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When is it fine to brag about my professional work?

“What do you do?”

When I first started answering questions about my business, being able to promote myself in these quick moments — standing in line, going to conferences, meetups — made me tense, nervous and fidgety as I tried to explain my digital products and how I paired it with my writing skills.

Talking about myself in this way, I felt like I was self-centered, and not helping a potential customer. Soon, each conference or event became a waste of money because I never knew if I was communicating clearly enough and walked away without any connections.

I’ve always had a hard time with compliments and tooting my own horn. But self-promotion, or humble bragging, is actually effective as a skill. And if you find yourself abrupt or overconfident, how do you know the fine line between promoting yourself or bragging?

I had one colleague who tried to get the attention of the boss for her accomplishments. Since her bragging was done over channels like Slack, Asana, and Facebook messenger, these spurts of bragging started to divide the team.

A dead giveaway that these posts were shameless bragging and not team needed updates were that no one gave her little emojis, except her work bestie, and no one implemented her ideas, asked her how she got her results, or tried to connect with her. The bragging felt like it came for a place of neediness, and no one was willing to feed into it, at first.

Now I get that the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and she definitely got more attention from our boss than anyone on the team. She was known to cheat, take shortcuts, turn in work late, and I was outraged when she copied my ideas and took credit for them.

And her continuous bragging led to other needy people bragging. But the stronger players could spot the false flattery and left after they completed their short term contracts.

Are you contributing? A meeting is a place to contribute ideas, not an awards ceremony. What will show your brilliance is your ideas and level of execution on projects.

At my writing group, we have special guest speakers, one being Adele Lim, the screenwriter who did the adaptation for Crazy Rich Asians, and as she told us her tips on being successful in Hollywood, she mentioned two things:

It is a craft, the 10k hours are necessary because the train moves fast and without the mastery of the craft, you will fall off.

The people that stay on the moving train not only know the craft, they give good notes.

If you’re always bragging without giving constructive feedback, you’ve wasted everyone’s time in a meeting.

The boss doesn’t want flattery. The team doesn’t want to work with someone who takes all the credit for themselves.

Everyone is sacrificing their time to discuss RESULTS.

Are they good or bad? What business are you bringing in? Is there more productivity?

If you want to self-promote, share the results, not how great you are, but what the numbers say, how the customers feel, how does your audience react? Celebrate the idea behind the results before you toot your horn.

When I went to a writer’s pitch conference in NYC in 2015, we had only one shot to talk about who we are, what we write about and why we are skilled enough to write it.

I had never been published before, At the time, I was a Content Marketing Manager, all I wrote were blog articles on fitness. I didn’t think I had any skills to promote.

But the agents want someone who can talk about their ideas and their story in a clear and compelling way. When I discovered that I was competing with previously published authors, I would need another ace up my sleeve, energy.

I had to make up for my lack of experience with passion and win them over with a fresh perspective, unique voice and what I was capable of delivering.

As young women, we’re taught to be coy, sometimes even mousy, because boasting is not polite or ladylike. Men seem to have more flexible boundaries when it comes to having arrogance, it makes them more masculine.

There are times when being coy helps, but it’s mostly in dating or when we’re building certain relationships, it is rarely useful non-business settings.

But when you get that open opportunities, there’s no room for coy behavior. Drop it and speak up!

When I get compliments, I’ve learned how to just take them and say, thank you.

That’s it.

If someone is giving you some sincere, kind words, accept them.

Before I was the worst, someone would say, “I like your dress” and I would say, “really, it’s so tight and I feel fat.” or “I like your smile” and I would say, “oh, my crooked teeth..” then smile with my lips closed.

So when someone gives you a compliment, take that opportunity for some recognition.

“I really like the work you did on this project.”

Bragging: “I stayed later when everyone else left and got it done.”

No self-promotion: “Oh, no big deal. It’s my job.”

“I really like the work you did on this project.”

Self-promotion: Thank you, I spent more time preparing and I’m happy with the results.

People don’t want to give compliments just to be rejected later. They want you to graciously accept a compliment, so use the opportunities they give you.

Your resume is a list of your credentials and accomplishments, but what does that do?

But if you have witty, funny or anecdotal stories to tell, you can easily self-promote in a subtle way. I always have cocktail party like stories to share to show how I’ve problem solved, or try to find a way to fill gaps with what is missing.

With stories, you paint a picture, you invoke imagination, show experience and share a small lesson. This is the most powerful form of humble bragging made entertaining.

As women, solopreneurs, artists, this is skill is a MUST for success because you want to find recognition from the right people.

Will you stay humble id you self-promote? Yes. You can have both, as long as you focus on the results and what you can do for others, you don’t have to feel sleazy about tooting your own horn, graciously.

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