Toot your own horn

Reframing the narrative around self-promotion

Recently, in a comment thread on LinkedIn under a post I made, a comment showed up that disagreed with me. The writer made a good point but ended with something to the effect of “but good job promoting yourself.”

It’s entirely possible that this was written with good intent, as a genuine compliment. I do promote my work. I am self-employed as an executive coach, and I have a book coming out in May. A big part of my job is promoting myself. The woman who wrote that could have been acknowledging my effort, and my ongoing learning curve to get better at social media.

But it reminded me of all the times I have been checked for “promoting myself” or “selling” when I named my competence or just took up space.

Women and other people from marginalized groups who name their abilities are generally checked, often by white women. I grew up being told “don’t toot your own horn.”

And I internalized that. Toot. It’s a word for a small sound, mocking, used by children, not serious, slightly embarrassing.

I worked in sales and was told not to sell. In my jobs in business development for ad agencies I was told “don’t be like a used car salesman.” As if clients were going to hand over their 8 figure budgets to an agency who had not clearly articulated why they were better than their competition in a competitive pitch where we were asked to articulate why we were better than the competition.

Unskillful promotion

Of course, there are skillful and unskillful ways to highlight your accomplishments, as a job candidate, worker, team or company. Unskillful self-promotion abounds. We can all think of the one who claims individual credit for work done by others, who steals the ideas or intellectual property of others and says they did it, the one who flat out lies about their results or wildly exaggerates their accomplishments, or fabricates credentials. On social media, unskillful self-promotion is inauthentic click grubbing, like outrage bait, the incendiary comment, the outright theft of the ideas of others, or outsourcing content entirely to AI.

Skillful promotion

Skillful self-promotion, on the other hand, is based in truth, in actual verifiable accomplishments. I always like to bring gifts – promote myself by coming up with my own content that offers some value. In a job interview, I might make a suggestion about a problem they have. I do a free intro coaching session with potential corporate clients. I name and recognize the contributions of others without diminishing my own role. You know what skillful self-promotion looks like too, although, like me, you’ve probably seen it less often.

The white guy factor

Let’s be real. White men aren’t told not to toot their own horns. They rarely face social opprobrium even when their most egregious fabrications are brought to light. You need only look at Trump, Musk, and DOGE to see that lying about results works for them, or at least they face little friction as a result. The rest of us are held to an entirely different standard.

What can you do?

Name it. Friends sometimes send me their resumes to review. With the women, I always have to edit to show the actual impact of their work. You didn’t participate in the team, you led the team. Write down the revenue results. Didn’t you completely revamp those processes for your company and save them millions?

In negotiation training workshops over the years, I have taken people through an exercise where they craft multiple stories to position their accomplishments to get a better salary. Women struggle to build a story, even in circumstances where in 5 minutes from the stage I can see what’s cool about their accomplishments.

We need to do recognize and name what we do well and be able to tell that story.

Trumpet your accomplishments. Blow that fucking horn. Like the walls of Jericho, knock down the barriers to your advancement, to getting paid what you are worth, to staying employed.

Resistance

I’m not saying you won’t face resistance, internal and external. I am good in a job interview, and can present the salient reasons why I am an excellent executive coach. Now I’m working on a whole strategy to promote my book.

And often when I do that, I feel sick to my stomach. All of that cultural programming which I ingested unknowingly, rises up, the psychological forever chemicals that I absorbed in media, school, work. Don’t promote yourself, let others praise you, deflect attention, be smaller, quieter, not too loud or too smart, don’t call attention to yourself.

I feel that often. I have to hit the emotional override button, just as I do when I’m anxious about getting up on a stage. It’s exhausting. If I won the lottery, I would probably never post on social media again.

But those of us that need to work, that need to pursue the promotion or raise, that must get a new job or keep the one we have; those of us that rely on social media to get income and advancement or promote our art, craft, or services, we need to promote ourselves. So, let’s do it and do it well. Without shame, without hesitation, let’s fill up our lungs, clap that trumpet to our lips and blow the walls down.