Art of Self-Promotion – Principles, Strategies & Your Script

The art of self-promotion, is essential for success. Find out the main principles that rule this leadership competency, the winning strategies and how to create an influential conversation about your value.

In my last self-promotion post we discussed how essential a leadership competency it is. Today, I’m sharing with you insights on the art of self-promotion than few people reveal. Let’s get started.

Part of mastering the art of self-promotion is to learn to include the contributions of others as you naturally weave-in yours in a conversation.

Principles to Help you Embrace the Art of Self-Promotion

The art of self-promotion is strongly anchored in your personal brand. And in order to brand yourself you must first understand your personality, passions, interests, and talents. Performance alone won’t speak for itself. Self-promotion is a leadership competency that is essential for communicating your talent and establishing your credibility.

1. First, ‘know thyself’ – Understand your personal value proposition. Authenticity is the foundation of the art of self-promotion. It provides you with the confidence you need to communicate the value you add to the organization. A little later, I will provide an exercise to allow you to write a clear script that identifies your strengths in ways that speak to the language of business outcomes. Your personal value proposition should be complimentary to the business needs, and in alignment with others’ goals and interests. Including others on your self-promotion formula can help you minimize, or avoid, resentment. Your personal value proposition should encompass past achievements, current impact, and future potential contributions.

2. No one climbs Everest alone – There is a myth that self-promotion means to advocate for oneself. In other words that it’s about stating ‘just the facts/ just MY facts’. But the reality is that there are a variety of different methods you can use to showcase your talents. Speaking about your teams’ accomplishments is another effective way to expand your own leadership and gain visibility. By doing so, you indirectly showcase your judgment, decision-making skills, and contributions while you promote others.

5 Key Strategies to Ace the Art of Self-Promotion

To strategically, and healthily self-promote, as well as endorse and promote others consider these actions:

1Personal Board of Directors (Sponsor, Mentor, and a Peer Advisor): Create a group of support to ensure you have people with your best interest in mind who can help you build and promote your personal brand. Personal branding is about people’s perception of you. Of the image you project. You don’t need to do it alone. Your Sponsor is a champion, your Mentor is a guide, and your Peer Advisor is a consultant that sees you in action and gives you feedback to keep you honest and in alignment with your goals.

• Sponsor: strategically seek the support and championship of someone with a position of authority and visibility to help you build awareness of your accomplishments. Someone who believes in you and fights for your legacy.
• Mentor: strategically select someone to advice you on how to navigate the culture of the organization, identify key relationships to foster, and coach you on how to be effective. Someone who encourages and guides you to take calculated risks (such as accepting stretch assignment to display your potential.) Someone who can celebrate your boldness and who helps you recover when something doesn’t go as planned.
• Peer Advisor: choose a colleague with whom you have frequent interactions and sees you perform in most aspects of your job. This is a person with a clear understanding of your role and responsibilities, including your cross-functional and multidisciplinary expertise. This person also needs to be clear about your goals and the support and guidance your Sponsor and Mentor provide in order to give you just-in-time feedback on how you are doing. This person is your “guardian angel,” someone you trust enough to be vulnerable with.

2Networking: attend professional events and make strategic and meaningful connections. Seek opportunities to share and collaborate in these forums. Actions speak louder than words, assuming an active role in these forums (being a panelist, facilitating a workshop, committing to a speaking engagement, etc.,) will allow you the opportunities to display your talents. This is a chance for people to learn about you in an indirect and modest way. One last note: Make sure to reciprocate if you rely on other people to give you a boost!

3Buddy System: establish a group of colleagues or friends with a shared goal of supporting and promoting one another. (This is at the core of the Red Shoe Movement Principles and what their methodology is all about.) This could be done in meetings, social media, and professional networks. You can support the effort by publicizing each other’s wins. All of this can be done in the spirit of promoting one another, but also of sharing knowledge.

4Passive: this is a subtle way to “feature” your accomplishments. Display awards, prices, recognitions, important degrees or certification in strategic places in your workstation. When you do it in good taste it becomes a quiet endorsement of your brand. Keep a professional bio available. Have a concise, yet relevant profile describing your qualifications in social media platforms including LinkedIn, Twitter, Blogs, etc.

5Just the Facts: this is how most people know about self-promotion. But “just the facts” it’s not only about giving a “speech” where you talk about your accomplishments. Weaving the facts into a conversation can be a very effective yet subtle method of self-promotion. (See an example below.)

For your personal brand to have a positive impact it must be authentic. That provides the foundation to talk about your value.

A Winning Script to Effectively Share Your Value

Now that you have the principles and the strategies, here is a suggested three-prong self-promotion script to help you effectively communicate and showcase “just the facts.”

1. State the current paradigm (the business challenge and/ or potential )
2. Determine how to introduce the challenge into a “boast.”
3. Make the boast, and give credit where credit is due!

Example of a Three-Prong Self-Promotion Script:

Rebecca, I just successfully closed the mega-deal with XYZ Company we’ve been working on for sixe months. It was not easy, as they are strong negotiators, but with the support of our research team, I drove home a $10 million dollars deal.

Notice the emphasis on your strength in handling a difficult negotiation, the inclusion of your team, and your ability to close a deal that will have a great impact on the bottom-line.

Final Words on Self-Promotion

Self-promotion is strongly anchored in your personal brand so it’s critical to understand who you are before you talk about your value.

The art of self-promotion is critical for one’s success no matter what your position in the organization. A word of advice, it takes practice, practice, practice. Practice makes perfect and it gives you confidence. Think about this: Professional salespeople make hundreds of sales calls a day. This constant repetition makes selling less scary. Similarly, the more you practice, the more natural your self-promoting becomes.

Remember to talk about outcomes, be matter-of-fact, make your self-promotion relevant, draw future applications, and individualize your accomplishments while including others!