3 Effective Ways To Advocate For Yourself In The Workplace

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The term self-advocacy is thrown around frequently, but the practical and necessary tools to get there are rarely discussed.?

Self-advocacy is a critical part of healthy relationships, long-term success, and overall happiness in life.?When you feel comfortable advocating for yourself, you can get what you want and deserve out of your difficult conversations.?

Zabeen Mirza, Founder of Jobs.mom, and podcast host of Mom’s At Work, discusses what self-advocacy is and how to use it to better your negotiations and general life.??

What is Self Advocacy...Truly??

Mirza states that self-advocacy is teaching people how to treat you.?

You teach people how to treat you by doing the following:?

1. Setting boundaries and expectations
2. Helping others to understand exactly what you want and need
3. Sharing what kind of support you need in order to perform effectively at work

Self-advocacy is communicating those things, and then helping others understand how they can best support you.?

It is a common misconception that self-advocacy is just about speaking out or standing up for yourself and that only good communicators or extroverts would be good self-advocates. However, you don’t need to be loud or outspoken in order to be able to advocate for yourself.

One of the biggest ways in which you can advocate for yourself in the workplace is by asking your employers to help you develop professionally. For example, ask them for more training, a professional development course, or even more responsibility.?

Another way you can advocate for yourself is by asking your higher-ups what their priorities are.?

If you have a million and one tasks to complete and your manager is asking you to take on even more tasks, take this opportunity to practice self-advocacy.?

If this happens, tell your manager something like this: “I understand this is important for you. However, let me show you the tasks I still need to complete. Can you please help me understand what the priority is? What is the deadline? What are things you want me to put on the back burner so that I can now do these more important things?”

Doing this does two things.?

First, it allows you to advocate for yourself without having to be aggressive. You are simply asking questions for clarification.

Secondly, it shows that you're organized.?

It shows that you care about your work enough to keep track of your assignments and that you are making sure you complete those tasks to the highest level of quality and on time.?

While it can be intimidating to have the conversation who out-ranks you, remember that a lack of advocacy on your own behalf increases your likelihood for a multitude of problems such as severe stress, anxiety, burnout, job dissatisfaction, etc.— all of which can negatively impact employee performance and can be more costly for your employer in the long run.?

In other words — you have more leverage when setting boundaries than you think.

Advocating for yourself early and often by setting those limits in instances of increased demands on your time are also incredibly important to set the tone for what future practices and behaviors will be tolerated, and will make it easier for you to address demands in the future that go outside those limits.?

Barriers to Advocating for Yourself

The unfortunate reality is that there will be barriers to advocating for yourself, both internally and externally.?

What are these barriers??

Implicit Bias can play a major role in self-advocating, according to Mirza.?

When we see ourselves through a biased lens, we may be less likely to feel compelled to advocate for ourselves.?

If we are biased toward others, we have the potential to ignore critical aspects of a person's identity that maybe they need more support with.?

In order to recognize these biases, we need to reflect internally and notice our behaviors: are we treating a certain person or group differently? If, so - why?

Once you have reflected internally and recognized these behaviors, you can work on identifying, learning from, and correcting that bias in future interactions.?

How to Effectively Advocate For Ourselves?

If advocating for yourself doesn’t come naturally, it will take time to get to a point where it does. That’s okay, be patient with yourself through this process.?

In the meantime, Mirza advises us to take a “fake it till you make it” approach. Self-advocacy is like a muscle. You need to work it out consistently in order to develop confidence and self-belief.??

Start with your internal monologue.?

Instead of saying “I can’t, I’m not good enough, they won’t like this or that”, try correctly those initial thoughts to “ I CAN, I WILL, I AM good enough, and they WILL like this or that”.?

Again, this won't happen naturally, but try your best to catch yourself in the act of doubting yourself and your abilities.

It isn't always easy, but it's always worth it. Whether or not you ultimately get what you want, you're improving your skills and confidence in the process of advocating for yourself assertively and respectfully.