Proud, Loud, and Strategic: Brag Better Book Review
The One Big Thing:
Attention, praise, and opportunities come to those who strategically talk about their accomplishments.
If you’re not enthusiastic and proud of your achievements, no one else can be.
Big Picture:
“Missed opportunity to brag!” is the #1 piece of feedback we give our career coaching clients during mock interview practice. So we were intrigued to learn of Meredith Fineman’s book, Brag Better: Master the Art of Fearless Self-Promotion.
Fineman’s overview will sound familiar to CloseCohen clients:
“My goal is to help you Brag Better—to find the words to describe your work and then share and leverage your accomplishments, in a meeting or from a stage, so you can propel your career forward. I’m confident not only that your accomplishments are worth talking about, but also that sharing them strategically and thoughtfully will help you get farther in your career and in your life.”
As we do in executive coaching sessions, Brag Better recognizes that childhood dynamics, gender, race, sexuality, age, and other factors affect your relationship with bragging. It’s also essential to understand that bragging is met with additional criticism and scrutiny for some groups; recognizing, as Fineman states, “the freedom to be heard is intertwined with privilege.”
Despite this, society rewards loud. The workplace is no exception—and it demands a “loud” strategy.
Why It Matters:
At CloseCohen, we hear from many talented professionals who wonder why they’re not being hired, promoted, or recognized at work. Fineman describes these folks as “the qualified quiet.” These competent individuals lack a strategy for self-promotion and believe their work will speak for itself. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t.
Bragging gives you control of your own narrative.
Go Deeper:
Bragging is simply stating facts.
You can train yourself to talk about your achievements, skills, and qualifications—without downplaying them, diminishing yourself, or speaking with false modesty.
Use cases for bragging better are limitless. For example, writing your bio, pitching, negotiating, public speaking, interviewing, writing a performance review or promotion doc, and even having coffee with co-workers or brunch with friends. (You read that right—share your wins to help others become your biggest champions).
Fineman’s description of what bragging better ‘is and is not’ provides a strong foundation for bragging better beginners:
Bragging Better Is . . .
- Using facts to shine and tell the truth about the work you’ve done.
- Having confidence in yourself and your voice: not letting anxiety or self-consciousness get in the way.
- Speaking up: not only when it matters, but also when it benefits those around you and helps raise all voices.
- Having a practiced delivery, whether online or offline: knowing what you’re going to say, how you’re going to say it, and what you’re going to do with it.
- Being concise and clear with your brags: coming up with specific, catchy vocabulary to describe yourself and your accomplishments. Specificity is the key to helping someone latch on to your message and understand you.
- Knowing who you are and how you want to be perceived.
- Having clear goals for bragging: knowing where you want your brags to land and having a firm grasp of what achieving these goals will mean for you and your career.
Bragging Better Is NOT . . .
- Fabrication or exaggeration: share about what you’ve done, and never lie about it.
- Volume without focus: being loud without strategy is useless, will only damage you, and cannot further your goals.
- Always asking others to promote you without returning the favor: bragging is a two-way street.
- Preventing others from shining along with you: there is plenty of space.
The Bottom Line:
Your ideas and work are worthy of praise and should be visible.
Bragging Better requires cultivating pride in your work and then taking small actions that help you share it with those around you.
Once you start using your voice, it won’t feel like as much work as it used to.
Ready to master the art of self-promotion without cringing? Contact us to book your executive coaching or candidate career coaching intake call.
CloseCohen proudly serves a global portfolio of clients with strong representation from the San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle and Bellevue.