Quick Tips to Communicate your Wins

If you want to grow in your career and as a leader you must learn to communicate your success. This is a skill and art that will move you in any direction you want to go exponentially faster than just doing good work. Bragging about all you’ve achieved will lose you friends, sure. However, strategically placing emphasis on the value you’ve delivered will propel you forward in every circle. It is a skill for sure. You cannot just talk yourself up, you need a strategy when you communicate the win. And that win itself needs to benefit other people. I can’t wait for you to develop this skill so here we go. If you want more on why communicating your wins is so critical? Check out the YouTube here!

Wins come in all shapes and sizes.

I know a part of you is thinking, but I don’t have a great win to communicate yet. Don’t I need to focus on that first? No. No you do not. You are winning all the time. Did you complete your work on time? That’s a win. Have you taken initiative? That’s a win. Did you have a great conversation with someone or on something that was intimidating. Take that win! Sure, you want to communicate you wins when they save a ton of money, bring in a big client, or save a bunch of waste in the organization. You’re likely winning every day in the small things and you can communicate your wins consistently to create a track record of success and build the muscle you’ll need to communicate your big wins effectively.

Refusing to communicate your wins can cost you

A leader I was coaching, Sarah, struggled with many forms of communication. One of her biggest missteps was in communicating her wins. Sarah insisted on giving the credit to everyone else. She would give the credit to her team, to her boss, to her peers. She even gave credit to the customers on a few occasions. I used different tactics to help her to understand why and how to communicate her success as a leader. She would only half implement and play at sharing wins. There was always an excuse why she couldn’t or shouldn’t communicate her wins in every example.

As time went on, the leaders above her began to question her abilities. They began to micromanage her and force additional steps for her to communicate more under the guise of additional coaching for her. Sarah was doing good work but wasn’t letting them see her impact. One day as she was lamenting all of her new meetings with the bosses I drew the line for her. If she had been sharing her impact proactively all along they likely would have never gotten to this point. The silver lining, these meetings could be a crash course in communication. To her credit, Sarah jumped fully on board.

So what did Sarah do?

In these meetings Sarah was asked to present from a slide deck on various areas to show improvement. This created a great opportunity to focus on language before the meeting. Sarah and I looked for areas to replace we with I. Sure the team executed the plan, but Sarah implemented it. We identified places where she could add more direct and specific information like dates, ratios, and projections. We identified all passive language and determined where it was just the words that needed to be more active, or if Sarah needed to take an active approach to change her mindset. Then she practiced presenting it with the switches we’d made.

Now, Sarah hadn’t developed the muscle, so it took much more effort and practice to share these successes well. She had been building the muscle of giving all the credit away for years so there was a lot of learning and unlearning that had to happen to be successful. When she told me about the first meeting, she complained it was awkward, uncomfortable, and that not everything came out right. I was so proud of her. She continued to practice and refine her communication during these meetings and in her daily interactions. Months later she reported that her boss applauded her growth over the year and noted that those meetings were a really great development opportunity for her. (AKA the manager thought Sarah had been passive and was giving herself credit for developing Sarah to this new level) In actuality, Sarah had been doing the work for some time. She just learned a new way to communicate the wins. Which I guess, the meetings did provide an opportunity for because she may never have had the full desire to change without them.

Did you pick up the tips to communicate your wins?

1. Notice your language.

Do me a favor and write down a win that you were a part of. (Bonus points if you add it here and send to me!) Read it and see how many times you give credit away. Did you say we where you really mean that you did the work? Are you saying they because a group fulfilled your instructions? Did you write something passive like the event was successful when you maybe meant I planned and executed this successful event through the efforts of the team? I’m not suggesting every sentence reads like that last one but just notice how often you give credit or walk past it when it is owed to you.

2. Be result focused.

If you made a list of all you did yesterday chances are you’d note inputs. I sent emails, made phone calls, and set/attended meetings yesterday. Even though you updated the language and wrote that you were the one who did it (good job you with the first step) it still hardly sounds like a success. Rather than listing inputs, consider the results you achieved with them. I met my cold email goal for the day and began phone follow-ups earlier than scheduled allowing more time to assist the team. I brought my stats to huddle and offered to set the senior leader meeting and create the agenda. The first version isn’t wrong, you did do all of those things. The second version links what you did to why you did it. It also shows peers and leaders that you are focused on success for yourself and the group.

3. Provide active facts rather than passive intentions.

This is a big one. If you want to communicate your wins successfully you have to remove these four phrases from your vocabulary right now.

• Trying to
• Working on
• Waiting for
• Planning on

I can’t stress this enough. If you are writing an email, or creating a presentation, or talking in a 1:1 do not say these. Instead, focus on what you have done. If you’re preparing for the meeting and it seems inevitable that you’ll say one of them, take an active step first. You’re not trying to reach Ted. You’ve sent an email and followed up with a call. You’re not working on a process, you have an outline that will be ready for review Friday. Don’t plan to have a meeting, schedule it before you bring it up.

Bring it all together

Just like with Sarah, when you communicate your wins, it will take practice. You will be awkward at first. You’ll be walking down a rocky road and relearning how to speak. Heck, depending on how long you’ve been giving away the credit you might actually be relearning how to think of yourself. So, give yourself some grace but stick with it. When you are passive in what you are doing and when you give all of the credit to others you set yourself up for failure. You have all of the talent you need and are likely already doing the work, now you just need to share it. As always, I’m here cheering you along. If you want to better understand how communicating your wins can impact your career click here and I’ll help you see where this one change can take you.