Latest / Women Who Ship / 1. Seeing What You've Shipped: Recognizing Yourself at Work
Transcript
- Sarah Williams: Hey friends. Today I'm talking about something that feels almost taboo for a lot of women in tech leadership. What do you do when everyone around you is getting recognized and you feel invisible? So I know I experienced this when I first started at a tech company. I was working at a high performing tech company. They really prided themselves on recognition on I know I definitely felt this when I first started working at a tech company. The team really prided itself on recognition. So promotions were celebrated. Peers were giving each other shout-outs and Slack. There were endless birthday cards to sign. And in fact, we had peer-to-peer awards that you could give out. And don't get me wrong, I was very happy for my colleagues, but I found myself quietly wondering if something was wrong with me. if I wasn't getting that same type of recognition. So imagine this is you as well. You're a senior woman, you're in tech leadership, maybe you're new to a company. Often you're the one who is responsible for recognizing others, maybe your team, your peers, your cross-functional partners. And in fact, if you're a woman of color, the research shows that you often have to outperform your peers to get the same level of recognition. In addition, you may have your team and stakeholders all having different preferences for how they like to be recognized, and that can apply to you as well. So despite being in this recognition-rich culture, you may be feeling oddly invisible. If you're new, you might not have a big splashy project with your name on it yet. Oftentimes at senior levels, promotions are slow and infrequent. So you can't really rely on that as your visible sign of success. As I mentioned before, because you're a leader, most of the public praise is going to be flowing through you to others. ⁓ not necessarily to you. And you may d notice that your peers are being recognized and start wondering what it means that you're not. So, first, I'd like for you to think about what's the story that you're telling yourself about this recognition? Is it if my project isn't getting a shout-out, maybe it's not as impactful. If I didn't get that peer-to-peer award, maybe I'm not being helpful. Underneath the surface, this is all about confidence, self-trust, and how we measure our value in environments where recognition is noisy. But possibly not evenly distributed, especially for women and women of color. But my message for you today is that you do not need the gold stars. When you rely on external praise, your confidence lives on a roller coaster. You can build a more grounded confidence by practicing intentional self recognition, learning to see, name, and celebrate your own impact, so that external recognition becomes a bonus, not your only source of validation. And I have some practical tools to help you do this. So, first, I want you to start out with what's the story that you're making this recognition mean about you? So, before you can go about changing any behavior, you need to get really curious about the story that you're telling yourself. When you don't get a shout out, what is the sentence that goes through your head? And then I want you to take a moment to separate the facts from your story. So, in the example I gave earlier, the fact was I didn't get peer-to-peer recognition for whatever reason. The story I told myself about that was I'm not being helpful enough. Once you can separate the fact, there's a million reasons that I may not have gotten peer-to-peer recognition. Maybe somebody really did appreciate me and they just forgot. Maybe it's not something that they do very often. Maybe they told my boss how pleased they were with me and they gave me recognition in some other form. So there's a a million reasons why the fact could be very different from the story. But once you see the story, I'm making this mean I'm not being helpful, then you can decide whether that's something that's useful and or whether it's just punishing. But when you see that you are telling yourself the story, I'm not being helpful, then you can decide whether that's useful or just punishing. The next tool I'd like you to try is called the Recognition Retro. So this is very similar for those of you who who have done Scrum projects. You always have a retrospective at the end. This is a retrospective that you're running every week for yourself. So I want you to build a weekly self-recognition ritual that trains your brain to notice your wins and not just your gaps. So what you'll want to do is block 30 minutes on your calendar. I like to do this. On a Friday afternoon, you're kind of ready to wrap up the week anyway. It's a good time to block out 30 minutes undisturbed and complete your recognition retro. And during that time, I want you to think about three to five specific things that you're proud of from the week. And then I want you to think about why that thing mattered. So for example, it could be something like I coached a direct report through a difficult conversation and I gave them the valuable tools. To potentially resolve this on their own in the future. Over time, this ritual allows you to build a private evidence file that will strengthen your self-trust. So at times when you're feeling a little down, you're feeling like you don't have an impact, you can come back and remember all of the amazing things that you've done. In addition, our brains