How To Embrace Self-Promotion Without Being Off-Putting

[Below is the audio transcript from this video.]

Promoting yourself in the workplace or online for your professional accomplishments and interests can feel off-putting at times. But it doesn't have to.

Self-promotion is essential for you to advance in your career, as you have to communicate to decision-makers and your peers, what you're working on your ideas, your accomplishments, and their impact on the industry at large.

Hi, I'm Brian Honigman. And this is my series Notes On Work, where I talk about what worked with marketing and your career. And in this episode, I want to talk to you about self-promotion without being off-putting.

I found that in many conversations with colleagues and friends when they're trying to talk about their accomplishments at work, whether it's on LinkedIn, or in a one on one with their boss, they struggle with feeling almost like selfish, or the focus is too much on them.

Even though they're talking about their own accomplishments, I found that there's three tips that work to help you better structure, how you're promoting your ideas in the workplace, and your accomplishments on a regular basis.

The first is talking about your contribution to a greater team, greater teams effort, or department's effort, if you can frame what you did as a contributor to a larger campaign or initiative, and kind of involve yourself as a part of the group.

That's one way of kind of moving away from the what I did, and me, me, me, and kind of focusing on the greater group's accomplishments, right. And that's a great way of highlighting your work ethic, your contribution without it being so centered on you.

The second tip is to focus less on, I'm so great, and look at what I've accomplished to this is the challenge I faced, I found that a lot of professionals are more comfortable talking about kind of the process they went through to overcome a roadblock, then being like, you know, look at me, I'm so great.

And that's probably for the best, you don't want to be too boastful or come across as arrogant or anything, but you do want to give yourself praise where it's deserved. So other people know what you're doing and know what to kind of associate what kind of work to associate you with.

So I often recommend talking about the challenges you overcome in the workplace, whether it's, you know, you know, solving an issue that many people were facing, or, you know, overcoming your own imposter syndrome, or whatever it may be, and talking about that in the workplace or on LinkedIn, so that, you know, people outside of your company can kind of hear about the challenge as well.

And focusing in on the challenge again moves the conversation away from you, solely, you're still related, of course, you're still part of the narrative. And when you talk about a challenge, it's likely not a challenge that only you have experienced. So it's also another way to bring in other people who can commiserate and chime in and start a broader conversation.

And then lastly, I think it's really important to foster relationships in the workplace, and from peers and other companies, with folks that will be your supporter, and sing your praises for you, give you kudos on LinkedIn or bring up your ideas or your accomplishments.

And that next departmental meeting, and that next conference, or whatever it may be, and kind of promote you, on your behalf. This is through relationship-building kind of networking, you know, being a reliable supporter of theirs, calling them out and calling out their accomplishments when necessary.

Again, this is can be online, in the workplace during a meeting, whatever it may be, so that you're not always saying kind of look at my accomplishments, but your colleagues, your kind of inner circle of supporters is doing it for you.

So you know, there are opportunities and times when it does make sense to say I'm really proud of myself. And this is the work that I accomplished in my field in my role and draw attention to it, you know, whether it's you know, in a meeting with your boss, and you're discussing your next promotion or you know, whether you're sharing that on in a LinkedIn article per se, but to continue to talk about your accomplishments and have it be a little less focused on you, you.

You want to talk about your contributions to a greater team effort. You want to talk about the challenges you're facing. And then lastly, build a kind of little support network for yourself, but you can kind of sing their praises and vice versa in a genuine way.

Thanks so much for watching. If you have any other I Ideas for topics that you'd like me to address or questions. Happy to do so in a future video. Thanks for watching. See you soon.

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