Self promotion and its frequency

Question

In a field like IT and software development, tips/help is always given and taken. Helping peers and juniors is expected from an employee in a decent senior position. I am one of such seniors who is guiding both my peers and juniors.

My questions are:

Is it important for my seniors to know how I help my team? Is this self promotion valid and necessary?

If yes, how frequently do I mention this to my seniors, esp about my help to the team?

P.S. I am good at small talk and I can do this sandwiched between other talks.

"My seniors" but you are a senior? Can you clarify the language? — Gregory Currie, Mar 23 '19 at 10:14
@GregoryCurrie there is a hierarchy followed in my office. I report to higher management and a few juniors report to me. The hierarchy has atleast 5-6 posts and I am in the 3rd from the top. — WonderWoman, Mar 23 '19 at 10:21
Does your company have a 360 degrees feedback system where you can tell who you have helped and they can take feedback from them during annual appraisals? — PagMax, Mar 23 '19 at 10:45
Seems so similar to this question : https://workplace.stackexchange.com/q/132204/75821 — Solar Mike, Mar 23 '19 at 10:50
@WonderWoman A very small company yet it has a 5-6 post heirarchy of developers? Sounds dysfunctional — Gabe Sechan, Mar 23 '19 at 12:15

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 23 '19 at 12:03

If you help people, and help them well, then your actions and attitude will promote themselves.

I hate self promoting, but I've been successful gaining a reputation as a competent, helpful, senior team member in a number of companies by simply helping people and making friends with them.

This advice obviously won't be applicable everywhere (I've never worked in a company that used stack ranking for example), but I've worked in start ups and enterprises and I've found that people respond really well to someone who ignores the office politics and existing team rivalries and just helps out when something needs doing.

In my current (enterprise) environment I've used that attitude to get an openly hostile lead of another team on to our side (and now consider him a friend outside of work as well), and two of my managers (one replaced the other) have both commented on it. I've also had people from other teams who I don't know and have never actually talked to recommend me as a good person to ask advice from, so I can only assume that it is noticed and spread further than my immediate team or the teams I've directly helped.

It's worth pointing out that you'll need to put your own team first - no one's going to like or promote a teammate who neglects their work in favour of other teams, but your team will also notice and appreciate it if you're a person who brings support from others when they need it.

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 26 '19 at 16:38

I guess you have a position of technical responsibility. A important part of such a job is making your team successful. So when you give technical advice you are doing your job. That's good.

If you are not recognized for doing this part of your job, by all means make it clear to others in the company. If insisting upon being recognized for your competence is self-promotion, then promote yourself!

A subtle way to do this might be: ask for help. To your supervisor say something like, "I like helping the team do (whatever). This work of mine is productive; it helps (avoid errors? meet schedules? whatever is true). Can you give me advice on how to do this part of my job even more effectively?"

Self promotion and its frequency

2 Answers2