Today I went to lunch with Neal Lenarsky, someone that a friend recommended that I chat with about The SoundView Group. We had never met before, or spoken, but I knew given the person who “set us up” that it would be a worthwhile conversation. It was - but that’s not what I’m writing about.
Before I went to the lunch, I looked on LinkedIn for the people we had “1st level” connections to in common. Because Neal’s business is the people business (he’s a sort of Jerry Maguire “Agent” for corporate executives), we knew over 15 people in common. So I printed out the list and took it with me to lunch. Neal laughed when he saw the list - said this was the first time someone actually showed up to a meeting with a list like that - and I said it was the first time I’d ever printed one out - but we both had a good time recounting how we knew each of those people and sharing experiences we had had with them.
What was interesting to me was that people always play the name game when they first encounter someone - it allows us to establish that level of commonality and comfort that speeds the offline social networking process. But my guess is that had we both not been using LinkedIn as an online social networking tool, it is very unlikely we would have come up with even one quarter of the people we knew in common - and even if we had it would have been a fairly stilted and laborious path to get there. But in this way we quickly established our common connections, and it greased the skids for a really good meeting. Yet another reason why I love LinkedIn!
Tags: LinkedIn, Neal Lenarsky, Social Networking