Self-promotion and different ways to be: Pulling out strengths from perceived weaknesses
Claiming your contributions is required to be successful in the workplace, but women are less likely to do it. I share sociocultural considerations on why this is hard and what we can do about it.
This year, I made a goal of posting regularly. I’m proud to say this is my 6th post! This week, I had planned to share tips for academics considering data science. However, my heart can’t get into that topic when my LinkedIn is flooded with posts about massive layoffs at Google, Microsoft, and Amazon. Instead I’m going to write about self-promotion, why it can be hard - especially for women, and what you can do about it.
What is your impact? What is your contribution to your team? These questions are common in the workplace. Performance reviews require employees to enumerate their many successes. Individuals build their reputation as competent and effective by frequently speaking to what they’ve accomplished and why it matters.
So easy, right? If you are a strong worker, surely you know what you’ve done and why it’s important. For some people, however, self-promotion feels uncomfortable or downright agonizing.
Women in particular are less likely to proclaim their contributions1. Many analyses cite a lack of confidence and undervaluing of their accomplishments. While that can be true, in this post, I take a different lens that considers systematic and (one of my favorite words) sociocultural factors.
I’ll share the punchline now (and hopefully you continue reading to learn more) - Perceived weaknesses often stem from learned strengths that were rewarded and practiced in the past. By learning how to pull out the strengths from those perceived weaknesses, we can make ourselves more comfortable and successful while promoting a different way of being.
Self-promotion as the assumed “right way to be”
When I hear the question, “What is your impact?” my brain short-circuits, and I hear a droning hum of “uhhhh…” reverberate between my ears. I am immediately torn between two states.
First, sometimes it’s hard for me to name and recognize my accomplishments. Then I face-palm because I know I do good work, and I’m proud of what I’m able to accomplish. When it comes to advertising those wins, however, the words feel slippery and unnatural on my tongue. I feel like I’m boasting, and I want to hide in a hole.
Second, I know I need to be able to speak to my contributions. It’s one way to show I’m confident in myself and then my partners can be confident that I provide value. After all, if I don’t make my successes visible, how would performance evaluators who don’t have firsthand knowledge of my work know what I’ve done?
Self-promotion as socially-constructed
As a social psychologist (yes, I’m going to keep bringing this up, it’s a strong part of my identity, and it informs the ideas I want to share with you), I have learned that this idea of “self-promotion = good” is a socially constructed one.
Self-promotion as an idea didn’t spring up on its own. It exists because people in a given culture decided it was a desired behavior and when people declared their triumphs, they were rewarded for it. Over time, as more practices and norms are created to encourage self-promotion, it starts to feel like this was always the way to be.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with self-promotion being tied to success. After all, it feels good to know you’ve done something well and it’s been recognized by others. It’s a source of pride to know you’ve built a reputation where people know what you’re capable of doing.
When cultural practices become problematic
Cultural practices and behaviors become problematic when they imply that the opposite behavior is bad and undesired. If self-promotion is good, then when you don’t promote yourself, you’re not doing “the right thing”. Something about you is lacking, and if you want to do well in the workplace, in your daily life, you need to speak to what you can do.
In the US, the idea of self-promotion as good is particularly entrenched. It stems from the core socially constructed idea that infuses every nook and cranny in the US - individualism and independence. Good, strong individuals know who they are through and through, and they’re not afraid to say it. When they declare who they are, they are seen as leaders and they’re trusted to get the job done.2
This brings us back to the dilemma for women, particularly those in the US, and how they are less likely to self-promote themselves. Part 2, here we come!
Avoiding self-promotion can be another “right way to be”
While the broader culture of the US promotes self-promotion (yup, I did that), women are part of circles that promote another way to be - being relational, accommodating, and creating situations that feel good for others. In these spaces, these other-focused behaviors are taught from an early age and rewarded just as much as self-focused behaviors are in the dominant culture. And it often feels good to look after others! Just as there is nothing inherently wrong with “self-promotion = good”, there is nothing inherently wrong with adjusting to others.
In fact, in many other cultures, particularly non-Western cultures, adjusting to others is not only not inherently wrong, it is promoted as the dominant right way of being. Interdependence and avoiding self-promotion is the desired behavior. Standing out and touting one’s own contributions is seen as immature because the assumption is no action is solely determined by any one individual. Contributions are still made visible, but in those cultures, other people do the highlighting, not you.
Women in the US are caught in the middle - for most of their lives, they were rewarded when they made others feel good. As they enter the workforce, which is a vehicle to promote dominant cultural ideas, they’re expected to switch on self-promotional behaviors and confident mindsets that they’ve had fewer opportunities to practice cultivating.
Faced with this challenge, what’s a woman to do?
Channeling different ways to be and turning perceived weaknesses into another tool for success
Ideally the systems that assume one behavior is good and another behavior that a large portion of the workplace embody is bad would change. Wouldn’t it be amazing if the workplace started to support and encourage behaviors related to not being self-promotional? Until that happens, all we can do is control what we can do. In this section, I’ll share some ideas on what you can try, and hopefully they can help you navigate some of these complex social situations and try new ways you can achieve success while promoting a different way of being.
Tips to channel a different way of being
As an Asian American women, I feel all sides of this situation. As a social psychologist (there I did it again), this is a problem I’ve thought about a lot and spent a great deal of time studying. Here are some of my conclusions and suggestions based on the knowledge I have so far:
It took me a long time to get here, but I’ve come to recognize and embrace the power that comes from being an interdependent, relational self. To do this, I’ve had to put aside my own conditioned assumptions that being independent is the right way to be. I’ve learned how to own my ability to listen, understand another person’s point of view, and create a connection with them. When I act in the world, I try not to move only myself forward; I want to bring others along with me so together we can create something better than any of us as individuals.
Now that I know self-promotion is a culturally shaped socialized behavior and not a magical gift people are imbued with at birth, I can start to learn and practice this behavior for myself. I am not destined to always be deferential because I’m an Asian American woman.
Knowing behaviors can be practiced doesn’t make them easy to learn. One caveat to the point above is to acknowledge that I am trying to learn new skills that others (mostly men) have spent a lifetime practicing. I can’t expect myself to get to their levels of self-confidence in a few days. But I know that if I keep taking risks and practice putting myself out there (and learn from the failures), I will get better.
Multicultural navigators have a superpower to flex depending on the needs of the situation. If you are a relational person and you’re feeling the pressure to promote yourself as a way to be successful, shift the story you tell yourself. You are not lacking. Avoiding self-promotion is not a weakness.
Think of these different behaviors as tools in a toolbox. Don’t throw away your relational wrench and only wield a self-promotional hammer. Channel your listening, connecting self when others are speaking. Channel your speaking, promotional self to share your point of view. Go back into listening mode to learn from the feedback, and repeat.
The world deserves your different way of being
I’ll end on this note - if you feel discomfort with a behavior you’re told you need to do to be successful, take a deeper look into where that discomfort comes from. Identify how it is tied to a superpower that is a part of who you are. Learn how and when to channel your strength hiding behind your perceived weakness. Take risks to practice the behaviors that feel uncomfortable to you, and add them to your tool kit.
If getting better at behaviors that the dominant culture desires means the world gets to see the wonderful, unique, different way of being that you could bring to it (and in doing so, slowly start to shift the system), then we will all be better for it.