One of the more popular topics, and it’s even one of my more watched videos, is around the concept of advocating for yourself. Having this ability or empowerment to speak up and share the amazing things that you’re doing. Look, nobody is going to promote you or offer opportunities to you if they don’t know what it is you’re doing.
And if you’re walking around, assuming that everybody can just magically see what you’ve done, you are absolutely mistaken! So you do want to be advocating for yourself; you want to speak up if you’re interested in career advancement, or going to the next level or the next opportunity.
But there’s something I’d like to offer for you to do before you speak up – and that is to listen up.
Listen up! And I mean, listen to what’s most important to your organization and to your manager. It’s great for you to go in and speak up and say, “Hey, this is what I’ve done. This is what I’m interested in.” But if you’re doing that before you understand what’s most important to your company and to your boss, you are very likely going to miss the mark.
It’s going to fall on deaf ears, it’s not going to be impactful, and it’s not going to drive what you want it to drive – the outcome, the goal on the other end. So before you go in and start advocating and speaking up for yourself, take some time to really listen. Listen to when your manager is speaking about current objectives and current goals.
What is the company focused on this year, what are their overarching visions and missions for this particular year or quarter? That’s where we want to start, is by listening up before we speak up!