Tips for Career Success – Tip 14: Be Boastful
Tip 14: Be Boastful
I know what you’re thinking. “Wait a minute! Wasn’t tip 15 telling me to be humble? What’s this boastful section doing in here?”
The truth is that successful people possess a balance of both humility and boastfulness. More importantly, they know when to use each. The best advice I can give in this area is to treat humility as a daily way of life attitude. Your gut reaction or instinctive stance should be one of humility. However, also be sure to make your successes known to help get your name out there as a high-performer. Effectively, you need to boast sometimes. A well-performed task or a big win at work can and should be something that elevates you within the company. Yet, if that same success is not recognized or acknowledged, it can just as easily be something that makes you despise your company. It is up to you to make sure you are doing your part to receive the recognition you deserve.
Why You Should Boast
In my first job out of school, I was lucky enough to develop a friendship with our CIO. One day at lunch, I asked him for advice on how to get to where he was at in his career by the time I was his age. He was a very young CIO of a large organization at the age of 42. His advice was simply to remember that no one will ever care as much about your career as you do. It is so easy to get frustrated when we feel our hard work is not getting the attention or recognition that it deserves. However, if we keep in mind that no one else cares as much about our success as we do, it paints a different picture. With that frame of mind, we can see that:
A.) we should not be upset with our boss or co-workers who are not advertising our successes, because our successes are simply not as important to them as they are to us
and
B.) it is up to us to make our successes known.
With this new frame of thinking, we can easily recognize the need to be boastful sometimes, but how do we balance humility and boasting?
When You Should Boast
How do we advertise our successes while maintaining humility? How do we boast without being seen as boastful? The truth is that it is hard to balance boasting and humility. Here are a few tips for when and how to boast:
As a follow-up
For a group effort
Opportunistically
As a follow-up: when you have shared a challenge with someone and then solve that challenge
I have found great success in letting those I work with know what I am working on or challenged by before it gets resolved and becomes a success. There is a twofold benefit to this approach: you might find the people you share the challenge with can help you solve it (see the next section) and once you do solve the challenge, you can share with your colleagues your solution/success without coming across as pompous or arrogant. There is a life-hack with this approach as well: if it does not become a success, simply don’t bring it up again. 😊
For a group effort: not only your success but a shared success
While sharing about a personal triumph may come across as being conceited, boasting about a shared success is often not seen as braggadocious at all. To illustrate this point, let’s take a little imaginary journey together:
Picture with me a scenario where one of your colleagues is in a meeting with your shared manager and you. You and the colleague have recently been working on a project together, and over the weekend, your colleague made a huge breakthrough and was able to complete the project. The colleague then proceeds to share with the manager a story of how they singlehandedly saved the company thousands of dollars due to this breakthrough.
Store away for a minute how you are feeling right now after imagining that and let’s go now on a different journey together.
Your colleague and you are in a meeting with your shared manager. You and the colleague have recently been working on a project together, and over the weekend, your colleague made a huge breakthrough and was able to complete the project. The colleague then proceeds to share with the manager a story of how collectively the two of you came up with a solution that saves the company thousands of dollars.
How do you feel now? Bragging about shared successes brings successes forward to leadership and brings colleagues closer together.
Opportunistically: when you are able to bring light to your success to a company leader (cautiously)
Another way to make successes known is to share them appropriately during larger group meetings. The instinct is to go straight to your boss in most instances when you do something that is good and brag about it. Unfortunately, very few bosses are going to advertise your success up the chain to their boss or back down the chain to your peers. Be sure to do this appropriately though or you can quickly pass from sharing a success to bragging, and as we’ve discussed, no one likes a bragger. While I wish there was an easy tip for how to work this one into your bragging repertoire, it really isn’t that easy. The best advice I can give is this: use this technique rarely, be as humble as possible while boasting about the success, and make sure it is worth it (i.e. share a big win and not something that could just be seen as doing your job).
Summary
In summary, boasting is an important skill for career success because no one will ever care as much about your career as you do. However, knowing when and how to boast is just as crucial to avoid being seen in a negative light.
Join us again next time for Tip 13: Volunteer.
Next Steps
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