fear of self-promotion | Words For Hire

Caressing You Softly with My Song

February 20, 2009 by Karen Swim

Written by Karen D. Swim

All week we have been examining the topic of self-promotion. Why this topic and why now?

: Image by vividBreeze via Flickr

Why Self-Promotion?

We can hire people to sell for us or we can partner with others to cross promote products and services but none of this replaces the need for self promotion. Self promotion is sharing your capabilities with others. Whether you are a student, artist, CEO or employee, you must e able to tell others about your talents and abilities.

Our reluctance to self-promote is often rooted in false beliefs such as:

Self-promoting is rude and overbearing
Before we self-promote we have to know more or achieve more.
We’re not that special or we have nothing new to offer.
Self-promotion shows a lack of humility or modesty.
It is disrespectful. No one wants to hear us drone on about ourselves.
It is loud, obnoxious, and always unwelcomed.

Bragging versus Self-Promotion
Self-promotion is not shouting to the world, “Hey look at me, click my links and buy my junk.” Self-promotion is the ability to sell your ideas and your capabilities to those they can benefit.

Many of us have associated self-promotion with negative behavior due to deep-seated beliefs about what constitutes politeness. We have unfairly intertwined selling ourselves with bragging and they are quite different things.

Self-promotion need not be a hurricane. It can be a gentle breeze that softly lifts your hair as it whispers the notes of nature in your ear.

Why you should care?
Would you knowingly withhold information from someone who needed it? In addition to your unique gifts and talents, along your life journey you have collected a vast amount of knowledge and experience. No one has traveled the same exact path as you so it is unfair to assume that you have nothing special to share.

Our world has changed. It is bigger and noisier and wallflowers can get stampeded in the shuffle. In quieter times, the boss would notice your good work and promote you or the townsfolk all knew you and bought from you because of relationship. Today, we cannot keep track of who knows what as we struggle to categorize the daily onslaught of information. Learning to self-promote has become an essential skill set for our work and personal lives.

Self-promotion begins with a belief that we are capable. Your dreams will never come true if you don’t take the steps to make them happen. You may sing like an angel, but no one will know if you never open your mouth and let your voice be heard. So go ahead and sing just hold back on the bass.

How can self-promotion be of value in your own life? Is it a skill set that came naturally or did you have to work at it?

Sequins, Shimmies and Sasha

February 19, 2009 by Karen Swim

Written by Karen D. Swim

: Image via Wikipedia

Dr. Christiane Northrup has one and recommends it to other women. Beyonce has one who made her own album. David Bowie’s is famous. Miley Cyrus shares the spotlight with hers. Mine has been the cure for my fear of self-promotion.

Meet my alter ego, Sasha the sales champ. Not the multiple personality disorder, on the verge of a breakdown alter ego. A persona or role if you will that was the antidote to my fear of selling, boldly going where I could not.

My journey to finding Sasha forced me to take a hard look at my own fears. When I was an employee, my face brightened when asked about my job. I enjoyed what I did and was proud of my company. I never worried about being overbearing because sharing what you did was a normal part of getting to know others.

It was so easy when someone else’s name was on the shingle. What had changed? Me. I was emotionally attached to the product in a way I had not been in corporate. Selling had migrated from a routine business practice to a reflection of me as a person.

I needed distance and Sasha afforded me that space. An alter ego provided me the luxury of stepping into a selling role with nothing to fear. Sasha realizes that it’s her job to find other people to help. She believes in the company and knows that it is not overbearing or intrusive to talk about what “we” do. She is building two-way relationships and understands that part of her giving is letting others know what you have to offer.

When I tell Sasha my fears, she rolls her eyes and responds, “Duh, if you don’t tell people what you do, how will they know?”

We want to buy from people we know and trust. We also want to refer to people we know and trust. If we’re all too polite to let people know what we offer, how can we give and get support? My alter ego understands this principle. She has not allowed herself to be saddled with unessential emotional baggage.

My fear of selling was rooted in disordered thinking. Sasha allowed me to adjust my lens and change my perspective. Sometimes a little distance is precisely what the doctor ordered.

Have you ever created an alter ego? In what way did it help you? What did you learn about yourself?

Tomorrow we will examine specific changes that we can make to self-promote without triggering those internal alarm bells.

Crouching Lion, Hidden Fear

February 18, 2009 by Karen Swim

Written by Karen D. Swim

My own descent into full-blown fear of self-promotion began subtly. I was fine when presented with a sales situation, one in which there was a clearly defined prospect. Even cold calling did not bother me, as I somehow was able to effortlessly slide into sales mode. I had spent the better part of my career in sales and marketing or in roles that required the ability to sell.

