How to be your own advocate in the workplace.
Simple steps to start advocating for yourself at work and achieve your goals. No one is going to do it for you.
One theme which has come up frequently in conversations I have with people about their career is how to get recognized for contributions. Particularly, how to get recognized for work (and rewarded for it) without being self-inflating.
Getting recognized for the work you put out is very important. Some work is harder to see than others, especially if you’re a member of a team working toward something bigger. If you can’t talk about or easily demonstrate what you’ve done and can do, neither will your leadership. It’s up to you to speak up for yourself. If you’re in a role with key performance indicators (KPIs)(metrics that measure how well you do your job) that you have to meet, understanding your output becomes even more important for keeping your job and ascending in your career.
Talking about ourselves in a positive and realistic manner is challenging. Talk about what you’re doing too much and you come across as self-centered or prideful. Don’t talk about yourself and people think you don’t contribute. Never speak up for yourself and you get walked on. Finding that balance between talking about yourself well without overdoing it is hard to find, but it is doable.
Here’s why it matters:
Money - If you want a raise, you need to prove why you deserve it. In order to prove this, you need to be able to talk about yourself and your accomplishments.
Opportunities - Your resume should include metrics of your performance, not just a list of tasks you do. It should demonstrate what you know how to do and how well you do it. Measuring your output helps demonstrate the value you add in what you do. If you can talk about this easily on a resume, you’ll have better luck landing that next job.
Respect - If done well, being confident in the work you put out will help your relationship with your team and others. People can’t respect your game if they have no idea what your role is on the team.
Relationships - When you’re actively and visibly contributing to the bigger picture, people appreciate you. Speaking up for yourself also improves your relationships at work, whether addressing less-than-ideal situations directly or creating more transparency. People operate better with parameters, and if people know where you stand, they’ll be less likely to walk over you or take advantage of you.
You’re responsible for your work, and it’s up to you to advocate for yourself and get seen. Here’s how you can start.
Write down the things you deliver on.
Extra work you do, the results of a project, anything good, write it down. How you did it, what it was for, what it accomplished. At the end of the year when you’re receiving a performance review and negotiating bonuses or salary, you’ll forget the things you did. It’s hard to remember your accomplishments from the past year, but if you get in the habit of writing things down every week, or pay period, or month, you’ll save yourself a lot of time later.
Start now and create a document or sheet on your work computer. Title it “Project Deliverables” or “2026 Accomplishments” or whatever you want, and start your list. Update it every Friday with what you did that week. Who you met. What you turned in. The feedback you received on it. Anything that demonstrates your efforts and the outcomes or people it helped. It’ll take 10 minutes of your time.
Look at the description for the job you have. Identify the key areas that are measurable, and start measuring them. This can look all sorts of ways, but the key is demonstrating with numbers and outcomes.
Many people forget when they’re in a job to measure their own work. This is your reminder right now to start recording your efforts. Measure it, write it down, and track your progress. Your work won’t speak for itself, it needs to mirror what you’re already communicating. It will help you in your current role and landing that future job. Your future self will thank you.
When you can look back at the things you’ve accomplished and can pull the data, advocating for yourself when the time comes will be easy.
If you want more descriptive, detailed steps on how to build this out and what kind of work to include, my friend Skill to Income by Yusup has a great post on building your “Brag File.” He offers clear advice on what to include and how to stay organized.
Make allies in the workplace.
This one is critical. The people you work with, or around, can influence your career in many ways, for better or for worse. But the bottom line is this — you always want more people on your side. Your team. How do you do that?
Be a team player. Help out the people around you, in your department or not. Get to know people. Ask your coworkers how their child’s recital went. Be reliable to them. The more positive interactions you have with someone, the better they’ll feel about you. They speak highly of you, word gets around, and now you have allies.
This is how networking is done. It’s not just reaching out to strangers on LinkedIn and sending a message. Your first network is the people you already work with. Ask yourself, “Am I someone they would want to work with again? Are they someone I would want to work with again?” Fostering your work relationships pays off immediately, and in the future.
