This is Laura Lee Rose, a business and efficiency coach that specializes in professional development, time management, project management and work-life balance strategies.
Simply put, I give people the time they need to be, do and have whatever they want.
It can be incredibly difficult for women to self-promote, since culture traditionally encourages self-disparaging attitudes in women. But not just women have this problem. How can you get over cultural barriers, or natural shyness, and really toot your own horn? Here are some tricks, and methods for learning to brag about one’s skill set and experience in order to build a business, attain new clients or get that promotion.Several avenues:
1) Just Ask. When you do good work, more often than not, a coworker, sibling department or client will come up and either thank you for your service or complement you. Take that opportunity to ask them to “put it in writing” as a testimonial or to your manager, and cc you and their manager. They are always happy do do that. The only reason more people don’t do it, is because it never occurs to them. Just Ask. Make is a point to do something nice and valuable for someone else, at least twice a month and ask for the note or even a video testimonial.
2) Create your Professional and Career Press Kit. Collect accolades. awards, recognitions, accomplishment, and customer notes in your achievement folder or Career Press Kit – as they happen. To many times people wait until the end of the performance review to remember what they accomplished throughout the year. Note them as they happen and you won’t have to remember.
3) Speak up. Start giving informative and valuable presentations and proposals. The best way to illustrate your value is to illustrate your value. If you are in the corporate environment, give Brown Bag Lunch training sessions on the next generation technique; create a proposal on how to either increase revenue, reduce costs or decrease time to market; start a movement to optimize or automate non-billable hours so that everyone can spend more time making money for the company. Stay visible with videos and even incorporating your head-shot to your email signatures. Make sure people know who you are. Make it a point to do at least 1 public speaking engagement a month.
4) Appreciate others. When someone else helps you, write a note to their manager and cc-your manager and them. Outline the important task that you accomplished with their help. Make it a point to thank at least one person a week this way.
5) Shine through others. Bring in valuable speakers and talent into your department. Create your own catalyst event to bring others together. Be the opportunity agent that connects the right pieces by asking experts to speak at your speaking series, interviewing them for the company newsletter, or arranging a consultation on a specific problem that your department or client is having, etc. Include this as your one-speaking engagement a month activity.
6) Weekly manager or client meetings. Take the initiative to schedule repeating weekly one-on-one meetings with your manager or client. Through the act of reviewing your weekly accomplishments, you are getting your achievements some stage time.
7) Don’t keep it in-house. If your manager is the only one aware of your talent and expertise, you are doing yourself a disservice. During performance time, all the managers of the same band have to rate and rank their pool of employees against each other. If you are only known to your manager – you won’t fair well in that comparison. Start volunteering your service and expertise to sibling departments other target markets. Be working on at least 1-side project for someone else at least twice a month. This is a good way to get “thank you notes” from the others and keep the pipeline of jobs coming.
As you may have noticed, I included a schedule to each of these action items. And each of this actions as associated with actually “doing the work” ( or the right to brag). The key is keep practicing on a regular schedule. If you continue to see yourself as shy, the you will stay that way. If you visualize yourself as a mover and shaker, you will become what you imagine. A habit is just a thought you keep practicing. Keep practicing the thought that you are a valuable and vibrant person.
If you want more information on these techniques, just holler at me. LauraRose@RoseCoaching.info