Say It Loud, Say It Proud: I Am Remarkable
Reports from a workshop designed to support women and underrepresented groups in talking about their achievements
Zone senior front-end developer Kayleigh Ridd reports from a workshop designed to support women and underrepresented groups in talking about their achievements.
Talking about and celebrating your achievements is a powerful way to be recognised within your workplace — and not doing it can be a barrier to promotion. For those in underrepresented groups, it is even more important in the fight to close the diversity gap in leadership.
But for me and many others, it is not something that comes easily. For women, there is societal pressure to be modest and not brag. We are told that our hard work will speak for itself. Alongside this, those who choose to self-promote can be judged harshly by their peers (and themselves). All of this can mean it’s hard to talk about our accomplishments directly without feeling uncomfortable.
I recently attended Google’s IamRemarkable workshop, an initiative that supports women and underrepresented groups in being comfortable talking about their achievements and challenging social perceptions around self-promotion. Here are some key things I learned.
Achievements Won’t Speak for Themselves
The first big lesson was that our achievements won’t speak for themselves. If we wait for others to notice our accomplishments, it may never happen. By not speaking up, we risk falling behind our peers who do — even if we are working just as hard as (or harder than) them.
This is really important when, for example, you’re going for a promotion. Being able to take a list of your accomplishments to your manager and teams lets them recognise what you can bring to the role and allows you to take control of how others perceive you.
It’s Not Bragging if It’s Based on Facts
Bragging can feel uncomfortable, and that feeling of awkwardness can make us shy away from celebrating our achievements. We’ve all heard the term “shameless self-promotion.” But the second huge takeaway from the workshop was that “It’s not bragging if it’s based on facts.” This is a really powerful way to reframe our perception of talking about ourselves.
What this means to me is that self-promotion shouldn’t be self-indulgent (as bragging suggests). I am trying to help others to understand what I can contribute and the skills I can offer. Focusing on the facts and talking about the work we have done or things we have accomplished isn’t bragging. It’s the difference between me saying, “I have two years experience of writing JavaScript professionally, and in that time, I have been a key contributor to three large-scale applications” rather than “I am fairly new to JavaScript, but I’m already pretty great at it.” Even as an example, that felt weird for me to write.
Putting It Into Practice
Self-promotion is a skill that takes practice to feel comfortable with and get right. To help us start practising, the workshop gave us a simple exercise. We started writing a journal, finishing the statement “I am remarkable because…”
To begin with, this felt very difficult. It took me a little while to write my first statement.
“I am remarkable because… I take time every day to support my team members.”
It felt like a small thing, but it’s something I’m proud of nonetheless. It was the small step I needed to build to bigger things and give myself permission to talk about myself without apology.
Once I had written my first statement and got past the initial uncertainty, it became easier to acknowledge more reasons why I am remarkable.
“I am remarkable because I tackle challenges that are new to me every day and I constantly push myself out of my comfort zone.”
“I am remarkable because I’ve provided bugfix code to the user-events library — a repo used by over 550k projects — to support a new use case.”
“I am remarkable because my colleagues nominated me for an internal award.”
“I am remarkable because, because, because…”
Starting each time with the line “I am remarkable because…” was really powerful to give me the space to be proud of myself and to try to silence the inner voice that shouts, “Who does she think she is?”
Saying It Out Loud
The second part of the exercise was to read two statements out loud to each other. It was a strong reminder that recognising our accomplishments internally is powerful, but championing them to others is an important step.
Saying to myself, “This thing I’ve done makes me remarkable” was difficult enough to begin with, so saying it out loud felt pretty daunting. It makes me feel vulnerable, but overcoming that to say, “Yes, this is something I’m proud of” was uplifting and empowering.
The group of people in my workshop were all experiencing the same feelings and were incredibly supportive. Hearing everyone else talk about their accomplishments was moving and it was wonderful to feel proud of all these people I had never met.
You Are Remarkable
This isn’t a challenge unique to me, and if expressing your talents and contributions doesn’t come naturally, here are some pointers I found useful:
- Write it down. Start with the “I am remarkable” exercise or anything that works for you, but writing the words helps internalise the message and gives you a list of accomplishments to refer back to.
- Don’t listen to your inner critic. Don’t worry if it tells you that what you’re writing isn’t remarkable enough. Just get it down.
- Don’t be too hard on yourself. Self-promotion is a skill that takes practice to get right, so keep trying — even when it’s difficult.
- Don’t be too hard on others. Creating a space where it’s OK for us to be proud of ourselves and allowing others to be without judgment is vital.
To find out more about Google’s IamRemarkable initiative, join the LinkedIn group for updates.
Thanks for reading!
