Don't downplay your accomplishments at the workplace

If you value humility, self-promotion can seem awkward. But keeping quiet could cause you to be overlooked for career advancement.

- Jessica Chen

Isn't it ironic that one of the best ways to accelerate your career is to have people see and recognise your effort yet for many of us, when that happens, such as when we get praised by our team, our initial reaction is to deflect and minimise the contribution?

We say things like, "Oh, it's not a big deal. It was easy," or "It's nothing," when in fact, it was a big deal and it did take a lot of effort. Our curt response is even a surprise to our well-meaning colleagues.

That's how I communicated whenever someone would congratulate me for a job well done. For years, I wondered why I intuitively minimised my own work when I should have been using that recognition to unlock more opportunities.

Recently, LinkedIn released its annual list of Most In-Demand Skills for 2024, and "communications" was on top.

Communication is about collaborating with others, speaking up in meetings, giving feedback, and public speaking. I also know communicating is our ability to advocate for ourselves and talk about our work, which isn't an easy thing to do for many of us.

Some of the reasons why we downplay our accomplishments can be due to our childhood. For example, being raised with "quiet culture" traits affect how we show up in the workplace today, where there's often a "loud culture" expectation.

Quiet culture traits are behaviours such as listening more than speaking, putting your head down, and being humble at work. However, in many workplaces, loud culture traits are what's recognised and even rewarded. Loud culture traits are speaking up quickly in meetings, seamlessly socialising internally and externally, and talking about wins openly and confidently.