Advocate for yourself

Exercise:

Advocating for yourself isn’t about always tooting your own horn and grabbing all of the attention. It’s about advocating for yourself so you can do your best work and be recognized for it.

Some thoughts to consider:

• Build your confidence through knowing your strengths, nurturing your inner critic, saying affirmations, physical embodiment, and continued decision to feel and behave with authentic confidence.

• Know your rights and local processes. Understand what is legally permitted. Know the processes for your organization.

• Reflect on how you do your best work. The environment. The time of day. The level of collaboration.

• Decide on what’s important to you, to advocate for.

To do your best work:

• In a 1:1 with your manager, share how you do your best work and what requests you have. You may want to work in a quieter environment or at home. You may want to wear headphones. You may want to keep your video off on most calls. Reflect on how you work best and share that with your manager. Actively listen to their response. Respond with appreciation or a counterproposal.

To share your opinions, ideas, and to ask questions:

• Reflect on your style in meetings. Do you like to speak up? Do you not like to speak up? Do you have things to say and don’t? What is causing you not to speak up? If you’re not speaking up, ask yourself these questions:

  • Is it your own hesitance?

  • Is it because other people are talking too fast?

  • Is it for some other reason?

  • What can you do about it?

  • If it’s your own hesitance, you can work on your beliefs. Notice your inner critic, name it, be mindful (breathe/rub fingers together), assess it & question it, then shift to a positive thought or action.

  • If other people are talking too fast, raise your hand (virtually or physically).

  • You can discuss the situation with a colleague or a coach to brainstorm ways to speak up and contribute.

To share your good work and be recognized:

• What do other people need to know about that you’re working on?

• What’s important to share in team meetings?

• What’s important to share in 1:1 interactions?

• What’s important to share with your manager?

• If it’s relevant to the other person or group, plan on sharing a brief update that gives the context of what it is, the concept/the what, the why, the when, the who, and the how. Keep it brief. Listen actively to responses. Take notes on questions or feedback. Follow up with people and/or group.

In order to advocate for yourself, you need to know what’s important to you. Here are questions to reflect on:

• What are your values from the earlier lesson? When other people’s behavior conflicts with your values, do you want to speak up?

• When you’ve put effort into a project and other’s need to know the status, risks, or wins, do you want to speak up?

• Are there specific causes, topics, or situations that are important to you where you want to speak up?

Make a note of what’s important to you and do your own self-coaching, that when these topics come up, you want to speak up.

Action: think about areas in your life or career where you want to be more of an advocate for yourself. Pick 1 and decide the timing, tone, and frequency in which you want to speak up.