Blowing your own horn

In many parts of our culture, it’s considered impolite to talk about yourself and your own accomplishments. In one workshop I lead, we talk about what messages we may have received that underscore this idea.

and my favorite:

There is, of course, an element of truth in all of this. For whatever reason, many of us are turned off by someone talking too much about their own success.

But, as with so much of what I write about here, who decides what’s “too much”? Who determines what amount of communication about what we’ve done is appropriate? And is it important to change this?

I want to make an argument for increasing people’s capacity to talk about the cool stuff they create and think and build and do. For one thing, it’s insanely interesting. I want to know about the book my neighbor wrote and the great apartment my friend renovated and the beautiful handmade soap my colleague creates in his spare time. Knowing about these things can make my life better, and even inspire me to create and make things myself.

Another reason we should want people to talk about what they’re great at is that it helps other people know who to go to when they need that thing. This is true on a community level (“ask Rob about his awesome soap”) and on the professional level (“you need Mary’s expertise on your team”).

If Mary doesn’t figure out how to pick her head up from her work and let other people know what she’s doing, they…won’t know. The idea that the people you work with somehow have a running tally of what you’ve done in their head is a myth. People are really only thinking about themselves, almost all the time. So even if Mary’s boss knows that she worked on X project, she probably hasn’t kept up with the fact that Mary did additional research to solve the key problem, and came up with a novel solution that could be rolled out to other departments across the organization. Mary has to tell her.

This is where it can be hard for those if us who have internalized the messages above. “Well, surely someone else will tell her” we allow ourselves to believe. “She’s a great boss; she’ll notice.”

Again, I have to tell you, she won’t. Or more to the point, she might, but do you want to rely on someone else to tell the story of the work you did? Will you get the credit you earned?