Advocating for Your Work
Try framing as best practices or a thank you to others. And don't forget to celebrate delivering as planned.
(Teddy the Corgi; Pacifica, California)
In reaching middle management, you’ve likely realized that getting ahead and being viewed as a leader in an organization is not just about delivering high performance; it’s also about making your achievements known and celebrated.
Women and minorities are more often assessed based on concrete, visible performance and not on potential. And so, we need to invest in making our achievements known even more often than non-minorities. And yet, we come from a hampered start. Women and minorities and often raised to “fit in”, be humble, and work hard.
Here’s a cliché that has more truth than I’d like: A woman cleans the kitchen, does the laundry, vacuums the floor, then hugs the kid goodnight, and goes to bed without a word. A man loads the dishwasher, then walks around the house announcing, “I cleaned the kitchen and did the dishes!”
I, and many women like me, did exactly that at work. After working hard and delivering great insights, we often don’t speak up to get the credit. Research has shown that not only are women less likely to speak up during meetings, when they do speak up, they are often not listened to or interrupted.[i] And when a man repeats the same idea, they get the credit. There’s now even a word for it: hepeating.[ii]
So, what to do to be more vocal? Some people get more aggressive and try to express their idea again. Sometimes, this approach runs into the warmth versus competence double standard, where women, and often minorities, are expected to be warmer and friendlier than white men. And so, it’s possible to overcorrect and then be labeled as rude or difficult to work with. Others ask the offender to explicitly give credit to the originator of the idea, which works if the person is open to feedback. Other people talk to their manager, who might then coach the interrupter, but can lead to strained peer relationships.
One of my favorite methods to make your ideas known is to share them as best practices or learnings. It has always felt awkward for me to just talk about my wins. And so, I hold lunch-and-learns or talk at team meetings about the things I’ve learned from my successes (and failures). I proactively share best practices for cross-functional collaboration, launching a new product, or getting the barista to make your drink just right. For me, it’s much easier to toot my own horn when I’m also giving back to others.
Another approach is to frame your achievements as a thank-you. You might have seen the LinkedIn posts where people celebrate a promotion or career win by thanking those who helped them. First, you express the achievement that is worthy of celebration, then you name all the collaborators and people who contributed to the effort and thank them. This is a great way to ensure your wins are seen and that people who contributed to a win but may not be speaking up for themselves are seen as well. Companies like Meta have standardized this as regular practice internally, with templates and ample encouragement from leadership to regularly post wins and thanks to coworkers.
Whichever tactic you try, the key here is to try different methods and iterate on how you celebrate your achievements until it works for you and your team. The worst case is if a win goes uncelebrated. It doesn’t matter if you feel uncomfortable tooting your own horn—it is simply a part of the job to talk about the wins and share the learnings with others. In the business world, if a tree falls in the woods and you don’t yell “timber,” it didn’t happen.
Celebrate Delivering as Expected
As you rise through the organization, projects become more complex. As these projects start to involve more teams, it is important to acknowledge and celebrate delivering projects as expected and on time. With high complexity projects and short timelines, it’s quite common for projects not to go as expected. As a leader, being able to prevent fires and launching features as expected and on time are worthy of celebration.
Let’s assume Alex and Sam are both product managers at Silicon Valley Startup Co. Alex is great at anticipating conflicts and problems. She works hard to ensure her product is running smoothly and that small fires are put out before they have a chance to grow. Her team hums along, delivering results quarter after quarter. However, Alex doesn’t get much exposure to leadership, and few other teams within the company know what she is up to.
Sam is not great at anticipating issues. He often misses key conflicts until it’s too late, creating large escalations to leadership and negatively affecting the work of many people. However, Sam is great at escalating and resolving large conflicts when they do happen. Sam becomes known for his conflict resolution skills and builds rapport with leadership, and his stories of resolving large conflicts travel far and wide. He is promoted within a year while Alex remains in her current role.
Ironic, right? Someone who is proactively managing the work and doing a better job has less visibility and is less likely to get promoted. Many leaders reward the hero who saves the day but forget to check if the hero created the fire in the first place, or that the person who pre-empts fires also deserves recognition.
As Alex to get the recognition she deserves, she should rally his team and managers to celebrate delivering as expected. Many aspiring executives do not pause and celebrate before moving on to the next task. Early in my career, I was often handling multiple projects concurrently, shifting my attention elsewhere when the launch was progressing well, neglecting to create a joyous moment where the team could come together, celebrate, and take a much-needed pause. Put times on the team calendar to celebrate delivering complex projects on time, as expected.
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Don’t be shy about finding ways to build your brand and advocate for your work. Just like writing and publishing a newsletter, every little bit counts.
[i] WomensMedia contributor, “Gal Interrupted, Why Men Interrupt Women and How to Avert This in the Workplace,” Forbes, January 3, 2017, https://www.forbes.com/sites/womensmedia/2017/01/03/gal-interrupted-why-men-interrupt-women-and-how-to-avert-this-in-the-workplace.
[ii] Beatriz Serrano, “Hepeating: When a Man Takes Credit for What a Woman Already Said,” El País, May 28, 2022, https://english.elpais.com/society/2022-05-28/hepeating-when-a-man-takes-credit-for-what-a-woman-already-said.html.