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We have struck a partnership with a large blue chip. I have had 2 meetings this week with them. For the second meeting there was a confusion about the time of the meeting due to timezone difference, the first person joined fine and later accepted my connection, the second person did not join, and sent an email telling me that they thought it was x time. I informed them that there must have been some confusion, in the end she did not join. Anyway, subsequently she did not accept my Linkedin request when I tried to connect with her.

We are partnering with them, should I bring this up with my boss, that I might have upset her?

I am a bit annoyed if this is the case, since in the invite, it informed the other party of the timezone difference.

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    Nobody is ever required to accept a social media request, nor to explain why they did not. Don't take it personally.
    – keshlam
    Nov 18, 2016 at 21:25
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    They might have to do business with you, but that doesnt mean they have to connect with you using their personal LinkedIn account. This is a sucky way to force people to connect with you.
    – user34687
    Nov 18, 2016 at 22:50
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    Are you sure she's seen your LinkedIn request? Many people do not regularly check their LinkedIn account, and not everyone gets email alerts for their account. I know some people who haven't updated their account in years. Personally, I only check mine once or twice a month.
    – djohnson10
    Nov 19, 2016 at 1:01
  • Sorry guys , just started using it, so not sure what Linkedin etiquette is. Since they were partnering up, I thought to myself that we should connect since it is a long term partnership we are establishing.
    – bobo2000
    Nov 19, 2016 at 12:07

2 Answers 2

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The threshold for making LinkedIn connection varies to a large degree from person to person (and for some people from day to day). For instance, I generally do not accept professional connections from people that I have not already worked with for a long period. I would not accept an invite from someone with whom I had a meeting booked once.

So I would just ignore this, and do not treat it as any indication of what your contact thinks of you.

It is entirely possible that your contact is annoyed about the failure to meet, independently of the LinkedIn invitation. However, even if it is their fault, I would hope that you are both professional enough to rise above these small annoyances and work together as your companies appear to wish.

Raising it with your boss as an issue seems an over-reaction. I probably wouldn't mention it at all, and definitely not in a way that makes your boss think there is something wrong needing intervention. However, if you find yourself talking through the the initial meeting stages or relationship with new partners in detail for some reason, I don't see any harm in mentioning it as a small detail.

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  • Would add that I accept hobby-related contacts with lower threshold, but LinkedIn doesn't differentiate . . . that's entirely my choice to be as arbitrary as I want on social media. It kind of works for me, BTW, my skills reflect professional contacts, and my hobby contacts rarely interact with me anyway. Nov 18, 2016 at 21:32
  • Indeed, "had one broken meeting appointment" would be far below almost everyone's threshold for LinkedIn accepts. She hasn't actually worked with you at all, yet; the invite was way premature. Nov 19, 2016 at 13:14
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LinkedIn is social media, even though it's business. Not everyone wants to be social.

Don't worry about it. It's not like it will directly affect anything.

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