Two of my most recent posts talked about how to promote yourself and your team. If you haven’t read them yet, then you can catch up on them now! As promised in those posts, I wanted to share some tried and true approaches to do self-promotion for you and your team in ways that do not come across as bragging. Even though you are doing great work, you boss may not see everything since they are busy doing their own thing. Self-promotion is what you need to do and can be a game changer for your career. It is your way of keeping both you and your team in front of your leadership on a regular basis.
Here are a few examples:
- The Art of Using the Status Report
- This is your opportunity to send a weekly status to your manager (or other stakeholders) so that you can show what you (and your team) accomplished, decisions that were made, recommendations that you put forward, where you influenced change and all the things that you did that demonstrate your leadership!
- For some people a status report is easier to do because they have time to think about what they want to say and how they want to say it.
- This can be very effective especially when their boss is in another location or is not as available to them in person.
- If you do it consistently, it accomplishes a few benefits:
- It serves as a way for your boss to access information
- You get to manage the perceptions that people have of you
- It captures all of the things that you (and your team) have done which makes it easy to write up your end of year review.
- Promoting Each Other
- This is a way to leverage some of your stronger relationships to promote the work that each of you are doing.
- Support them by sharing their accomplishments and get them some visibility.
- Have them promote your accomplishments to others. It is a great way to get others to brag on you and your team.
- It is a good way to build broader credibility and reach a larger network of people.
- It may be easier for you to promote what other people are doing vs what you are doing.
- Volunteer for Visibility
- Take the opportunity to volunteer for leadership roles on taskforces, diversity groups, community groups or conference panels. This can be done either internally in your company or externally with charities that you have passion for and who can use your leadership.
- You can be a speaker, organize events or drive an initiative across your organization or team.
- Write a book, be on a podcast, start a newsletter, leverage your personal brand on social media to promote what is important to you and how you are driving change
The important thing to recognize is that you need to make sure people know what you are doing. Select one of these ways above to put yourself out there in a way that is authentic to you. I know you are telling yourself that you shouldn’t have to do this and that your work will get you noticed. Unfortunately it is no longer a viable option for managers to see everything that their teams are doing with the amount of work that everyone has on their plate and the global reach that technology has put in place.
Self-Promotion is what you need to do to ensure that you are connecting with the right people, managing the personal brand that you have with others and standing out from the crowd.
Here are a few additional resources that may also be helpful.
Do you have what it takes to be visible?
Do you want to be part of the good ol’ girls club?
Download my visibility infographic from my website for some other ideas on how to promote yourself.
If you would like my help or know someone else who needs help with self-promotion just send me a note! We can figure out the best way to move forward.