STOP Underselling Yourself
How often do you find yourself re-thinking a recent conversation and how you could’ve pitched yourself better? I just did this last week at a job interview, when asked about my experience in a particular area, I erred too far on the side of modesty. For some of us, getting better at accepting compliments and representing the work we do is probably a life-long process, as we’ve been socialized by family and culture to always downplay our achievements and contributions.
Toni Collis gave a one-hour session for SheTO last fall, sort of a crash course version of a workshop she usually does over the course of a week. Toni wants to get 2000 women into tech board rooms in the next five years. She’s a former executive herself, now a coach, with a masters in high-performance computing and a PhD in physics.
The focus of Toni’s workshop was on how to stop underselling and undervaluing yourself and your team. She pointed out that if you’re a manager and you struggle to do this for yourself, doing it for your team can help you get out of your own head. She emphasized the business benefits of building self-confidence.
The negative ripple effects of undervaluing yourself include:
Not getting the recognition you deserve, from your team or your company, because they don’t know how much you do behind the scenes,
Being underpaid because of that
You’re frustrated by lack of progress in your career, and anxious about that
You spend more time justifying your ideas and decisions than your peers do, and your team doesn’t appreciate everything you’re doing for them.
The results of undervaluing yourself include:
You appear less qualified than you really are
You appear desperate (for example, in a job interview)
You seem like a poor negotiator, because you don’t seem to take yourself seriously.
The first step is recognizing that you deserve the same opportunities as anyone else. The goal here is to enable you to have the impact on the world that you’re capable of making.
Toni shared some exercises where she encourages us to answer these questions ourselves, as well as having 3 trusted peers answer these for us:
Choose 3-5 words to best describe yourself. For example, I chose: brave, resilient, direct, insightful, empathetic.
What is one thing you’d like to change about me and why? For example: One thing I’ve been working to change is the tendency to make assumptions about people’s motivations when they don’t do what I expect.
What are the best skills and assets I bring to the table? Here’s what I wrote:
I’m good at seeing what people are good at and encouraging them. I’m also good at challenging people to grow in a safe way.
I’m good at reading quickly, synthesizing information, asking the right questions, and writing.
I’m good at helping other people with their writing. I’m good at thinking outside the box and cutting through bullshit. I don’t tend to think like everyone else.
I’m good at breaking big projects down into smaller pieces, and estimating how long things will take.
I think I’m good at managing expectations. I’m not afraid to break bad news or confront people if necessary.
I’m good at back of the envelope calculations and research, prototyping, defining options, and deciding between those options.
I’m good at public speaking about projects I’ve done, and coaching folks to give better presentations.
I’m good at cross-team collaborations and building bridges across disciplines.
Next, Toni shifted gears and gave some advice on how to make a good first impression, for example at a new job.
Center yourself. Do this with whatever breathing or somatic exercises work best for you. I like to use qigong-style exercises.
Google yourself, and have a recent photo on LinkedIn, so people know they’re meeting with the real you!
Use powerful, confident, and positive language (this one is arguably the hardest to learn)
Introduce yourself in <60 seconds
The first 90 days are critical at a new job
When you introduce yourself, don’t just say your title or company name. Say your core skills and potential. Solving other people’s problems is makes you instantly valuable. With that in mind, write an impact statement in this format:
I am a ___ who helps __<type of company>__to ____. For example, in my current role I have __<describe an achievement>__ that ___<business impact>___.
Here’s mine:
I am a data professional with experience ranging from data collection to pipeline engineering to machine learning and shipping models in production.
I help domain experts, for example in cybersecurity, by automating what can be handled by machine learning/AI, so they can focus on the harder parts. In my last role, I led a team that productionized the company’s malware detection model, which improved performance so much that we moved up several slots in a third-party vendor evaluation of anti-virus tools.
For job searching, make sure you’ve listed your top 4 strengths in LinkedIn. The headline doesn’t need to be your job title.
Then she talked a little about negotiation, in the context of salary negotiation, but we negotiate all kinds of things on a daily basis for ourselves and our teams, e.g. budget, promotions, priorities, timelines.
Understand the other side
Assess your bargaining power and goals
Establish parameters/redlines: what are your go/no-go cutoffs?
Specific to salary:
How is the company doing?
Their priorities, plans, and BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement)?
What is your market rate/competing offers?
What would prevent them from giving you what you want?
The Q&A section of this session was particularly great, because the audience asked fantastic questions, and Toni give really succinct, practical answers.
First, Nidhi Gupta (SheTO’s courageous leader!), asked how we can be authentic while not underselling ourselves.
Toni answered by saying look, authentic leadership isn’t showing up and ranting about your personal life all the time. You still want to be the best version of yourself, i.e. you can say “I’m having a tough day, my parent is dying, I need some space” and then not too long after you’re able to show up and be your usual rockstar self. You’re honest and transparent while also demonstrating “I have the tools I need to succeed here.”
Q: I was always told my work should speak for itself. How do I get past that?
Toni answered: “It should, but it doesn’t.” She went on to say it’s very easy to miss contributions, we all do it, and even the best bosses miss things. That’s why we have to always be telling people what we did and why it matters. She said it should always be fact-based, i.e. “I’d like to take this project forward, here’s why it’s good for the business…”. It’s not about aggressively arguing or seeking attention for attention’s sake. She said it’s never too early to start talking about the business case for our work.
Q: How did you learn to have a better work-life balance? And I really loved Toni’s answer, since I completely agree and had a similar experience. She said your success depends on your work-life balance. You do your best work when you’re well-rested, take all your vacation days, and socialize. Studies show how productivity drops at >40 hours/week of work. You have to have rock-solid boundaries.
Q: How to deal with colleagues who say I only got my job because I’m a woman, and not because of my skills? What do you say to people who say you’re only a diversity hire?
Toni said “I know what I’m about to say is hard to believe, because what they said really hurts, but it doesn’t matter what they think. Say nothing if you can, because they don’t deserve our time. If you want to, or need to challenge them, use facts, and disagree, and say here’s what I bring to the table. If it’s a colleague, you can report them to HR. But fighting those individual fights is tiring, and we can choose to just ignore them and say hey, even if I was a diversity hire, that’s still a really high bar. Fewer than 9% of people in boardrooms are women.
Q: How do we reprogram a lifetime of being socialized to be humble and never brag?
Toni said first, give yourself a break. Notice when you’re people-pleasing. Check in with yourself at least 3 times a day, for 3 weeks. You’ll start to notice when you’re doing it, eventually you’ll get to where you notice in the moment, and then you can change it.
Then you notice, pause, and reframe. To re-frame, you say “Thank you brain, for trying to protect me, now it’s time to be different.” If you see the same things coming up over and over again, write them down and figure out what to say differently. Write it on a post-it and put it on your computer screen if you need to remind yourself what to say next time.
Q: What to do if you’re already in a situation where you’re being undervalued?
Toni said it depends on whether it’s because you’re not talking about yourself, or because of a toxic work environment. If it’s toxic, cut your losses and focus on getting out. If it’s a healthy work environment, prepare some statements for upcoming meetings, and ask more questions as a way to advocate for ideas. Your visibility will go up, and with it, your confidence.
She said confidence isn’t what makes you brave. Experience is. So you have to be willing to make yourself uncomfortable, and practice selling yourself, and what you bring to the table.