Confidence, self-promotion, and career advancement

Meredith Fineman Transcript

Sabrina Merage Naim
From Evoke Media I'm Sabrina Merage Naim. With me is Kassia Binkowski, and this is Breaking Glass, a series of conversations with women around the world who are shattering glass ceilings and challenging social norms. They are audacious, gutsy, and their stories are echoed across borders and generations in a rallying cry that is changing the narrative for women everywhere. Today's conversation is with best selling author, speaker and women's advocate Meredith Fineman. Meredith is the author of Brag Better, and the founder of FinePoint, a leadership and communications company that elevates individuals at all levels of their career. We're talking about women's struggle with self-confidence, and more specifically, how we too often fail to promote ourselves professionally, Meredith has coined the term "brag better", and she's refined her expertise helping women build the skills to promote their accomplishments in a way that can advance their careers.

Kassia Binkowski
Sabrina, I just want to reiterate what you said about skills, the conversation with Meredith really drove home the fact that self-promotion is in fact a skill that any woman can build. And she shares some of those concrete tactics with us today. Regardless of where in the world you're tuning in from, Meredith reminds us that we're not alone. Bragging better is something that's so many women struggle with, including those at the top of their industries. But that shouldn't prevent any of us from shortchanging our own accomplishments. Take a listen.

Sabrina Merage Naim
So, the theme of our conversation today is why it's important for women to brag better, which is something that you focused much of your career on now and as the name of your book. But we're going to talk a little bit more about the cultural norms as it relates to self-promotion of women, the expectations in terms of career, and why it is so difficult for women to properly promote themselves and their achievements in the same way as men. So just as a background, you're a speaker, a best selling author, an entrepreneur, a woman's advocate, your writing has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, Inc, Forbes, Entrepreneur, Marie Claire, Elle, among others. So you're pretty much out there in terms of the message that you're trying to relay. And where we want to start the conversation really is where did your interest in communication stem from? And when did you decide to focus that effort on helping women promote themselves?

Meredith Fineman
Absolutely. So yes, the book is "Brag Better", the better part of the past decade has been teaching people not only women, though, a lot of my focus is on women, my audiences, the qualified quiet, people that have done the work, but don't know how to talk about it, that is without gender. But, you know, I wanted everyone to be able to absorb the materials, but it obviously skews a lot towards women and affects women very differently. My interest in communications has been present for a very, very long time. And so I am the daughter of a journalist and a former journalist, the granddaughter of an English professor, and writing and English teacher, and the granddaughter of an advertising executive.

Kassia Binkowski
So it's in your blood.

Meredith Fineman
Yeah, so you know, our family business is words. I guess I would say,

Kassia Binkowski
I love that. Were their relationships with particularly strong women that really inspired your own self-confidence? I guess I'm curious kind of who nurtured both the pride and the poise, that you have to be comfortable doing something that so many women are not?

Meredith Fineman
Well, I appreciate that. Yeah, I get the confidence question a lot. I am a pretty confident person. Now, I certainly wasn't always that confident. But I was never afraid in the verbalizing department. Like I was never, I might have not been confident but that was never displayed in the way that I spoke or how I wasn't afraid to talk about things or ask questions or contribute. I have a very vocal mother, I talk a lot in the book about, you know, parents or guardians or people that are large influences in your life when you're young and how you see, you know, the expression of voice. I think that definitely certainly has something to do with it. I never felt in any kind of way silenced at least verbally at all. So I think that that had a tremendous impact on me. But I don't, some of it's related to confidence. But it's, you can still be a person who is not confident and still not stop talking. So, I think the interplay of those is really interesting. And particularly with these ideas, and you know, I've been working on the book "Brag Better" since about 2013. And trying to convince people that it mattered and why it mattered. And I, you know, the book came out in June of 2020. And I get so many messages about, like,”Where has this book been?” It's like, well, it's been me yelling into the abyss about how people need this book, and the skill set and how it's very different. You know, people have said, Oh, well, we have "The Confidence Code" we have "Lean In". I'm like, “Well, let me tell you why this is distinctively different from that. In fact, they are so different. It's not even comparable.”