Gossip positively around the office. This is the best way to create allies. Someone did something great? Tell people! Word will spread that you’re saying nice things. When you lift people up, they’ll lift you up too (unless they’re a jerk, but you’ll figure that out pretty quickly).
You can be great at your job, but if no one likes working with you, then you’re not moving up anytime soon. When you have a network of advocates who can speak to the work you do (aka their interpretation of how you make them feel) then you can advocate for yourself while being backed up by people who believe in you.
Get things in writing.
This is for advocating for yourself if things turn sour. I was talking to a client this past year and she told me she was struggling with a coworker of hers. He would say she said things that she didn’t, try to make her look bad in front of others, and make her second guess herself. My advice to her: use writing to communicate. If he’s saying you said things you didn’t, now you have in writing what you said. He can’t make you look bad if he doesn’t have the paper trail, and you have the paper trail of what you did right.
If you work in a turbulent environment, get things in writing, especially in regard to something important, like instructions or expectations. Make sure there is a paper trail. This protects both parties, but especially yourself.
If you do communicate with a manager verbally for most communication, take notes and send them back to them for “alignment.” If you have a 1:1, write down what you discussed, the action items, and any expectations. Immediately after the meeting, send over the notes saying this is what you took away and allow them to add anything that was missed.
Hopefully, you don’t work in an environment where words are being turned against you in order for someone else to get ahead, but I think we’ve all been there. If you are, this can help hold them accountable. If they give you a poor review, revisit your notes and realign on the expectations that were communicated. People are less likely to do shady things if you make them justify themselves every time.
When you have things in writing, you have solid evidence to back yourself up. I wish there was always integrity in the workplace, but at the end of the day it is up to you how things end up. You can’t control what someone else will try to do, but you can control the impact on yourself. You can’t do this passively, you need to be proactive in advocating for yourself.
Learn your strengths and how to communicate them.
In this post by Luisa Surma, she poses the question, “what’s something you’re good at that most people aren’t?” If you can’t answer that question, you need to start reflecting — further in her post she has some exercises to do so, which I would highly recommend. She goes on to discuss how Leonardo Da Vinci went about applying for jobs. He didn’t have a list of tasks he’d performed in other jobs, he would get straight to the point about what he was good at.
“I know how to reroute rivers.” Clear, and to the point. Adds value. Demonstrates outcomes.
Same goes to when you’re talking about yourself. Learning how to speak to your strengths is critical to people seeing the value in you. Telling people what you’re good at isn’t egotistical. You’re at work — you’re letting people know how you can help them accomplish their goals. It’s your job. It’s why you’re being paid, and if you can’t tell someone what you’re there for, you either need to find a new job or find your words.
Identifying your strengths gives you the words to start speaking more confidently about yourself. It gives you clarity.
Don’t downplay your importance with your words.
Using words like “just” and “I think,” whether verbally or written, water down what you’re trying to say. If someone on your team is asking for your input, logically speaking, you don’t need to preface it with “I think.” Of course you’re thinking, that’s why they’re asking you.
This habit took a while for me to break, but I’ve found a way, and it’s through adding clarity. If I’m mostly confident in my answer but want to still make my confidence clear, I back up into my answer with the “why.”
For example: “I think We should go about the task this way because x, y, and z.”
Remove the “I think” by backing into the why. Why do you think that is the solution? Well, that’s what you have to explain to them. Backing your confident answer with your logic will sound a lot better than “I think… we could do this because I just…” No, stop that. If they asked you, it’s because they trust your judgement, so you should trust it too.
Learn your strengths, gain your clarity, and use your words to advocate for yourself.
Ask good questions.
One of the best ways to demonstrate understanding and action is to follow up with good questions. I use this trick all the time. It’s not just about the question though, it’s how you ask it.
