Women: How To Define Your Value In The Workplace

If you are a woman actively building your career but struggling to get the next promotion you may need to change your perspective from results to value. 

As women, we are quick to undermine, diminish, and give up our value. Why is that? 

Patti Newcomer, an accomplished leader working for Blue Chip companies says,

“Women’s struggle to be out front with their value in the public sphere largely has to do with their expected role. We are supposed to be mothers. I feel I have spent an entire career explaining to myself and others that ‘it’s ok, I’m going to go to work too.’ My mother didn’t understand why I needed to work and she constantly put pressure on me.

My other two sisters are also career professionals. One is a lawyer from ERISA claims law firm and one is an information technology (IT) manager for an insurance company. My mother gives us constant digs about not putting our kids first. Men generally don’t feel this sort of pressure.”

This mindset of needing to explain that it’s “okay” to work carries over into the workplace. 

Patti continues,

“Early in my career, I thought if I just worked hard enough. That people would want me to be at their table. It took me two decades to learn this is only a partial truth.” 

Define Your Value In The Workplace

As women we are taught to “just do great work” and then we will get our rewards and be promoted. In other words, our value is wrapped up in our work product, what we can show.

This is true to an extent but leaves out a major part of your value. Your intrinsic value. Your intrinsic value is a combination of what you were born with, your collective life experience, your unique perspective, and how you think. It’s what makes you you. and it’s an indicator of what’s possible. Your potential.

There is a subtle but very important difference between performance awards, primarily monetary or stock rewards, and promotions. Performance awards are based on the results you’ve delivered in the past. It is backward-looking. Promotions in contrast are based on the value you can deliver in the future. It’s forward-looking.

To use a financial analogy, your performance award is like a certificate of deposit that has matured. A promotion is more like your net present value compounded over a future period. Both are important but only one will move you further in your career. Get too focused on delivering results only and you may get stuck at your level wondering why others pass you by. 

Unfortunately, as women, we focus almost exclusively on the results. So much so that we achieve them and stand back assuming leaders will take notice (much of the time leaving it to chance) but more dangerously, we assume that it is our results that will get us promoted. This is flawed thinking. It’s our potential to take on more responsibility and higher leadership positions that get us the promotion. 

When we don’t define and communicate our value, we miss out on the bigger opportunities. We get left behind.

Patti’s ‘Aha Moment’

As someone who thought herself balanced and sensitive, I surprisingly found myself in a situation where I entirely overlooked an employee who was deserving of a promotion, and had I not been prompted to check, it would have passed me by. This individual is an absolute rock star and didn’t even bring up the idea. Only when I proactively looked at the data and thought through her potential did I make the change to promote this individual to the next level.

Patti continues, “I’ve had to check with people on what they wanted. If I didn’t do that I would be guessing. Women can’t ‘brag’ because both men and women dislike it when other women brag. Women are taught to be pleasers. If you are bossy that’s a problem. There is no “bossy” word for men. This came to life for me at P&G where I got negative marks for being aggressive (i.e. a bitch and competitive.) If a man is aggressive this translates into ‘passionate’ and ‘strong’.”

Because most of us don’t have 1. a proactive boss and 2. checks and balances to make sure it’s not just the squeaky wheel getting the grease, we need to take action on our own both as managers and as custodians of our own careers. 

While it’s important to be aware and take action, we shouldn’t blame ourselves. Men and women have some barriers to overcome to equalize career advancement opportunities. Some are mentioned in this post (socialization, vocabulary) but there are others. What if women were paid equally? Or, according to The Lawyers practicing Indianapolis, if child care was affordable and accessible. This would make it much easier for a woman to focus on her career. 

Absent of these things – we just aren’t there yet – there are some actions you can take.

1. Be aware of the difference between performance and potential 
2. Consider both performance and potential when planning your career or having a career conversation with your boss or mentor
3. Don’t let your results speak for themselves. Your unique individual voice is critical to defining your potential.

Wrapping It Up

It can be difficult for you to define your value without feeling like it’s something negative (bragging, aggressive). This is a socialization, systemic, and vocabulary problem. In spite of this, the more we as individuals own and define our values, the more we can impact change, one conversation at a time.