5 Ways to Show Your Work Without Being Cocky
Many professionals struggle with finding the right balance between promoting their work and maintaining humility. In this article, we dive into powerful strategies for sharing your achievements
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Some time ago I asked the 3 managers I have at Amazon:
“Do you see me as too cocky?” “Am I more talk than action?”
Now the question is, why was I afraid of this?
I promoted my work more than other people do. This created the fear I may be doing it wrong.
I asked Basma Taha for advice on how to share your guilt-free.
Basma:
I think unlike what the phrase “sharing your work” sounds (cocky, selfish… etc,) it’s actually much more than that.
It’s a strong tool for excellent knowledge sharing. This tool is useful because it helps teach others, to help others grow.
Along with sharing your work, you should also share your mistakes. In the spirit of sharing good knowledge. To allow others to avoid your mistakes, or use the same fixes that worked for you.
On a professional level, I started getting positive feedback when I started sharing knowledge and more updates about my work. People regard this as an excellent communication tool!
On a personal level, I think sharing knowledge gives great satisfaction feeling. And, it of course makes your work more recognised.
Don’t be a Dark Knight, be the Light Knight!
In today’s letter, we’ll discuss the following ideas that you can apply now to make your work scream “good” recognition:
Leverage demo sessions to your advantage
Share your design before implementation.
Use The Retro Kudos to Your Advantage.
Share your work in 1:1s with your manager.
Post like a pro in cross-team Slack channels
#1 Demo Sessions Can Be Your Winning Card
What do we mean by demo sessions?
Demo sessions are meetings held in a group of teams to share knowledge. They can go from formal project demos to sharing a cool productivity hack you just found.
How to best apply it
Prepare: You must spend time preparing for the session before you do it. Doesn’t matter how much you prepare, it will depend on the complexity and your familiarity with the topic. It can go from 10 minutes to a few hours.
Confidence: You need to be confident in your presentation. And, confidence comes from good preparation.
Awareness of the details: Try to be as aware as you can of the small details on your knowledge-sharing topic. This prepares you for possible questions. Don’t obsess about the details though.
Keep it simple and concise: Don’t overcomplicate your demo. Remove the unnecessary bits. Only include the most relatable bits.
Don’t be perfect: Don’t try too much. Don’t just put the great stuff and leave out the challenges, the mistakes, and the good stories. People love a good story, but remember a good story is not a perfect story!
Your Wins
Increased Visibility: Gain visibility across teams.
Networking: People know where you’re experience lies, they will reach out to you.
Learning: You will learn new things as you prepare and teach others. You’ll likely find people asking questions, and opening interesting doors for discoveries.
How we applied it
Fran:
On the main project my team worked on last year, I volunteered to do a demo in multiple demo sessions: skip-level manager level, all-Spain level, organization level… I didn’t author every part of what I explained. But I was the one increasing his visibility the most.
In another situation, I did a demo in Madrid sharing a cool tool that allowed for internal use (an AI writing assistant). I had done zero work preparing, but I got grateful words from a lot of people whom I never talked with because they saw the value of the tool, and they associated my face and my name with it.
Basma:
I recently led a knowledge-sharing session on project scoping. I've been exploring various perspectives on it, documenting all my findings, and suggesting the next steps in a document. I then shared it with the team.
This act in itself is a form of knowledge sharing, but I saw it as an opportunity to present the document's contents directly to the team.
Sometimes, it's easier to hash out certain matters in real time, so that's exactly what I did. And it was a resounding success! The meeting sparked insightful discussions.
The team asked interesting questions that hadn't crossed my mind. Some even praised my ideas, seeing them as practical to implement.
If I hadn't organized these sessions, I would have missed out on valuable feedback about my presentation style and the distinction between business and technical scoping ideas.
#2 Share Your Design and Brainstorm Before Implementation
What’s this work before implementation?
Many times, we rush into implementation only to later regret it because we haven't thoroughly thought through the solution.
One effective way to defend against this is to share your design before diving into implementation.
You can achieve this by leading a session where you share the various options you've considered, along with their respective pros and cons.
How to best apply it:
Share the design before the session: this will give people some time to go through your design and prepare any questions or ideas.
Encourage people to participate: during the meeting make sure you’re not the only one who’s talking. Ask others what they think. And, REALLY listen, without interruption.
Your Wins
Time-saving: Saves you from redoing your work.
Increases your credibility: When team members find you eager to implement “the right solution” not just “any” solution, they will trust you more.
Exposure to your thinking process: This will make your colleagues understand you better. How you think and how you communicate. This will lead to better communication ways with your team!
How we applied it
Fran:
Not only have these sessions but record the outcomes. There’s nothing more painful than a question from someone having a valid challenge when you are already committed to a solution.
Ensure everyone’s voice is heard in these early sessions and record the decisions taken. I recommend finding some ADR (Architectural Decision Records) format and using it for those key decisions taken.
When people challenge later on in the project, their intentions are not to disrupt your work, but to understand that the alternatives were considered and we took a conscious tradeoff.
Basma:
I've been actively leading many such sessions over the past few months because I've realized I tend to rush into solutions prematurely. I'm working on a plan to consciously strike a balance between speed and correctness.
In my experience, I've found these sessions to be invaluable for communicating my thought process, identifying potential pitfalls in my solutions, and being exposed to alternative ideas.
Since I started hosting these design-sharing sessions before implementation, I've received positive feedback.
Sometimes, the changes aren't significant enough to need a meeting, so I simply share Slack posts outlining the different options I've considered.
#3 Use Retros to Your Advantage
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