing posts like this one and creating social bookmarks for others to see; I’ve never really applied it on LinkedIn – so I think this will be an activity I shall gladly take up.