How well do you stay in touch with friends from your younger academic years (high school, college, advanced degree programs)?

Our reader poll today asks: How well do you stay in touch with friends from your younger academic years (high school, college, advanced degree programs)?

• Extremely well: we’re in constant contact 6.85%
• Very well: we connect multiple times a year 20.09%
• Well: we’ll connect every few years 16.12%
• Not well: I may see them at a class reunion 22.73%
• Not at all: I’ve lost touch with all of them 34.21%

Missed connections and missed opportunities. 57% of you report not doing a good job of staying in touch with peers from your academic years. This could mean missed opportunities to build and strengthen your network. Given the plethora of social media networking tools and the ubiquitous nature of communication channels, it’s not terribly hard to reconnect with old friends and classmates. Many of those classmates are at similar places in their career. They could be great sources of customer referrals, employee referrals, job openings, and other business opportunities. They’re also great to connect with and have them be a sounding board and a friend. Go look up someone you were friends with long ago. See what they’re up to. Reconnect. At the very least you can reminisce about old times and possibly have a laugh or two.

– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC

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These results were originally a SmartPulse poll in SmartBrief on Leadership which tracks feedback from more than 240,000 business leaders. Get smarter on leadership and sign up for the SmartBrief on Leadership e-newsletter.