Noticing Accomplishments
Phew... I feel like a weight is lifting off my shoulders. I've been putting off writing this blog for over four weeks! If you haven't been following along (I get it, you have a life!), this is the third post in a series. After admitting how tough it is for me to "take the win," I've redefined WIN as Welcoming Achievement, Inviting Gratitude, and Noticing Accomplishment.
I've been writing a weekly blog for months, but this topic made me so uncomfortable that I just stopped. I thought about writing. I talked about writing. But the fingers didn’t move…Talking with a friend about my writer’s block, I realized it wasn’t really writer’s block that was the problem. It was about social conditioning.
This conditioning started in my childhood. I grew up in a small, hard-working town in rural Missouri, where everyone was pretty equal. My family’s Baptist roots taught us to be humble and repentant, and didn’t allow for women to be leaders. There was no room for a big ego, especially for a girl.
These roots carried into my career, where I hesitated to highlight my accomplishments. Some of this was due to a lack of confidence, but mostly it was the "ick" feeling from societal norms. Talking about family or my team was fine, but sharing my own wins? Only with women at work, and never too loudly.
It turns out there’s a good reason for this. Research shows that women face backlash for self-promotion. A study from 1998 found that when women self-promote, it can backfire, increasing our perceived competence but reducing our likability and, in turn, our hireability. And, we know that self-promotion is key to landing big roles. Talk about a classic double-bind.
But hasn’t the world changed? With the Barbie movie and the summer of women artists in 2023 boosting the economy, and Reese Witherspoon saying “I’m my own best lottery ticket” way back in 2019, can we now talk more loudly about our accomplishments? The fighter in me says "YES!" but the realist in me says "Um... not quite yet."
So, what to do? Nerds like me go to the research, and new research published in 2023 found a new way to do self-promotion right: Dual Promotion. Wharton professors Maurice Schweitzer, Einav Hart and Eric VanEpps published their work in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology saying that “by combining self-promotion with other-promotion (complimenting or giving credit to others), which we term “dual-promotion,” individuals can project both warmth and competence to make better impressions on observers than they do by only self-promoting.”
While applicable to any gender, this dual promotion strategy is perfect for women who struggle with self-promotion. By promoting others and ourselves, we appear credible, confident and warm.
So, here are some of the accomplishments that I’m noticing right now and sharing:
I applied feedback from clients to create and launch a new Muriel Consulting website, refining my messaging and imagery choices to match my target consulting clients better.
I published a new podcast on negotiation, incorporating feedback from friends to highlight this crucial topic and featuring an incredible expert Kathryn Valentine of Worthmore Strategies.
I successfully delivered a presentation to Plancorp’s wealth planning team about women investors and the importance of owning your personal narrative, a powerful combination suggested by Sara Gelsheimer at Plancorp.
I'm so grateful that this writer’s block has lifted, and I'm thankful for all the readers and members of the Muriel Network.
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At Muriel Network, our mission is to amplify female connection to close the gender wealth gap and senior leadership gap within wealth management. If you’re looking for transformative encouragement, inspiration, data and insights, and next-level development, we hope you’ll join us. If you and I both go, it will be incredible.