Sabrina Merage Naim
I'd like to hear a little bit more in terms of, I mean, you have your company FinePoint where you're helping people with their communication strategies. And you wrote the book. And a lot of it was really focused on women. And we're going to talk about the cultural dilemma around that in a second. But why is it different than what is out there already?

Meredith Fineman
I really cared that brag better be deeply rooted in tactics. It's a strategic communications book. And it is a skill you can learn. That is the basis of this book that you know, bragging is stating facts. That is it, and you need to state them to the right people so that they can advance your career and so you can get what you want. And at its core, it is an instructive, skill-based, case study-based, interview-based book that I wanted to be very careful not to tell people what to feel, and instead tell them what to do, because I believe that the former just creates more anxiety and the latter actually works.

Kassia Binkowski
I just have to interject here really quickly, because you've just stated something so eloquently. You said bragging is just stating the facts. Two things. One, I don't think I've ever heard it stated so simply. And secondly, I don't know how it sits with me yet. To be honest, when I think of bragging I jump straight to ego.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yes. I completely agree, and I go through the same thought process, honestly. But Meredith, I love what you're saying about the qualified quiet. I hear that and think "okay, yes, I'm like that". And so are most of the women who surround me not because they're not strong, not because they're not accomplished women, right? Mainly because we haven't been trained or prepared to properly talk about it, and talk about our accomplishments. And I hear what you're saying that it's not gender specific. But I do think, and it sounds to me like you've experienced this, that it is more prevalent culturally and societally among women.

Meredith Fineman
Oh, yeah. I mean, that's not close. That's not a question. I just didn't want my book... I mean, again, you want it to have the largest audience possible. And I was very careful, sometimes. I mean, we have a lot of issues around women and thought leadership. And, you know, you'll notice, and I have some amazing friends that have thought a lot about these topics, why we don't call women geniuses, why we don't call women visionaries. And I was very careful that the second you say something is for women, it is diminished. And that is just more of patriarchy. But yes, it is, for so many reasons, significantly more difficult for women, significantly more difficult for anyone who is not white and male. So that can mean men of color. Then you have racism and sexism for women of color, you know, gender expression, identity, you know, I should say, you know, cis white men is certainly more difficult. It's not a question.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Let's just underscore that statement for a second. You're saying that bragging, promoting yourself is significantly more difficult for anyone who isn't a cis white man. And I think at this point, it's safe to expand upon that and say most things in life are significantly more difficult for anyone who isn't a cis white man. That's just the world we're living in.

Meredith Fineman
Yeah, so I talk about, you know, bragging is so difficult for everyone. You're so not alone. It's what I do for a living, but it's specifically difficult for women because positive attributes historically, for women were associated with passive behaviors, particularly around voice. So she was demure. She was shy, she was coy. All of those things were seen as deeply sexy, attractive, alluring, but they also meant that a woman did not speak and was just you know, seen and not heard, which is a deep part of a lot of people struggle with bragging better, is in some ways, particularly women told to be seen and not heard. And so you have that piece you have, women, who are judged on metrics that men are not. what you look like, what you sound like, how tall you are, what you weigh? Do you have gray hair? Do you have kids? You know, there are so many factors that we, and society and patriarchy upholds of women that they don't ask of men. And so that is extremely difficult. Then you add in what it looks like to be a woman who decides to put herself out there, whether that is raising your hand in a meeting, and then people after saying, "Oh, she's such a bitch", or someone running for president. And people are writing about, you know, her voice and her outfits and saying, "Oh, she's such a bitch". So you see the examples that you have, and we're starting to get more of them, which is great. But, you know, it's sort of the tall poppy thing, too, is like we want a woman to be as successful as we deem appropriate. And then that's enough for you like, how dare you be so confident? Or how dare you be so brazen or loud, or things that we would think are fine for men and not okay for women?

