FULL TRANSCRIPT

00:00 – Show Opening.

Are you a professional who wants to become a more effective leader? Then get ready for daily tips from the coach, with the experience and inspiration to help you succeed in any leadership situation. You’re listening to the meeting leadership podcast with Gordon Shepard.

00:27 – Start Here – Podcast content starts here!

Gordon Sheppard Speaking

Welcome to another episode of the meeting leadership podcast, where we help professionals just like you to take action by building up your leadership skills, by building up the ability that you have to run highly effective meetings. Now in this episode, it’s really about building up the leadership skills in the area of promoting yourself. And one of the best platforms to do that on is LinkedIn. And today we’re going to talk about what leaders must do to succeed on LinkedIn.

Gordon Sheppard:    Now, I’m a big believer in the platform. I’ve used it in all kinds of different ways to to get work, to meet great people, to help with volunteer initiatives. It’s been just a wonderful place to really build relationships. And with that in mind, today I’m bringing back Alnoor Damji who was on episode 24 of the podcast, and then he was giving us some great tips. You might want to check that one out, and today he’s going to tell us even more.

Gordon Sheppard:    It’s a terrific interview. You’re going to learn a lot and I’m not going to delay. So here’s the interview with Alnoor Damji.

01:25 – Interview Starts – Alnoor Damji

Gordon Sheppard:    Alnoor, welcome back to the show. You did a blockbuster job in episode 24, it was really great to have you on so much so that I thought it was great idea to bring you back, to help leaders learn even more about what they should be doing on LinkedIn. Great to have you here.

Alnoor Damji:      Thank you once again for the lovely invite.

Gordon Sheppard:    Just for some folks that maybe have not caught up with you just yet, give us a brief introduction about yourself.

01:48 – Alnoor Damji Introduces Himself

Alnoor Damji:      Thank you for that. I have been teaching LinkedIn at conferences, workshops one-on-one for the past 10 years. It’s just been great to have been invited, even though all the way up to China to deliver these.

Gordon Sheppard:    Well, and I’ve seen you in action. I’ve seen you teach a room full of engineers who didn’t know a thing, and in a very short amount of time with a wonderful, wonderful sense of humor, you brought them a long, long way. And today, I know we were going to be … We were talking before the podcast episode got started here. You wanted to pass along some of your suggestions about things that leaders must do to succeed on LinkedIn. Where would you start people off for things that they must do?

02:26 – LinkedIn Suggestion #1 – Do not do it alone

Alnoor Damji:      Number one is do not do it alone. I find lots of leaders are afraid to collaborate. The beauty of the platform is when you collaborate on campaigns when you get together.

Gordon Sheppard:    But what I’m hearing you say is, you’re recommending that folks get involved with other people, and actually go beyond just putting up your picture and the text, but actually collaborate with people.

Alnoor Damji:      Exactly. Share your knowledge, and when you find using LinkedIn … It’s a search engine tool. So putting the keywords there, finding out who is within your first degree network, who is within your second degree network? Reach out, see if there is any way that you can collaborate together.

Gordon Sheppard:    What are some other suggestions that you have that leaders must do to succeed on LinkedIn?

03:13 – LinkedIn Suggestion #2 – Be human and tell a story

Alnoor Damji:      Be Human. How do you build a story. With any story, what is the setting? Well, who are the characters? There has to be that conflict. The conflict in me was mental health. The conflict could be the problems that you’re having with your product, with your service and then finding that resolution.

Gordon Sheppard:    And Alnoor, what you’ve been able to do is you’ve been able to actually be vulnerable on your profile, so that people can learn authentically from that, and then it’s exposed you to even more opportunities.

Alnoor Damji:      That is so true. And when I shared about being authentic on … This is what I’m sharing a lot these days. This is how people 10 times their brand. We are so afraid to be human. And when we are showing that there’s a real person behind this, people are reaching out and saying, can I work with you?

Gordon Sheppard:    Al Noor, these are absolute blockbuster suggestions. Do me a favor for the audience, and just recap your main points.

04:09 – LinkedIn Suggestion Recap

Alnoor Damji:      My big thing is don’t do it alone. Work together with other leaders. Collaborate there, have an abundance mindset. Share your knowledge. And then, when you share your knowledge, do it authentically. Be open to taking risks with the content that you’re sharing. The people are wanting to know what there’s a human behind the social media, so that is the key things for you to level-up and build your brand.

Gordon Sheppard:    Al Noor, fantastic information. As always, really appreciate you being here on the show. If people want to get in touch with you directly to learn more about some of your LinkedIn expertise, how can they get in touch?

04:50 – Alnoor Damji – Contact information

Alnoor Damji:      You can reach me via my email on Noor@IamAlNoor.com on LinkedIn. My hashtag, please do follow those, is #IamAlNoor.

Gordon Sheppard:    IamAlNoor, you definitely are Al Noor. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Alnoor Damji:      Thank you again for inviting. Al Noor means delight, so thank you so much for that.

05:12 – Conclusion

Gordon Sheppard:    I hope you got as much out of that episode with Alnoor Damji as I did. And the big piece for me in there was when you’re on these social media platforms, don’t do it alone. Reach out, and then when you reach out, imagine if you share the great knowledge and the skills that you have, you’re going to absolutely help other people to grow. It’s what I do here on the podcast, and it’s what you can now do on LinkedIn. 

05:38 – Meeting Leadership Academy – https://meetingleadershipinc.com/academy

I also want to let you know that this episode of the meeting leadership podcast is brought to you by the Meeting Leadership Academy. If you want, great live training for you and your team to learn how to have more effective meetings, if you want to build your leadership skills through great online training, check out MeetingLeadershipInc.com/academy to learn more. And as always, thank you so much for listening, and we’ll see you tomorrow on the meeting leadership podcast.

06:02 – Podcast Outro

Thanks for listening to the meeting leadership podcast. Be sure to subscribe for more strategies to help you become an outstanding leader. And don’t forget to rate and review so we can bring you fresh content every day. We’ll see you tomorrow, right here on the meeting leadership podcast.