Brag Lunch Leader Edition

So perhaps you’ve been thinking about this brag lunch thing, but you’re still uncomfortable. “That’s great for individual contributors,” you’re saying to yourself. “Heck, I’ll even coach my team so they can brag better. But I’m a leader, I shouldn’t brag, right? And besides, I don’t do really anything, the team does it all!”

I have had many variations of this conversation with all kinds of leaders. As a new engineering manager, I had the same instincts, which was to give the team credit for everything and take none for myself. Later, as a project manager and product manager, even though I didn’t directly manage folks, I was leading teams and still wanted to give them the credit. And, like the folks I talk to, I was doing this with great intentions and in sync with my core values. 

But when I didn’t take credit for the work I’d done, as well as what the team had, I was devaluing the work of a leader. Leaders matter. Here’s an example. On my resume there’s a line that says when I was a General Manager I shipped three innovative new products. Here’s the thing: not one of those products was my idea. What did I do? I recognized the great ideas and discarded a lot of other really good ones so that the best three had the resources to succeed. I set goals and held the teams accountable for execution. I built a lot of bridges to get people throughout the company excited about the new products to help ensure their success post-launch. And so on. 

If we want to grow more leaders, we need to recognize and celebrate the hard work they’re doing! Whether you’re a people manager or an individual contributor in a leadership role such as an architect, product manager, or project manager, the work you do matters. 

Here’s the good news - we can do both! The team should get a lot of credit and we should recognize the work of leaders. Step one for you as a leader is making sure you’re bragging well for the team. Bragging is telling a story of a success and it is a good thing to talk about a job well done. As a leader we should shine lights on successes, because they show what great looks like and what we want more of. And, people want to know that their leaders recognize good work when they see it.

Step two is to tease out the role you played in that success. Sure, your team had the idea, your team did the thing - they should get credit! But you recognized the idea, resourced the idea, built bridges to other teams to get the idea accepted and helped in a hundred ways for that thing to get done. 

Now outside of managing your own career, or making sure your team gets credit there are other benefits to being able to clearly articulate your wins. Being able to clearly articulate your wins can help you to:

• Attract the people you want to hire. Those awesome folks you’re trying to hire want to know they’ll be playing with a team and a boss with a great track record. 
• Create or shift the narrative for a thankless project you got handed. Ever been given a necessary but painful project to lead, like a big technology migration, or a Salesforce or Workday implementation, or some much needed but not-fun process improvements? Don’t let the detractors have the loudest voice—stake out the wins and claim them. 
• Improve your ability to get the resources, scope, or authority to do even more awesome work. When people know you deliver, you’ll be more likely to get to address other, even more interesting and challenging problems. Maybe there’s one that’s been bugging you but that everyone else has thought was too hard. By showing what you can do, you might get a chance to fix that thing! 

So, if you’re having a hard time bragging, remember that you are responsible for the team. You set the priorities, you get them what they need, you hold them accountable. You’re a big part of not just getting things done but deciding what even gets done.

As leaders, we need to be good advocates for our team. We need to show their wins and we should never hide their light because we don’t want to put ourselves forward. What’s great is that often when often get a twofer: a brag for the team and one for you. And on the human side, it can feel a lot more natural and comfortable if we start with the team, and then show the part we played.

Your Dot Release: Identify something awesome your team did that you want to brag about. Now, detangle your role in that success and build a brag for that, too. Imagine telling both stories, that of your team and of how you helped. Does it feel easier now?  

This article is part of an ongoing series about brag lunches.

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