Kassia Binkowski
I want to reiterate a point you just made about how we see the examples that we have in front of us. And you said earlier that your parents, you know, modeled this for you. I grew up in a household where, you know, my dad had no problem being vocal, and being very bold and promoting himself in very public ways. And my mom who worked full time and was incredibly accomplished in her own right, did not. She just never modeled that for us. That said, I was never told directly, it was never expected, that I'd be reserved or demure. And yet, that's absolutely kind of the behavior pattern that I've probably picked up over the years. How much of that just stems from what we see? How much of that is so deeply ingrained, culturally, that we're not even it's it's kind of like subconscious exposure to these messages and expectations? Do you have any sense of that?

Meredith Fineman
Yeah, I mean, I think it's a real mixed bag. I'm very clear that bragging is a skill, stating facts about your work strategically to advance your career is a skill. And it's a tool. But this is a systemic problem. And it's not women's to fix. It's not anyone's to fix. And what really bothers me also about a lot of books like this, particularly about women is that it puts the onus on women, and we're so willing to say, "well, we'll do the work, it must be us". Maybe if you know, I, you know, x, y, and z into the abyss, someone will like me more, take me more seriously. I mean, they're, deep structural issues with patriarchy, it's just what it is. But then when you add in things you're told when you're younger, and forming experiences good or bad, you know, maybe you had parents who really, you know, wanted you to use your voice, and you were really excited about bugs and gave a presentation in third grade about them, and everyone made fun of you. And you said, I'm never gonna put myself out there that way, again. You know, stuff like that forms and informs. The media obviously, has a lot to say about women, good women, bad women, how we feel about them, what we say about them, how we judge them. So it is systemic, it is deeply ingrained. You know, we have certain ideas that, you know, might start to change about gender and identity and expression, that are conversations that will continue forever, probably, until you know, we're in a society that I guess is genderless? I don't know. I mean, who knows where that's going. But a lot of it's in the water. And so, the thing is, is even if you have been told those things, what I want to reiterate is sharing your work and talking proudly and strategically about it. You might not feel that way all the time. But it is a skill you can pick up even if you are someone who is told to never speak at all.

Sabrina Merage Naim
It sounds a little bit like what you're saying is, in the beginning, there's a component almost of "fake it till you make it". Even if you don't necessarily feel confident or comfortable, or even believe, you know, in the level of achievement that you're trying to put out into the universe. You got to kind of fake that confidence until you get there. Is that right?

Meredith Fineman
Oh, absolutely. And it comes and goes. I mean to be meta about it, I wrote a book called “Brag Better” and I'm like, well, nobody's read it. What is what if it's bad? What if it's really bad and I don't know? Like I don't know, I think it's good, I've done everything I can, I'm a good writer. I don't feel struck as much by imposter syndrome as I do by like, other syndromes and just anxiety and being tough on myself. And the doubt piece. You know, but yeah, it doesn't matter where are the most powerful people on the planet are just as insecure as everyone else. And you know what I've seen, the best brags, the best people sharing their work, are never the most senior.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Translate that directly to career achievement, because there's still a huge income gap between men and women. And one of the many reasons for this is purely that women are just not taught to negotiate harder for themselves. To expect more, to, like you say, "brag better" for themselves. What is the relationship between these cultural expectations and professional advancements?

Meredith Fineman
My argument over the past decade and working with thousands of people on this is a strategic way to share your work with confidence is what will advance your career in certain ways. So whether that's an internship, whether that is a raise, whether that is a corporate board seat, you have to tell people what you've done, because they just don't know. And oftentimes, they just don't care, especially in a situation, I mean, the past year of COVID, where we are all literally two dimensional and can't get in the room and win someone over like, that really matters. You can't drop by your boss' office and say, "Hey, you know, I really thought that presentation that I did went really well, can I get some feedback?" or, you know, "I really want to make sure I'm communicating my wins to you". And I am emphasizing also that this is a professional skill and practice. I mean, some interviews have asked me sort of the personal implications, I'm not going to pretend to like, you know, know how to improve people's personal lives. That's not what I'm talking about here. This is a strategic communication skill, that helps you be a better employer, a better employee, a better manager, and a better professional. But also, it helps you advocate for yourself as you advance your career. And "as you advance your career" doesn't have to mean at the tippy, tippy top, it just has to mean, whatever success is to you. And so the book is sort of peppered with interviews and case studies and exercises that people can do. But maybe it's as simple as, as I said, making sure once a week, you let someone know that you had a tiny win. And even if that's saying to your friend being like, "Oh man, I like worked out today. And it felt nice, and I'm proud of myself". That's also fine. It's just getting in the habit of sharing that information and practicing.

