6 Ways You Can Promote Yourself at Work Without Sounding Big-Headed

We don’t tend to like people who brag. Boasting about how great you are and what you have achieved won’t go down well with your colleagues (even if they pretend otherwise). However, if you’re keen to progress in your career, it’s important that you do effectively promote yourself at work.

How will you secure your next promotion if your boss doesn’t know how well you are doing? How are you going to win the respect of your colleagues if they don’t know how great you are at your job?

If you’re able to promote yourself and your achievements (without sounding big-headed and annoying people), you’ll be able to boost your career. Your manager will reward you, your colleagues will respect you, others will seek out your expertise, and, most importantly, they will recommend and promote you too.

So where should you start with promoting yourself at work? Here are 6 ways.

1. Share relevant and useful information

Have you recently discovered a fantastic new tool that the rest of your team could benefit from? Have you heard some industry news that your colleagues may find interesting?

It’s important to pass on new discoveries and useful information to the rest of your team. Your colleagues will appreciate the tips and view you as an expert in your field. Helping them out along the way could also earn you some future recommendations and vital help in return.

2. Talk about your achievements in relation to you

Boasting about having the best results on your team isn’t going to promote you in a positive light. By comparing yourself to others, you are indirectly putting them down.

What you should do is compare your results to your previous results. This way you can show off your achievements, and your colleagues will feel genuinely happy for you. “I made more revenue this quarter than I’ve ever made before” sounds a lot better than, “I brought in the most revenue on our team this quarter.”

3. Give your opinion

Wherever relevant, you should speak up and share your opinion during meetings. Even if many of your superiors are present, have the confidence to assert what you think and share new ideas. Then you’ll get the credit when they’re a success.

4. Use your initiative

Every business is always on the lookout for ways to improve its operations. Using your initiative to streamline procedures and improve common practices will get you noticed. Are there reoccurring problems that you can solve? Have you found a better way to get a job done? If you come up with new solutions and ideas, be sure to share them with others. This will make your colleagues respect and look up to you, and it will make your manager recognize your value.

5. Be generous

Share your expertise and knowledge to help others. If a colleague has a dilemma or is looking for advice, share your thoughts with them. You never know, you might need their help another time.

6. Make the most of your performance review

Generally speaking, performance reviews don’t come around too often, so when they do, you need to make the most of them. Prepare for your performance review like you would any other business meeting by thinking about exactly what you want to get out of it.

Every performance review is a great opportunity to promote yourself to your boss. Are you looking for a pay raise or promotion? You’ve got a great opportunity to prove that you deserve one.

Use your performance review to talk about your strengths and accomplishments, and use key evidence and examples to back up what you are saying.

Bringing it all together

Promoting yourself at work is tricky. There’s a fine line between effectively promoting yourself and appearing big-headed and cocky. If you follow these 6 tips, you should stay on the right side of it!

A version of this post previously appeared on CareerExperts.