Title: 7 – The Benefits of Remembering Others

Welcome to this week’s edition of Lawcountability J.D. Today we are going to be talking
about the benefits of remembering others.
When a colleague of mine, or a friend, or a client starts something new, I will often send
a little good luck gift from my time in Japan. One of those happens to be a doll that
looks something like this. And my clients, my colleagues, my friends who receive this,
often have never seen this particular item before and are intrigued.
It’s interesting enough that they might keep it on their desks because it’s a point of
conversation and once they learn about it, and people ask them about it, it just tends to
yield some discussion once people come in to their new office.
I happened to be speaking to a colleague of mine to whom I had sent this doll once, and
she said: “You know Ari, that doll is such a good idea because I put it on my desk, I talk
about it with other people and every time I see it, I think of you”.
But that wasn’t it, that wasn’t really the most moving part of it. She said: “I think of you
remembering me”. And we have since done work together on a number of occasions,
I’m not sure it’s directly the result of this doll, but certainly the doll gets people thinking
of my thoughtfulness, and it gets people thinking of what I do in the same way that that
kind of thoughtfulness will encourage people to think of you and what you do, and what
you offer.
So, today what I want you to start thinking about is, for example, in LinkedIn there is a
way that they tell you if a colleague of yours is having a work anniversary, if someone is
starting a new job, if it’s their birthday, and it provides you with the perfect opportunity to
follow up whether you never speak to them, you’ve spoken to them recently, you’d want
to just reconnect, you would love to start a conversation that you haven’t started in the
past. Use this technique, it will be ideal and suggest your memory.
Now I want to go back to what we talked about last week, which was reaching out to an
alum, and I wanted to share with you a somewhat humorous example of how this might
work, or not work. So I simply wrote to someone: “I’m a former associate at this firm and
a GW law alum, and I saw on the alumni website that you were promoted to partner,
congratulations”.
So the person wrote back: “Thanks very much, seems that we were close at our school,
and the class must not be updated because I’ve been a partner now for two and a half
years, but it’s nice to be recognized, thanks”.
Now, this indicates that that was something of a failure, except for the fact that it has
sparked a response, it created dialog. We don’t always care about perfection, we strive
for momentum, some reason to follow up, some reason to reconnect, a way to set the
foundation for a relationship. And this did that, and so I share it with you because it
wasn’t ideally successful, but certainly it did what you and I hoped that it would do,
which is start a relationship.
So today’s tasks are going to be: go to your LinkedIn connections and visit the Keep In
Touch section. So we just click on Connections – Keep In Touch, it will show you that
screen of images of people in your network, and it will tell you what’s happening with
them, is their anniversary at a job, have they started something new, is it their birthday
etc., and identify a few individuals celebrating something.
Try that now, open up a new window in your browser and just try that particular activity,
see how it works for you. Who can you call or email to congratulate? Every single week
as you know, second task is always how do you reach out.
Think of an individual, who can you call or email, and I always try to help you out and
provide a script: “Hi Jay, LinkedIn says that you’re with your firm, with this company for
three years in November, congratulations. How are things?”.
As always, sparking conversation, prompting some dialog and some follow up. So, think
about how that can happen for you. And who can you meet to congratulate and discuss
a collaboration. So: “You’re at this organization for three years, maybe our student
group could invite you to talk about your experience”. Or: “I would love to talk to you
about what it takes to be successful and to stay somewhere for a long time”. Or: “Why
you made that move”.
All these different items are sparked by you being thoughtful, you remembering them
and thinking about their move, and LinkedIn feeds that to you, it provides it to you and
they let LinkedIn know, right? The whole system is built around an optin strategy of
them telling people what’s happening in their career, and telling you since you’re in their
network.
So just think about who can I meet, think about is it someone that I could meet this
week, who’s local to where I’m in school, or is it someone that I might be able to meet if
I am home for Thanksgiving, or if I’m traveling somewhere over the Christmas and New
Year’s break, something to think about.
And of course, click on this week’s active tasks and you’ll want to enter some of this
information in there, go to LinkedIn and visit the Keep In Touch section, identify a few of
those individuals who are celebrating something, who can you call or email.
You can think to congratulate them, or you can just simply follow up: “You know, I
remember when you started there, that’s fantastic”, and spark a little conversation that
way, you can think of “Can I meet someone that I don’t really know very well”, or if you
feel more comfortable starting with someone that you do know who you’d seen, just try
the technique, it’s really… this is all about you honing certain skills.
So, try the technique of using that as a reason to reach out and see how it works for
you, see how it feels comfortable, what it feels uncomfortable about it. You’re welcomed
to email me and let me know, and I’ be happy to try to brainstorm with you.
When you’re logging in, as always, try to click Yes, so that you start to get the reminders
for the first task on Tuesday, second task on Wednesday, third task on Thursday.
Obviously, if you don’t want the reminders, but you really liked the content, which I still
appreciate, just click Yes and you won’t get any reminders at all.
Go into your goals, and look at what you set for yourself in your timeline, but also add a
few goals. So if you have some goals thinking about, well, I’m going to try to do this
particular technique, the Keep In Touch technique let's call it, every single week, then
you might want to add a goal that over the next month I’m going to do the Keep In
Touch technique once a week and see how that works out for you.
A lot of people tend to like this activity because there’s just lots of potential associated
with it, and I love that, I love anything where there’s lots of potential associated with it
where it doesn’t make you feel particularly uncomfortable, but has the potential to really
yield some significant results. It’s a very genuine and sincere way to reach out, it’s again
something that people have provided and shared already with LinkedIn, so there’s no
surprise that you might know it, it’s just a surprise that you might actually follow up on it.
And that’s what I would love to see you take advantage of. And please, consider as
always, designating an accountability colleague. Every single week we see such
tremendous results from students who are actually designating someone as their
accountability colleague, a peer, a spouse, a friend, a professor that is their mentor, just
someone who will know at the end of every week whether or not you did the tasks.
And that’s really going to be key for you, as every week having someone work
alongside you to ensure that you’re accomplishing this, and also to kind of know what
you’re doing, because they may have a suggestion for you, it’s as if you have a partner
in this effort, in your job search, in your career development, in addition to all the other
resources that you have available at your disposal.
And please feel free to email admin[at]lawcountability.com suggestions for future
programs, suggestions for ways to modify the system, I welcome that and really
appreciate your insights.
Thank you as always for joining us this week for our Lawcountibility J.D. program on the
benefits of remembering others.