For example, if I’m working on a deliverable that isn’t due for a few days, leading up to it I would ask the leaders involved follow-up questions on the tasks I’ve been working on. I would start the question by telling them what specifically I was tasked with and what point I had reached on the project. Then I would ask them a clarifying question of some sort. It doesn’t have to be anything crazy, and please especially don’t ask something you could figure out on your own. It can be simple. The important thing here is you are getting in front of leaders, demonstrating your work through the update, signaling your competence with the task at hand, and demonstrating your understanding by finding the gaps and asking questions. It’s not about the questions, it’s about facetime with people who matter, signaling what you can do.
It’s subtle, but it works.
“Hey, I wanted to check in about an aspect of this project. I was able to get X done and followed up with Y, but I wanted to see what your thoughts were on this. *insert idea/question/example.*”
When you ask good questions, it shows agency, problem solving, and accountability. These are all characteristics that advocate for you. Actions speak louder than words type of thing. Ask good questions.
Don’t rush.
This is one I’ve been learning recently and has made a huge impact on how I’m received, professionally and personally. Don’t be in a rush.
Think back to some of the best leaders you’ve known. The people who could command a room, think and speak with clarity, and identify goals. Did they seem frazzled? Were they disorganized? Were they anxious?
If they were a good leader, probably not. This is what I’ve been paying attention to.
People who exude confidence aren’t also the ones rushing themselves or the people around them. They’re steady, know their priorities, and lead by example.
This doesn’t mean they move about their work lackadaisically. It means they move with confidence and care. Rushed work is never done well, and if you’re feeling rushed, you probably don’t have your priorities straight.
I’m still working on this one myself, but here are two things I’ve learned that help me move with more assurance and less chaos:
Plan ahead. This one is basic, but important. I try to plan out my week ahead of time and ensure my schedule prioritizes what I need to get done. If I focus on the wrong things, I don’t spend enough time on the right things and end up feeling rushed.
When I plan out my week, I know what I need to do and when. I also try to leave some margin for things that might come up. That way, when someone asks for my help, I already understand my capacity and whether I can offer help or not (also great for making allies at work).
Set times of intention. It’s so easy for me to get caught up in my day, that by the end of the day I feel like my day happened to me, rather than me taking my day by the reigns. I don’t want my days to happen to me, I want to own the day and make things happen.
One way I do this is setting 2 minutes before each activity to practice being present and remind myself of the goal. I do this with everything now. If I have to coach practice, I take time before to remember why I coach, who I’m doing it for, and who I want to show up as. If I show up rushed and distant, I can’t expect my players to show up focused and dialed in.
If I’m having a 1:1 with my manager, I take 2 minutes. I think about what I want to talk about, what questions to ask, and how I want to get to know them better.
It works for everything.
End of the day, you want to be the calmest person in the room, and you can’t do that if you’re rushed. When you’re calm and have your priorities straight, you learn how to move with more confidence — a crucial part in advocating for yourself.
Becoming your own advocate may seem daunting at first, but it’s a positive feedback loop. Getting started is the hardest part and it only gets easier from there. You recognize your strengths and speak to them in a way that get’s them recognized by others → you get rewarded for your efforts → you gain confidence and continue developing your strengths → you get better at advocating for yourself → you get rewarded → and it keeps going.
You won’t get what you want unless you can you advocate for yourself.
Have other tips on how to be your own advocate?
“Talking about ourselves in a positive and realistic manner is challenging. “ it’s hard for ( some) women to do this. Maybe it’s where I hit in a generation; my male colleagues would always find a way to work their accomplishments, however small, into conversations. And if you say it enough times people believe you. Lol.
Also and maybe you covered this earlier in your article. I still find it hard to talk about my own accomplishments and small wins, but easy to hold others up. In my last corporate job, every team meeting, I would come with a one line sentence about what I had observed the small wins / work my co workers had throughout the week. When it was my turn, I would talk business then turn it to “Kristina had a great client call yesterday. I happened to be in the adjacent room and she presented her material so well. And did you all hear about the contract James got signed ? “ it also made it easier for me to eventually talk about my wins for the week.