Peggy Klaus Read Online Free PDF Page B

brag like “one of them,” but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it at all. Let me show you how to talk about yourself in a way that is sincere and feels comfortable. By doing so, you’re going to learn how to brag
and get away with it!

CHAPTER 2
    What’s So Good About You?
    Wherever you go, there you are.
    —B UDDHIST SAYING
    •  “So tell me about yourself,” asks the interviewer, looking at you, then the clock.
    •  “What kind of sales experience do you really have?” asks a venture capitalist sizing you up. “Why do think you’ve earned a raise?” asks your boss with his eyebrow raised.
    •  “How have you helped me lately?” asks a demanding, high-profile client.
    •  “What do you do?” asks a stranger at a networking event.
    •  “Isn’t this position really way out of your league?” asks the headhunter scanning your résumé.
    •  “How about introducing yourself to the group?” asks the company president your first day on the job.
    •  “What are you doing with yourself these days?” asks someone who has heard you’ve gotten axed.
    •  “Where did you go to school?” asks the CEO who graduated summa cum laude from Harvard.
    So, what’s so good about you?
It’s a question we are asked indirectly in our business and social interactions daily, and how we respond determines the effectiveness of our bragging campaign. Yet how many times have you walked away from a golden opportunity to strut your stuff and thought “Why did I say that?” “What was I thinking?” “If only I had said …”
    Most of us think of the perfect thing to say about ourselves after the fact. As we later reflect on our encounters, we fantasize about how much more forthright, charming, and articulate we could have been, saying all the right things in just the right way, like characters do in movies. Then our courageous visions and thoughts slip away until the next time we are caught off-guard, when we make the same mistakes all over again. The reasons behind these lapses, as you’ve read thus far, are varied: entrenched bragging myths, weak interpersonal communication skills, and brag-fright. But there is also another
big
reason: We simply haven’t done our homework, leaving us unprepared to field the questions thrown our way.
    Effective bragging starts with
you
. It is based on having a clear sense of who you are and what you have accomplished, as well as what you are accomplishing right at this moment. It depends on your skill in communicating what makes you unique and interesting in the eyes of those you want to impress. Yet most of us remain curiously unable to articulate our stories and the diversity and extent of our skills, abilities, and attributes. We are equally unaware of how others perceive us and what exactly they like about us. We take ourselves for granted, thinking that we haven’t really accomplished anything, that we’re “just doing our jobs,” and that the recognition we seek will naturally follow our hard work. Then reality moves in. We get overlooked for a promotion, special assignment, or pay raise. Someone else takes all the credit. We never get called back after the first round of job interviews. We get pink-slipped. We feel unappreciated and misunderstood. With life moving at such a frenetic pace, it’s difficult to recall in colorful detail our successes from a month ago, much less a year or five years ago. Our accomplishments remain only as shadowy memories—that is, if we haven’t forgotten them altogether. We lose track of what brought us to where we are today and how to leverage what we’ve got to take us where we want to go.
    Despite this tendency toward amnesia, we have been accomplishing things all our lives: Since taking our first breath, we haven’t stopped. We each have a history of hundreds, if not thousands, of successes that make us memorable. So how do you make certain that everyone else knows what’s so good about you? You start by