BYOS, or someone else will

Bring your own story, or someone else will tell your story for you.  This was one very important lesson I learned over my years of professional experience.  Growing up as an Asian American, I constantly struggled to navigate the space between boasting and self-advocacy.  Most Asians were raised in very strict homes where children were disciplined rigorously to be quiet, respectful and humble.  They were taught to study hard and let their grades speak for their achievements.  This upbringing commonly translates to Asians living up to the stereotype of hard-working but do not stand out among their peers.  

Corporate America recognizes performance above all.  This country was built on the backs of pioneers, challengers, and outliers.  Those who stand out positively will ultimately do well in the work place.  These attributes are counter intuitive for many of us who were raised not to make waves.  

Performance Review time represents a critical time for everyone to stand out and advocate for their body of work.  This is not the time to be heads down and let the metrics speak for themselves.  Those who are well versed in the art of self-advocacy help their superiors to ‘pound the table’ on behalf of their advancement and increases.  Those who are not, take the chance that someone will tell the right story for them.

So, how can you bring your own story?  I offer the following 3 A’s of Performance Story Telling:

1. Authentic. (Tell YOUR story) Goes without saying you need to tell accurate stories.  Don’t be caught in a lie!  You do want to tell a story that leaves your audience to see who you were in the story.  Just as you need to limit using the pronoun “we” and put more emphasis on “I” when telling stories at an interview, you need to do the same when it comes to telling your performance story.  This is again counter intuitive for many Asian American professionals because we grew up being told not to brag.  When the audience hears “we” more often than “I,” they may begin to suspect that you are claiming credit for someone else’s effort.  Therefore, it is important to make sure that you clearly articulate the role that you played in your story.  Our team’s hypothesis was that our clients can increase their market share if they add social media as a promotion channel.  I developed the financial models based on benchmarks of comparable businesses for our analysis.  My models validated our position by illustrating a potential of 5% increase in market share over 12 months through advertising in WeChat, Twitter and Facebook. 
2. Audience-centric. (Tell portable stories) You need to tell your story in a language that the audience understands.  Many times, your story will need to go beyond a group of people who know you.  It goes without saying that you should avoid jargon and acronyms that limit the ability for your story to go viral to a wider audience.  There are many things that companies do to help create a common language, such as company values, strategy and goals, burning platforms, agendas, competency behavioral indicators, etc.  When you tell a story leveraging these elements, it demonstrates that you are aligned with the company and people who do not know you will still be able to recall the value you are bringing to the table. In demonstrating the company value of innovation, I led a project that leveraged bots to automate and accelerate the close processes.  We were able to shorten quarterly closing by a week or 25%.
3. Amazing. (Tell stories with a “so what”)  You need to structure your performance story in a way that provides the audience with clear understanding of the purpose of your performance during the period, your approach and solutions, and most importantly, your impact.  Your performance story needs to help your audience understand what was amazing about your period.  I have been a part of many performance review round table discussions where common challenges to performance stories included, “So what?” “How was that distinctive?” “Was he or she just doing their job?”  You need to make sure the story helps your audience understand how your results set you apart from others.  I set out to improve my sales this year.  I actively expanded my network and deepened my relationships at the clients.  As a result, I increased incremental sales of my accounts by 25% and brought in 10% more new accounts than my peers.

In Corporate America, it is as important for someone to be able to articulate the value of their performance as it is to be a high performer.  Why?  It demonstrates your ability to describe performance, measure impact, and articulate value in alignment with desired outcomes.  The higher up you move in the organization, the more you will be called upon to perform that task.  If you cannot do it for your own performance, then it would be difficult to see you describing the impact and value of your project, team, division, or organization.  So, before you write off telling your own performance story over lunch as office politics, consider it as an audition for your next job.

I will leave you with this thought.  As companies are doing away with periodic performance reviews and shift to everyday coaching, you will need to become even more comfortable and vigilant in telling and building upon your own performance story.  When it comes to your performance, be aggressive.  Tell your own story.

Thank you for reading this post.  As always, please share your thoughts and experiences in the comments and share with your networks if you found it to be useful.

Stay Cheesy,

The Rambunctious Rat