Forget being humble. You’ve earnt bragging rights
It’s not cool to be humble and it’s crazy to be modest according to this self-promotion coach.
Millennials may be media-savvy, but that doesn’t mean they know how to sell themselves, according to one of their own who has become an advocate for the benefits of bragging.
Stefanie Sword-Williams, 28, says a lack of confidence and the fear of appearing arrogant are holding this generation of workers back.
“Somewhere along the way, self-promotion has gained the worst reputation in the world, along with the word networking,” the London-based coach and consultant tells The Deal.
“The fear of looking arrogant absolutely overrides any potential to claim an opportunity for them because people feel they should be modest.”
Modesty is not part of Sword-Williams’s temperament — her business, her website and her forthcoming book say it all with their F*ck Being Humble branding. And it’s paying off. She recently was named one of Forbes magazine’s Top 30 under 30 in the European media and marketing category. And she has global reach with her work helping people build their own brands.
Many would argue that millennials are far from self-effacing in the workplace. At their worst, they have a reputation for wanting to be the chief executive before they finish their internships.
But Sword-Williams disagrees, saying they need less humility and more salesmanship if they want to build careers. That’s especially so now that the coronavirus pandemic has sparked a work-from-home revolution that could be the beginning of a radical shift. This month, Twitter became the first big tech company to announce its employees could work from home indefinitely, suggesting to Sword-Williams that the workplace will fragment even more, making it harder for millennials to be noticed.
“It will be more important to document the stuff that’s going well, achievements that you have had, because face-to-face connections with colleagues you might not get, because of the disconnect,” she says.
A good CV can go a long way, and Sword-Williams credits her father with teaching her how to sell herself as a teenager.
“He could make my CV look like the most entrepreneurial thing you’ve ever seen even if it was just filled with a year of a Saturday job working in a shoe shop,” she says. “He was always great at helping identify the actual benefits I was offering people.”
Cultivate an online presence
Her own transformation into a global salesperson began when, working in advertising, she attended networking events in London and was struck by the lack of diversity on panels.
“I just didn’t feel like I saw people I could connect with,” she says. “Simultaneously, I was going to lots of creative events and seeing artists and filmmakers doing all these great things. They were under the age of 30 and not getting spotlighted, which I think was because they were younger and also were not promoting themselves enough.”
F*ck Being Humble, a platform that promises to teach you how to be your “own biggest hype man or woman”, was launched in June 2018.
Sword-Williams advocates cultivating an online presence and mining your work history and personal life to find your unique selling points that will emotionally connect with others.
Since March, she has been running the company full time, although the lockdown has meant networking and self-promotion webinars rather than live events. In September she will launch her first book, F*ck Being Humble: Why Self-Promotion Isn’t a Dirty Word.
While her work is “designed to be gender-neutral”, Sword-Williams says she will “always look out for women because I know what we go through”.
“It was always my mission to champion women,” she says. “The site immediately resonates with women. Pretty much all women I meet get what is being said because they can place what is being said.”
Her workshops attract people from IT to personal trainers, including university graduates applying for their first salaried jobs and people returning to the workforce after parental leave.
Watching her friends experience their “quarter-life crises” was one of the prompts for Sword-Williams to launch her own company. “Everyone had taken a job for four of five years, they thought they had to specialise in a role, but they weren’t actually that happy in it,” she says. “I didn’t want to wait until I was 50 to share all this information because I think peer-to-peer sharing is massively on the rise mainly because it feels more relatable.”
She says the lockdown should encourage people to lean in to digital networking.
“I’ve built nearly all of my contacts through digital connections,” she says. “I think it’s even more powerful now because we have the time to focus on using the global digital tools we have to connect with people. People also have less distractions and are probably in a more giving attitude right now.”
She worries about a system that misses out on a whole “chunk of education” on digital connection: “I’m surprised that people don’t know how to use LinkedIn, but it’s because no one has ever taught them.” Not to mention teaching people the benefits of self-advocacy.
“At the end of all my events I give people the chance to stand up and self-promote and share with the audience something they’re working on that’s really interesting,” Sword-Williams says. “You see one person sheepishly put their hand up and by the end of it, it’s this domino effect. It’s an amazing feeling.”