Authentically Promote Your Work Without Feeling Like A Jerk Part 1 - Beliefs
How do you feel about selling your work?
Most of us have subconscious beliefs about what it means to sell our work and these beliefs hinder us from telling our story about how we are making a difference or having a substantial impact through our work product. Women particularly struggle with promoting our work due to a fundamental fear of being disliked or ostracized for being perceived as opportunistic, arrogant or even downright dishonest. We may be hyper-cautious about coming across as annoying or pushy at the risk of somehow offending others. Our resistance to self-promotion is deeply engrained by historical and current societal norms and conditioning, where girls are expected to be nice rather than disruptive and that attitude/expectation bleeds over into adulthood. (Download this free ebook 10 Confidence Building Habits To Implement Now if you want to build your confidence so that this fear of being disliked in NO LONGER a hindrance for you).
The root cause of the struggle with “selling our work” has less to do with our ability to communicate effectively, though this is a skill that can always be improved, and more to do with beliefs, attitudes and expectations regarding selling. In order to get unstuck in this area, it is critical to address these beliefs, attitudes and expectations rather than focusing the “how to” of promotion and selling.
Tool #1: Belief that selling is about overblowing the impact of your work and being deceptive
To illustrate this point, I will share an embarrassing personal story. Growing up in the late 90s, this was the era of tv infomercials, and as a teen I would fall for all the marketing scams on late night tv. The biggest one I can remember is my green hair tragedy in high school. I won’t get into a lot of details but let’s say it all started with an infomercial that advertised a miraculous natural way of straightening very kinky curly hair that left it healthy, with a lot of body and silky smooth. I bought the product and needless to say there was nothing silky smooth about the ending result. I ended up with big clunks of green product in my hair that wouldn’t wash out after hours of vigorous shampooing under the shower that resulted in my wearing a baseball cap for an entire week in high school while I waited until the hideous green color eventually washed out. In case you were wondering, even after all the green came out … still no silky straight shiny hair!
Based on this life experience (plus many more), I had really negative associations with selling anything, even my own work because I thought selling was associated with being deceptive and dishonest, and if it was good, people would just know about it anyway. The work should speak for itself is what I erroneously thought as so many others do.
This is a false belief: The truth is that our work does not speak for itself if there is no audience hearing what the work is saying!
Key reflection question: You may not have ended up with green hair, but what experiences have you had inside or outside of work that may have contributed to negative associations with sharing your work and its impact with others?
Tool #2: What Personal/Cultural Value(s) Do You Think You are Violating?
A good question to ask yourself to uncover why you are stuck is, what value am I stepping on by doing this thing? Maybe you think you are violating a value of honesty or even humility. You may not actually be violating a personal value but you may be making false associations with the action that will cause you to be stuck. In my case, integrity and truth are important values and I associated “selling” anything with being like a dishonest or “sleazy” sales person.
This is another false belief; the truth is that you can build awareness about your work and its impact while maintaining your integrity. This means sharing in an honest, authentic and balanced way. There is no need to be deceptive and the people you are sharing it with always have the freedom of choice to decide what they want to do with the information that you have generously shared with them.
Tool #3: The importance of choosing a word that works for you
Another thing to think about are the words that you use to describe the process. Words are very powerful and they have an impact on our associations and thought patterns in powerful ways that we are often unaware of. There are so many negative associations with “selling” that many of us can’t get past this word to do what we need to do to get our information out there.
What if, instead of using the word “selling” you chose a word or phrase that resonates with you and reflects your intention? This is a great way to get yourself motivated to take action that doesn’t trigger you but instead aligns with your values.
Some suggested replacements for the word “selling” are “sharing your work, “sharing best practices” or “sharing information”. Another useful phrase could be “building awareness” about your work to reflect that you are letting people know what has been done to contribute to a needed solution. It is essential to recognize the importance of adding your perspective so that decision makers can make an informed decision based on diverse viewpoints and with all the key information available. When you don’t share what you know, you could be hindering an informed decision-making process. Whatever final decision is made is at risk for being imbalanced due to critical information being left out due to your lack of input.
Next week, we will continue to look at other things that hinder us from promoting our work and what to do about them but for now I am curious, what are some of the reasons that you may not feel comfortable with this concept of “selling” your work?
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Ok, that's all for this week my dear treasured friends, don't forget that you are a light, so shine!
