#owningyourvalue

by Neha Sampat, Esq.

October 25, 2021

I recently saw a Twitter post recommending that individuals receiving a particular professional award refrain from centering themselves in posting about this honor and instead “be humble and stand out.” That advice raised a row of red flags for me.

This constant pitting of humbleness as oppositional to owning one’s value and standing in one’s accomplishments is part of what troubles me. As I explored in this video a while back, humbleness and humility are not mutually exclusive from confidence. One can be confident and own their value while also being hungry to learn more and grow! 

Celebrating yourself does not mean that you do not celebrate others who helped you along your journey. Saying, “I’m great,” isn’t the same as saying, “I’m great, and no one else is!” Proclaiming your expertise doesn’t indicate you have nothing to learn from other experts.

One of the exercises I teach in our Owning Your Value workshops requires participants to first identify an accomplishment from their past. It can be personal or professional. It can be however big or small. It can be something they were lauded for or something no one else noticed but them. It can be anything, as long as it is an accomplishment that is meaningful to them. And yet…many people find it extremely difficult and painful to even think of one single accomplishment. Why is that?

We have been conditioned to not register our wins, to not sit with our successes, to not bask in the glory of our accomplishments, and this feeds our Imposter Syndrome. Some of this is due to our capitalist society that centers on perpetual productivity and incessant striving: We are too busy running on to the next thing to stop and appreciate the thing we just did!

But for many of us, this conditioning also is a tool of a system built on bias, oppression, and exclusion. A system that tells those of us who are marginalized that we belong at the margins and that others belong in the center, that we must cede the spotlight to them, and that what we have is due solely to what others gave to us. That we shouldn’t “brag” and should, instead, be humble. That we’re “not team players” when we acknowledge our individual contributions. 

These pressures have taught us to make ourselves small: We deflect compliments (“Oh, it was the team!”), minimize our contributions (“Oh, it was nothing!”), and cautiously refrain from “making a big deal” about our experiences and perspectives. 

Yet, ironically, while the system demands our smallness, it simultaneously expects us to deliver big, especially when compared to those in the majority. In a pivotal study conducted by Nextions, fictional Caucasian Thomas Meyer’s legal memo was rated by law firm partners at 4.1/5.0, while fictional African-American Thomas Meyer’s memo was rated 3.2/5.0. Spoiler alert: It was the same exact memo. And this is not just a racial discrepancy. As Professor Joan Williams points out, “women have to try twice as hard and show more skill than men to be viewed as equally capable.”  

And even when many marginalized outperform others, their accomplishments still are questioned. Take, for instance, Simone Biles: She is the winningest gymnast in history who performs unrivaled skills at an unrivaled level. Yet, the International Gymnastics Federation undercut the scoring value for a vault move no other woman gymnast has even attempted, much less landed. They devalued her. And well before that, she weathered nasty criticism when she wore her infamous GOAT (i.e., “greatest of all time”) leotard. Even though she had the proof to back her claim of being GOAT, many came down hard on her for her confidence, calling her arrogant and describing her as not being a team player.

This “confidence backlash” is a tool of maintaining the heterogenous status quo and of keeping the historically oppressed small and at the margins. And it is directly related to the lack of representation at the highest levels of leadership in corporate America. A prerequisite to ascending into corporate leadership roles often is sponsorship, which is when other people openly and publicly vouch for someone’s expertise and legitimacy and connect them with the right opportunities and right people – in other words, say their names and speak their excellence. Yet, Black women in particular do not receive the sponsorship they need and deserve, and this has become a tremendous barrier to Black women in the C-Suite.

The harsh truth is this: Many of our historically marginalized and excluded colleagues do not get their excellence spoken by others (as it should be); their wins are erased and/or credited to others who then ascend the corporate ladder and perpetuate the problem. So how do we disrupt instead of perpetuate this?

Here are a few insights and tips to help you get comfortable with owning your value and with other people (especially marginalized professionals) owning theirs:

Build a culture of celebrating efforts and wins: Make it a normal part of the week or month to have each person on your team name something they did well, and celebrate that as a group.

Model confidence and humility as connected: Share openly what you’re good at, and share just as openly, what you’re still learning. Be able to say, “I’m proud of myself and I’m proud of so-and-so and so-and-so for what each of us brought to this situation.”

Vigilantly disrupt your unconscious biases: Check yourself every time you feel the urge to judge someone as arrogant, especially when that someone has been historically marginalized or oppressed. You may be operating out of your own unconscious bias. Look out for your mini-me bias so you are not just sponsoring those who remind you of yourself, but also are sponsoring those who have different identities and backgrounds from you. Make sure to sponsor and speak the excellence of the multiply marginalized (especially Black women).

Use your platform and privilege to laud others for their accomplishments and to champion them when they laud themselves: We have power over who are seen as thought leaders in our spaces, even just through the voices and accomplishments we choose to amplify and like on social media. This is how we change stereotypes such that a confident, melanated woman (for example) owning her accomplishments isn’t arrogant, but is instead powerful, capable, and successful. Seriously, go to social media right now, and amplify an accomplishment of someone who may normally face confidence backlash due to stereotypes and bias.