How Promoting your work is different from promoting yourself.
Few days ago, we had a meeting with one of our VPs. He was here on India trip, basically an Indian but settled in US. So, in his speech he talked about an interesting observation and shared his thoughts on work. He said we engineers are good at doing lot of things, but usually don’t talk about our work. We always think that our work would speak itself. No need to advertise about it. I as an engineer doing my job efficiently, which is good enough.
There are people who would always talk about themselves. Those people are really irritating. But it is important to give right perspective of your work to people. To do that, you should try promoting your work. Reach out people, when you need something, when you are aspiring to achieve something. Talk about all the good things you are doing, instead of talking about yourself. Tell them about what you have done in any specific project. How you added value there, how you solved some critical problem. This would give people idea about what you have achieved. You have evidence to support your claim on whatever you are looking for.
At times we feel that we don’t want to do showoff like many other people do. Those people are always ready to jump to grab any opportunity to talk about themselves. This habit of people irritate us. May be one of reason why we also don’t want to become like that person. But it is not about showing off, it is about informing people about what you are doing. It is about making people notice and know what work you are doing. You never know how this information can help people to take their decisions when they are having some opportunity for similar kind of work or people who can provide you what you are aspiring for.
The idea is to do good work in your job or area of expertise and whenever you get some opportunity, promote your work. This promotion should be in terms of informing people about your good work. It is something some company is creating some product and without advertising or telling anybody expecting that people start buying their product, which would never happen, until unless people know about it. So, to get opportunities in your workspace, you need to sell your services, you need to tell people what you have for them to offer.
You cannot create something in silos and expect people to give you opportunities for the same. You must tell them, inform them. So, promoting your work is an opportunity to sell yourself. Whenever you get this opportunity, don’t miss it. You never know who may like your work, your ideas and give you the next opportunity which you are aspiring for.