Have you been around someone who seems to “toot their horn” at every beck and call, leaving you feeling disgusted and ready to exit their sphere?
Do you wonder if you should speak up? Promoting yourself doesn’t have to have to put off everyone within your vicinity, in fact, self-promotion is a leadership skill women need to embrace.
Although women understand self-promotion is key to their advancement they don’t use it, having been conditioned to do “good work” and wait for recognition. In fact, women hate talking about themselves! In a 2019 survey, 77% of women would rather run errands in the rain, clean the bathroom, or give up social media for a week.
Self-promotion can effect massive change in women’s ability to reach heightened leadership however by not implementing self-promotion women can be overlooked for promotions due to their management being unaware of the abilities and qualities.
To avoid the negative outcomes of little to no self-promotion consider:
Your Accomplishments Help Others
Self-promotion is a leadership skill and you have a responsibility to share not only what you have accomplished but that or your team and company. You can use these accomplishments to build influence. Did you build a great project? Share this! Did you mentor a coworker who developed an incredible program? Promote each of you! Share honestly about all you have successfully completed as well as those around you.
Align Your Skills
What are your skills and passions? How can you align these in a way to use as self-promotion? By identifying your skills and passions you can find and create opportunities to self promote like a new project, board position, and more. Embracing self-promotion not only brings enormous benefits for your resume and portfolio you are creating yourself as an expert in different initiatives.
Know Your Audience
Struggling to practice self-promotion? Learn your audience. What do they care about? What interests and motivates them? What are their goals? Who are the key stakeholders? Blatant horn-tooters may make you cringe, however by identifying your audience and what their needs are, you can position yourself favorably by tailored self-promotion.
At the end of the day, you are worthy of self-promotion, it’s not arrogant or disgusting, it all depends on how you implement it. This is a necessary leadership skill women must embrace. It establishes a connection within your community where you are helping others, aligning your skills with your audience and leveraging your passions and skills for the most benefit for everyone involved.
Finally, consider this, if you are unwilling to self-promote how will you relish the feeling of success if you’re unable to share it?
You are talented and deserve recognition.