Those who work the hardest aren’t always the best at work, and if you want to get ahead, you need to brag to your coworkers about your accomplishments, experts say.
If you bump into a colleague at the office and they ask how you are, you shouldn’t reply with a standard “I’m fine” or “I’m busy”, says Professor Alison Flagell.
Instead, they should proudly boast about their recent accomplishments, says Fragar, the organizational behavior expert at the University of North Carolina.
While this kind of behavior may seem embarrassing, Fragar told The Wall Street Journal that it can change how your coworkers perceive you and put you on the path to promotion.
“We are constantly given the opportunity to tell our stories and we throw them away,” Fragar said.
And she offered some advice for overcoming self-consciousness about bragging: Think about colleagues who have successfully climbed the career ladder by doing the same thing.
Alison Fragar, a professor of organizational behavior at the University of North Carolina, recommends that employees seeking a promotion brag to their coworkers about what a great job they’ve been doing.
She said those who have been promoted are already bragging about their efforts.
She also said that as work increasingly takes place behind the scenes, workers should ask themselves what good parts of their workload are not being recognised by their bosses.
In fact, Tessa West, a psychology professor at New York University, found that 80 percent of people take on multiple roles at work, such as running a committee or working on projects with other departments.
More than half of these additional responsibilities come with no additional compensation.
“People often assume they get credit for these things, but the credit is only in their boss’s head,” West says — if their boss even remembers.
Tessa West, a psychology professor at New York University, found that 80% of people fulfill multiple roles at work.
Sometimes, managers may not want to tell their bosses all of the extra work you’re doing for fear of appearing disorganized, she adds.
That’s why West recommends asking your boss if the extra work you’re doing will come up during annual performance interviews, where managers evaluate employees behind closed doors.
And West says workers sometimes need to take a tough stance to demonstrate their dedication to their particular role.
She suggests saying “no” to tasks that are peripheral to the job description, and says workers should justify their refusal by saying they want to hone their existing skills.
If you can’t think about how to package the extra work you’re taking on, it’s probably not going to help your career, West says.
Following some of this advice might make employees feel like Michael Mount from the awkward sitcom “The Office,” played by Steve Carell, who worked at the fictional paper company Dunder Mifflin and was known for his sassy remarks and frequent gaffes.
But experts say combining their advice with hard work is the path to success.