Kassia Binkowski
So I want to talk a little bit more about kind of the digital implications of this or how to practice it, because, we recently had a conversation with Jeffrey Tobias Halter who's an expert in gender equity in corporate America and he was sharing with us that you know, merit is less than 10% of the reason why individuals advance in their careers. And something like 60% of the vast majority had to do with exposure. Exposure to people at senior levels, exposure and opportunity to promote yourself and be known within the company where you're working. So much of that now, almost all of it, is digitally. How do you do that? How do you see social media influencing it, this opportunity to kind of curate, you know, ourselves online? What does that relationship look like? I mean, on the one hand, I can see the digital space actually easing the vulnerability of self-promotion. But we also know that there's this huge pressure for perfection that can be completely crippling. What does that look like? What have you seen?

Meredith Fineman
Yeah, so that idea of merit versus exposure is the point of my work. I shifted, I was running FinePoint as more of a public relations firm, and I started to notice that nobody knew how to talk about themselves. That people didn't know how to brag, that I was watching this trajectory of women specifically. You know, the more senior a woman got, this particular skill was not improving, or even starting at all. But also, being in and around the media, it is about my frustration with us rewarding the wrong voices. I mean, that's why I call the qualified quiet the qualified quiet. We have these loud people who, everyone knows someone in their industry, in their work pod, in their network, who has done less than they have and gets more recognition. And so, we have it ass-backwards. As much as I would like to be optimistic and say, "we can get those loud people to be quiet", that's not going to happen. That's not the way we pay attention. That's not the way we communicate. You know, some of these people aren't just going to wake up and be like, "Oh, I should step back and, let someone else shine". I want to be very clear as well that bragging better is a team sport. If you are someone people listen to or if you're working on bragging better, it is also part of your job to elevate the voices of others. To bring others with you, to help open the doors for those behind you and to ask people to brag for you too. I mean, it's a whole sum of its parts and that comes from my understanding of exposure and storytelling. The perfection part can be intimidating. Gen Z is fascinating for a lot of different reasons. But you know, harkening back to authenticity, I think millennials really perfected the "perfect". What that looks like. We know what colors that looks like, we know what that apartment looks like, we know what that office looks like. And the thing is with storytelling, that's not what is interesting. And that's not what gets you remembered. It's flaws. It is nuanced, it is risk taking. And that's really what gets you remembered is having the balls to be like, "well, actually, this is who I am", and share more of that.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I want to highlight something that you just said that I think is so important to re-emphasize, which is that so often on this podcast, we talk about the importance of taking people with you, taking women with you. You mentioned that bragging is a team sport, and we need to use that skill also to help other people. And I would say that doing that for women, especially, and helping women not only to train them and to give them the tools to be able to, to do this for themselves. But also when you are a manager of female employees to be the voice for them on their behalf to continue to advance them when it's appropriate, and at the right times. I just think it's something we don't do often enough.