Cowering Man

Yet, I was uncomfortable with proactive self-promotion that required me to raise awareness of my brand. A problem that may have been quietly tucked away as a quirk or minor weakness in the “good old days” came face to face with the reality of life lived aloud in living color and broadcast to millions of people. There is nothing like social media to slap you in the face with your weakness and magnify it like the trick mirrors in a fun house.

I watched in horror as peers blew past me on Twitter and created ravenous groups of fans on Facebook. I hobbled along like a one legged tortoise in a race against a herd of hares. Everyone else seemed capable of sharing their accomplishments, and telling the world what they did while I stood on the sideline waiting my turn.

I had good excuses. I did not want to bother people. People were being saturated with too much information. I did not want to come across as a know it all. I was going to be nice if it killed me. So, I didn’t invite people to friend me, I rarely promoted my blog, I never invited subscribers and heaven forbid that I should actually send a newsletter to the people who signed up for one. In other words, I did nothing.

As opportunities slipped through my hands my “politeness” started chipping away at my esteem. I believed that I wasn’t in the same league as those who self-promoted. I had a bad case of “not as-itis” – not as good, not as smart, not as credentialed. The questions came fast and furious: Was I too late to join the party? Was my market too crowded for what I had to offer? Oh gosh, why did X client hire me, this project is over my head!

Before I knew what hit me I was hiding under the table with a lion trying to avoid the stampede. Modesty had become a cancer that was affecting my job, and I had to find a cure.

I had scope creep and it wasn’t pretty. The scope of my fear had moved from self-promotion to my confidence in my ability to do my job. A job I had been doing on my own for nearly five years with 20 years of experience to back me. Shocked to my senses, I crawled from under the table and resolved to find the way – to the yellow brick road, Kansas, the Wizard (I already had the cowardly lion after all- I honestly did not care where I went as long as the Land of Scared was in my dust.

You may be tempted to dismiss your fear as a minor inconvenience but I learned the hard way that fear does not always stay in the box you have chosen. The fear of self-promotion in today’s world can cost you in opportunity, dollars and self-respect.

Stick around for the last two posts in this series and I will tell you how I drop kicked my fear like a kung-fu master.

Have you experienced scope creep in regards to fear? What did you do to overcome it?

Learn to Love Self-Promotion – Part I

February 16, 2009 by Karen Swim

Written by Karen D. Swim

I could not see her face but the anxiety and confusion in her voice provided a visual image that made me wince with recognition. “I don’t understand it. I have given keynotes to a room filled with hundreds of people. My training programs have consistently received excellent feedback. I know that I’m good at what I do but for some reason I just can’t seem to promote myself.”

I nodded as my fingers gripped the phone. My client had successfully run her own business for more than a decade. She was known in her industry for her results. She had been published extensively in respected industry journals. Her knowledge and expertise were unquestionable, but like so many others, she had difficulty selling herself.

Her words could have been mine. I had only recently found my own breakthrough with this problem. I am not sure if misery loves company but as I struggled to free myself I found no shortage of smart professionals facing the same brick wall.

This is not a problem confined to gender, culture, geography or even age group. The fear or discomfort of self-promotion affects business owners, employees, executives and freelancers – in other words, anyone and everyone.

In Guerilla Self Promotion, Dave Jensen ( 10 OCTOBER 1997, SCIENCE’S NEXT WAVE http://nextwave.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/1998/03/29/207) shares the following definition of self-promotion from behavioral scientist George W. Dudley:

“The fear of self promotion consists of all behavioral habits, thoughts, actions, or feelings, which conspire to keep competent people of all walks of life from being able to stand up and take credit for who they are and what they do well.”

So, why is it so hard for competent people to promote their expertise to others? A few of the common reasons I discovered:

Fear of Rejection
Fear that you will appear arrogant
Lack of Confidence
Fear of isolating others with self-promotion
Fear of Success
Dislike of sales tactics
Taught to value modesty / humility
Uncomfortable in spotlight

The root of these reasons will vary individually but all can be traced to attaching an emotional connection to the promotion process.

This week we’ll take a closer look at our discomfort. We’ll pull out our deep rooted angst, and remove its power. I will also share tactics that will help you overcome your fear and become your own best sales person without compromising your values or integrity.

Have you ever struggled with fear of self-promotion? How did you overcome it? We’ll be discussing the topic all week.

If you have specific questions or issues you would like to see covered, let me know in the comments or by email at karenswim at gmail dot com.