My eldest daughter started an internship this week, her first ‘real world’ work experience. I advised her to set up a LinkedIn profile and to connect with the people she works with and meets. In my opinion, it’s never too early to start building a professional network.
I was mentioning this to a friend whom I respect enormously; he is a self-made entrepreneur who makes his money in recruitment but has many other business interests. His response surprised me: “Tell her not to bother, LinkedIn can do more harm than good!”.
LinkedIn has been one of the main candidate-hunting grounds for recruiters for over a decade, so this comment, coming from a recruiter, was unexpected. I asked why and he responded; “She’s young and many people will be jealous, it’s best she doesn’t attract attention. You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t”.
With due respect, I disagree.
While there may be some people who feel resentment or jealousy towards another’s success or good fortune, we should not allow these people to define us. As social media demonstrates every day, there will always be ‘haters’ who look for the worst in others and try to bring them down. My younger daughter has a small bracelet business and posts regular videos on TikTok to promote her newest designs. I was following a chat thread where a few people were attacking her prices and demanding 50% discount. Her response was fantastic. She made a video showing what you get when you pay half, proceeding to cut the bracelet, packaging and accessories in half. I loved it!
The point here is that we need a strong sense of identity in order to protect ourselves from the personal attacks of others. In their 2010 text, ‘Difficult Conversations’, Harvard professors Doug Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen discussed the three conversations that exist in any difficult dialogue. They label these conversations the ‘what happened’, ‘feelings’ and ‘identity’ conversations.
The ‘what happened’ conversation is the process of discussing facts and opinions as we see them. Most of us are adept at having this conversation and often we never progress beyond it. However, in any difficult conversation feelings and identify issues will be present and if we don’t address them, our chances of effectively dealing with the situation and finding resolution is much lower.
A well-grounded sense of identity comes from strong values and belief systems. If you believe in what you say and do and if this is aligned with your values, what you say and do will come from a place of conviction. This allows us to deal with the challenges we encounter, whether from someone who resents our success or tries to diminish our product or service.
In fact, the ability to have an effective identify conversation with yourself is one of the most important things in life because it directly impacts our self-confidence and self-esteem. If someone you care about whether friend, family or business is having self-doubt, introduce the identity conversation to them. Simply knowing it exists helps us connect any given situation to our core values and beliefs which grounds our identity and in turn, positively impacts our mindset.
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