How often do you get to performance review time, or prepare for an interview, where you are required to talk about the great things you have done and feel somewhat stumped. You look back on the ‘successes’ of the year and think “but that was me doing my job, how do I talk that up?”
If this rings true for you, you are not alone – I hear these types of comments from 90% of the females I coach. But only around 10% of the males.
This kind of chatter often doesn’t discriminate for those in high-up-the-chain roles either. I was once told by a female client “My manager told me to think, act and speak like a man to talk myself up!” Alas, she was not (a man) and using this method made her feel ultra uncomfortable and even less confident in herself.
Often at this point, the female coachee will say to me “But, I don’t want to come across as arrogant either!” I hear you and no one wants a “I’m so wonderful because I got out of bed and showed my face at work today” story. Rest assured this is not written to create such a result, just to get you thinking of ideas for what you can do to clearly state the great things you are doing, no exaggeration, no underselling.
So, how do you get started?
First up, let’s be real; there is a job to be done. Of course, efforts for job completion could be deemed ‘not up to scratch’, while on the other hand, ‘exceptional’. So how do you even decide which bucket you fall into? Or whose perspective decides this? This can be the start of the concern we have when trying to decide how well we have performed. We base it on our external world – what other people think, or might think of us – which of course can change from manager to manager, or company to company.
I want to ask you: why do you have to wait for someone’s perspective as to what deems good vs. bad? Why not lead yourself & create what expectations you see as good, or great, or exceptional for yourself? Rest assured this doesn’t mean that we don’t take on feedback or assistance to grow and learn, but sometimes taking a step back and viewing from our own eyes as watching someone else with our expectations of (good/great/exceptional), then working on our inner world can make a huge difference!
Make a list of the job tasks – you may already have this in a PD – make a few action points for poor, average, good, great performance. I.e. what is the action behind great performance here? Viewing the position from your eyes as ‘manager’, helps you see from another perspective, keeps job performance tasks clear when it does come time to measure yourself and talk about it. You could always ask for feedback from peers or managers if what they see as great performance measures with yours and discuss the differences.
Then, work on your inner world – confidence aspects – is critical to allow us to speak as us, naturally, happily, and eventually, comfortably. Ask yourself questions such as what makes you employable, what do people at work come to you for, what are 2 of your ‘superpowers’. Once you have asked yourself, then ask a friend, colleague or partner (or all 3!), others can really help us see the great in us when we aren’t so sure.
We don’t have to pretend to be anyone else just to feel comfortable about who we are and what we bring to the workplace.
