Promoting yourself: the rules of success
LEARNING THE ART Selfpromotion is a tough task because if you overdo it, you come across as a braggart else you lose out
A diligent and hard-working project manager at a global bank was known for meeting deadlines. A functional expert and a team player, she never hesitated to work beyond the designated hours. Self-evasive and reticent, she strongly believed that her work would speak louder than words to get her the recognition she deserved. Much to her dismay, however, she was passed over for a promotion that year.
Inherent excellence is not always enough to fetch recognition. Potential sponsors need to know about your skills, competencies, accomplishments and experiences to be encouraged to make a positive difference to your career. You can share information on this so that you get career-enhancing opportunities.
HOW TO DO IT
Self-promotion is a delicate art because if you overdo it, you come across as a braggart, and if you underplay, you don’t get the accolades. Here are a few strate- gies to generate more visibility:
PREPARE YOUR STORY
A senior stakeholder you meet in the elevator enquires, “What’s up?”, and you respond with, “All well. Thanks!” Instead, you could have seized this opportunity to promote yourself by highlighting an accomplishment or two. For instance, “We successfully closed a record number of 248 transactions this month—25% above average.” The trick lies in being prepared with your story, and arming yourself with data points that you can reel off at the drop of a hat.
REDEFINE SELF-PROMOTION
Since promoting one’s accomplishments goes against the value of modesty ingrained in us, let’s first rethink the definition of self-promotion. “Just as the objective of marketing a product is to generate awareness about its key benefits to help customers make sound decisions, think of self-promotion as a responsible communication of your talents and accomplishment to those who can leverage and benefit from this information, thus making it a win-win proposition,” says Darshana Ogale, chief operating officer, S P Jain School of Global Management.
CLOTHE IT IN ANECDOTES
Share your success in the form of a story. Instead of saying that you did an awesome job negotiating a successful deal with a tough customer, share your strategy and challenges in cracking the deal, enabling your team to learn from your experience. Engage with humility, focus on facts, and ensure that those stories are relevant, says Dorie Clark, in a Harvard Business Review article, How To Promote Yourself Without Looking Like A Jerk.
“Align your story with the context and the audience. Share it with a genuine belief that it is relevant to the audience, rather than with a mindset of promoting yourself. Authenticity matters,” says Atul Srivastava, chief executive officer, Effective Peo- ple, a Mumbai-based human resources consulting and training company.
IMPACTFUL INTRODUCTION
When called upon to introduce yourself at an external conference, an internal training programme or to a visiting global practice head, go beyond the vanilla introduction encompassing your role, designation and experience. Make your introduction audience-centric and impactful by incorporating elements that differentiate and lend a recall value.
ENGAGE BEYOND YOUR CORE WORK
As the organization expands, it is not easy to get noticed outside your immediate circle. “Participating in forums outside my core When you promote others, work, like knowledge-sharing guided by the principle of reciforums, organizational commitprocity, they promote you in tees, corporate social responsireturn. This reverse promotion, bility initiatives, diversity, etc. besides enhancing your visibilhas gone a long way in helping ity and highlighting your me garner visibility and connect achievements, also helps you with people beyond my operabuild relationships and earn tional network,” says Ogale. goodwill. So, be open to connecting with people, learning about, and promoting, their talents and achievements.
COMMUNICATE WITH YOUR MANAGER
Tracking your accomplishments and feeding your manager with regular updates would be mutu- ally beneficial—it would not only help you promote yourself, but also offer your manager data points to identify areas where you could contribute. Managing others’ perceptions about your accomplishments separates workplace winners from those who don’t move up the ladder.
ENGAGE ON SOCIAL MEDIA
Start with posting an impactful profile, portraying your expertise by engaging in discussion forums, posting articles and commenting on posts, thus creating visibility for yourself. “I have found that leveraging the organization’s intranet is a great way of getting your story before your audience,” says Ogale.
REVERSE PROMOTION