Meredith Fineman
Yeah, absolutely. And when you're in the realm of communications, and messaging and visibility as I am, you start to realize you can't do it all yourself. First of all, nobody wants that, and it's not doable. But also at its most selfish, it just makes you look good. And if you have no other motivation to be a person who helps other people along, when you do that, it creates goodwill among co workers, colleagues, and friends. It shows others to pay it forward. But it also highlights your generosity. It is free. And in a lot of scenarios and a lot of situations and a lot of companies, it can feel like there's only room for one. I don't believe that, but I do think some of the systems certainly keep them from having more than one. The one woman, the one person of color. So that, and then there's a lot of pressure on organizations, particularly at the top, to actually diversify and not just say they're interested in it, and put one white woman in one place. In the book, I talked to Imina Tusseau and Anne Friedman, who are authors and podcast hosts, but also the creators of something called shine theory, which is this idea that if I don't shine, you don't shine and surrounding yourself with other powerful, interesting women elevates you. And, anytime you choose jealousy, it doesn't work. It actually undercuts what you're trying to do.

Kassia Binkowski
So we had a conversation recently with Angella Nazarian, who's the founder of Visionary Women, and she put this really eloquently as well as like, there's no scarcity in success. And until we can wrap our heads around that, until we can share that space and create the space to bring other women up beside us, everybody gets pinned down. And that's a theme that we've heard reiterated across every guest and the most diverse industries.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Yes, Kassia. We've had so many guests on the show who tell us that now that they've shattered whatever glass ceiling they were working towards, they're shifting their focus to create space for more women to join them. So how do we make that happen?

Meredith Fineman
Yes. So it's about understanding that there's opportunity all around you to promote yourself and brag about your work. I'll say, again, to define bragging as stating facts about your work strategically and cohesively to advance your career, stating those facts, especially since we're behind computers. One thing I talk about constantly is your email signature. Is it easy to contact you by phone? Is it easy to learn about who you are? Is it easy to understand what you're about and what makes you different and unique? Is your work displayed somewhere? Is there a link to I mean, I would prefer a personal website. If not, is there a link to somewhere with a bio with your previous work history? You know, with a portfolio somewhere, you got to make it easy for people. I mean, that's one thing you learn in communications and in PR is it's not only about communicating clearly, it's about doing it really quickly, and making it easy for someone. I mean, so much of Bragging Better is making it really easy for people to promote you and your work. But also to say yes to you. So, look at your email signature. Maybe put a calendar reminder in every two weeks or once a week. Open up a Google Doc open up an iPhone note or write on a piece of paper. Take 10 minutes every week or every two weeks to write down your wins and keep that running list. It's way easier to do that, and they're trying to think back. That is, that is a difficult thing to do so that you can remember it so that you can remember it for a quarterly review, an annual review. So you can remember it when you're asking for a raise. And they're saying "why?" it's like, well, I did these things. Put in a quarterly calendar reminder, so every couple months, to update your bio. Do you have a bio? Do you have a consistent bio, a long bio, which is everything about you everywhere, and then from that a paragraph bio, a short bio. And then from that a two line bio, and are all of those being updated consistently? Again, that stuff falls to the bottom of the list, it's hard to write about yourself. Then ask a co worker to look it over, ask your friend to help you. There are lots of other people at your disposal, you don't have to do this by yourself. Those are some opportunities, especially because all people can go on right now nobody's going to conferences, nobody's in meeting rooms, you know, office spaces are frozen in time from like March 13, or whatever they think it was a Friday the 13th. And so you have to communicate more explicitly than ever, who you are and what you've done. And it's also part of your job to report accurately on your career and on your work, so that people can manage you properly. So people can assign you the right projects. It's actually truly part of your job.

Sabrina Merage Naim
I love what you're saying. And I think that I'm learning personally so much from this. I can tell you that in preparation for this interview, even Kassia and I had a number of conversations about this, and how this is a skill that even is so difficult for us. And we're both entrepreneurs. Okay, all right here, here's me trying to brag, we're both entrepreneurs on the spectrum of accomplishments for our age, I would say we're up there. We've done a lot where we're going in a lot of different directions, and we work in a lot of fields. And yet even that sentence was so difficult for me to say, it's painful, to try and perfect that and to be public with it. And whether this is from a culture within our household or outside of our household, whether that is just society, you know, what comes with every step of our career, or even in our lives as women, I don't know, I think it's probably like you said a mixed bag. But having real life tactics that people can practice real tools to utilize on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, I just think is so important, instead of us, you know, spending the entire discussion talking about all the problems not having any real solutions. Because even for us, it's extremely challenging to overcome this.