are really good at scanning our environments for danger. So a lot of time it's very easy just to focus more on the negative things that are happening rather than the positive. So with this ritual, what you're doing is retraining your brain throughout the week to find the good things. And last, having this evidence file makes it easier to advocate yourself whenever promotions come around or performance evaluations come around as well. You've got a long list of things you've been keeping track of that show the impact that you're having in your career and on your team. The next tool that I'd like you to think about is determining what your recognition preferences. The next tool that I'd like you to think about is determining what your recognition preferences are. And if you're comfortable with it, sharing those with someone else. So there's a variety of different ways that we can receive recognition. Maybe it's one-on-one feedback directly from your manager, directly from a colleague who was working on a project with you. Perhaps it's public praise. So your project or your team getting a shout out in the all hands meeting. Perhaps it's a stretch opportunity. So you've been given a very difficult project or you've been given a dysfunctional team to get back on track. Perhaps you really appreciate sponsorship. So you want to know that you're being put in the room with execs or with your senior leadership team. So you're having that opportunity to really showcase your work yourself. Next, what I'd like for you to do is share this information with someone you trust or with your manager explicitly. I can say that as a manager, it's very helpful for me to know this information about my team. ⁓ oftentimes I'll default into what my recognition preference is if I don't know this about the person. And that can cause trouble sometimes. If if I perhaps am a person who really loves public praise. And then I go to an all hands meeting ready to shout out someone who actually finds that quite embarrassing. It can just prevent that type of ⁓ pain if you already know ahead of time that that person doesn't appreciate being recognized in that way. Mm-hmm. If you're comfortable, you can also add the gender or leadership lens. So you can let this person know as a leader, it means a lot to me to know that you're advocating for me in the rooms that I'm not in. So just to share with you all, I think I'll share with the whole group. ⁓ my recognition preference is actually public praise, as I talked about a little bit ago. So I'd like to share with you all my recognition preference. It actually is public praise, as I spoke about. It makes me feel really good when my manager or someone I've worked on a project with happens to share that in a public Slack channel, for example, or during a big meeting. It just makes me feel really good to know that I've made a difference on my team and that my work is being seen and talked about. Your bonus tip for today is to redefine what recognition could look like at your level. So often at senior levels, recognition looks different than it did earlier in your career. Often at senior levels, recognition looks different than it did earlier in your career. So look for those non-obvious signals. Who is seeking out your advice? Have you been given a really gnarly project and you're being asked to stabilize it? Whose careers are you shaping? And then I'd ask you to reframe some of those as recognition. So being trusted with difficult, ambiguous work. Is often the quietest but truest compliment. For women and women of color, I'd also like for you to include your own advocacy as recognition. So each time you speak up for yourself, you're signaling to others as well as to your own brain that your work is worth seeing. And I understand that this can feel very heavy and challenging, especially for women of color, to constantly have to be self-advocating and self-promoting, but I just for your own sense of self-trust. And self confidence, I think this a this reframe could be very powerful for you. So this week I'd like for you to schedule a 30-minute recognition retro with yourself. Write down the three specific things you did that mattered, and one sentence about why each one was important. As a bonus, share one of those wins with your manager or a trusted peer on purpose as a way of letting yourself be seen. If practicing this helps you start to see your own value, please share this episode with another woman in tech who might be feeling invisible in a noisy recognition rich culture. And be sure to hit subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify so you never miss an episode. If practicing this helps you start to see your own value, please share this episode with another woman in tech who might be feeling invisible in a noisy, recognition-rich culture. And be sure to hit subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify so you never miss an episode. That's it for this week's episode of Women Who Ship. Go ship something great this week and don't forget to recognize yourself while you do it. Mm. If practicing this helps you start to see your own value, please share this episode with another woman in tech who might be feeling invisible in a noisy, recognition-rich culture. And be sure to hit subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify so you never miss an episode. That's it for this week's episode of Women Who Ship. Go ship something great this week, and don't forget to recognize yourself while you do it.