Meredith Fineman
You're so not alone. It's what I do for a living, you know, spoken to 1000s of people about this premise. There have been two, actually, one and a half women who have said in the 1000s of people I've spoken to about this, I'm always at conferences. I am everywhere. I used to be everywhere, now I'm in my house, but there have only been two, I think, one distinctly and then I think there was one more who told me they did not need this. Of 1000s. So it's, you know, like 99%, it is universal, but also, it's a skill and with any skill you have to practice.

Kassia Binkowski
So I want to ask about the relationship between privilege and pride. I mean, I'll be really honest, I'm a white woman born in a country that gives me a passport to anywhere I want. I had a private education, I feel incredibly privileged for the access to education and opportunity that I had. And I see that as being a huge contributor to the success I've had professionally. As a result, I and a lot of other women in my shoes, preface any promotion that we're doing of ourselves in our work with, I'm lucky, I'm so lucky. You know, I'm so privileged. And, this is a very, very common thing for women to do I see it all the time. Does this undermine the promotion that we're trying to do? I mean what is the balance? I think I'm asking between privilege and accomplishment and how do we package that in a way especially in this moment, where we're, we're incredibly sensitive to or trying to be sensitive and aware of the kind of power dynamics and the social issues at play?

Meredith Fineman
Bragging better is deeply related to privilege. And I was very, very conscious. I did about 20 interviews for this book. Black women, trans women, women with different backgrounds, women of different ages, ethnicities because I am an Ivy League educated, privileged white woman. And it couldn't only be from me, because there are certain areas where I can't be helpful. And I've had many non white clients, but I am keenly aware that I cannot fully, truly understand their experiences. So if you are someone we listen to - a man, a white person, a white woman, it is part of your job also to pass that mic and to elevate those voices. When we talk about this idea of there being room on the stage for everyone, that also means if I'm asked to give a talk and I can't do it, am I sending them a list of interesting women of color that I advocate for and I like? Because they probably aren't going to do that work. Am I making sure that I am on panels, and suggesting other people who don't look like me? Who don't sound like me? Who don't have my background? Am I making sure I am not on panels where it's all white women? Am I making sure that I'm doing my part? Yes. And I'm not going to pretend. I have fought very hard for this platform and for these ideas, but I had many legs up. For a number of different reasons. So that's a really important thing. I think there are times to do that. And there's times to not, you know, there is still a lot of struggle for white women, but we benefit from whiteness, and you know, being adjacent to white men. So we really got to get it together, especially in our voting block, but that is an entirely different conversation. Lucky is a really interesting phrase that I used to say, and then you know, people always say, well, you make your own luck, and you can still feel lucky and be proud of things. I don't think it undercuts it. You know, there are times to be aware and say those things, and there are times where sometimes it can just feel like empty gestures, and you have to judge that yourself. But yeah, to especially also live in a country, at least currently, where you're not prosecuted or persecuted for using your voice. And there isn't any real inherent danger though there is danger to women always, of being vocal, understanding your power in the world as well. I really thought this concept was so deeply American. But you know, a lot there's a lot of really international appeal because of also cultural standards around this, which is something we haven't talked about. And that also deeply informs how you feel about these things.

Kassia Binkowski
Meredith, what do you think is kind of the the one takeaway that you want women to walk away with from this conversation? I mean, there's been so many poignant insights and observations and, clearly something that you're incredibly passionate about and knowledgeable on. What is kind of the the one underlying message that you would like women to hear and to to feel confident in.

Meredith Fineman
Your accomplishments are worth talking about. Full stop.

Sabrina Merage Naim
Breaking Glass is a production of Evoke Media. Evoke is a nonprofit organization that exists in order to elevate the people and stories that are working to make the world a more unified and equitable place. Learn more at weareevokemedia.com