Struggling To Advocate For Yourself At Work? Look To These Tips From Selena Rezvani’s New Book

When was the last time you found your needs and values being ignored at work?

Did you decide to stand up for your wishes or did you feel uncomfortable in doing so?

Every day in companies around the world, employees, teams and leaders engage in a constant dance of power where one party can find themselves feeling perfectly fulfilled while another is emotionally crushed.

And if you find yourself often on the powerless side of this dynamic, it can feel as if you have no control over your career potential and that you may never be able to assert yourself out of that position.

But thankfully for employees and leaders who struggle in these work scenarios – and fortunately for the organizations that need healthier work relationships in order to achieve better business results, there is a new book that provides much needed wisdom and help.

I sat down with the premier expert on advocating for yourself at work, Selena Rezvani. Selena is a keynote speaker, content creator and media commentator on leadership, particularly focused on helping emerging leaders develop confidence and the skills need to assert their presence.

Her latest book comes out today, entitled Quick Confidence (Wiley) and it is not just an informative read about why many of us struggle with certain confidence-diminishing situations at work. It’s a reference manual to be consulted frequently, for practical and actionable scripts that quickly elevate the tenor of how you show up and how others will perceive you.

We spoke about a few themes that stood out to me and related to my work in coaching leaders who often waver between having self-doubt and overconfidence. Here are some highlights of our conversation.

Shattering myths about confidence

Selena’s book provides real life scenarios where one’s self-confidence plays a major part in the outcome.

A few examples include negotiating (a job offer, salary or a work decision); working with a pushy colleague or an intimidating boss; and getting interrupted in meetings to the point that it’s affecting your effectiveness and the optics of your leadership brand.

I shared with her that I often see leaders navigate these situations with the wrong idea about confidence.

They buy into the myth that being confident means being aggressive or declarative when working with their teams.

They choose to be dominant and in the belief that they are driving results, are quick to shut down resistance.

In her book, Selena lays out an example of how this behavior which she refers to as “experting” often happens from a place of personal insecurity – the very opposite of confidence.

She elaborated on this: “when you are the one experting, it’s an unsustainable pressure to be the best and you’re doing it to insulate yourself from vulnerability when in fact, we should be doing the opposite.

“Instead, what we need to understand is that nobody's working with perfect information, nobody has perfect insight into the problem, and nobody can guarantee their idea is foolproof.

“We do our teams much more of a service when we share an idea that we think has a really strong spark, but it's maybe not perfect. And then we let the group right-size that.

She continued, “We let them reality test that idea and get feedback on it.

“That's the best interdependent style of a healthy group. You can go out on a limb.

“You feel safe enough to not be the expert, but to be a generally informed person and share your ideas, knowing part of your team's job is to push back, debate, agree in some cases, build on your idea.

“That approach, for me, in my own career in life has helped me put experting in its place.”

I shared with Selena that on a recent panel speaking with newly promoted executives I talked about how everyone in the room had already “made it” yet many of you will feel as if you need to still be the smartest person in every interaction.

And yet, I shared, what those junior and mid-level colleagues want most from [these leaders], is to see your vulnerability and humanity; that you can ask for help and admit when you’re wrong. Because it lets them know they can potentially get where you are someday.

Selena added, “Yes, this is exactly right. It reminds me of Amy Cuddy’s research where she emphasized that warmth must come first, then competence [to truly influence and engage people].

“And this is not intuitive to a lot of people. What you're talking about, almost a negative example of overconfidence, is also called “advantage blindness.”

“When leaders get high up,” Selena continued, “they assume other people are working in the same conditions as them and that others feel just as visible as them or their ideas are taken as seriously.

“So the best leaders don't ‘expert,’ they're actually good at perspective-taking and using genuine curiosity to understand other people's experiences. I think there's more empathy. That’s the E word we need to use, not the expert E word.”

Advocating for yourself with healthy entitlement

After discussing the dangers of being overconfident, Selena mentioned why she wrote Quick Confidence and how it was so important to her that she helped readers battle under-confidence, not just for their own careers but because of how it creates missed opportunities for teams and organizations.

She shared, “Under-confidence stops us from sharing our ideas, potentially from sticking up for somebody else when they're overlooked, or they're diminished in front of us to lobby for a change within the organization.

“And as the employee contract changes with ‘quiet quitting’ and the ‘great reset’, one of my goals is to help people find their place in the magic middle of those extremes.

“This is where employees, in particular, feel like they can find that healthy respect for their strength, their value, their contributions, and speak to those.

“They can have conversational influence in talking about those value-adds and contributions that they bring. That's really my goal.”

She continued, “It's not to get you to pound your chest like a gorilla, and it's certainly not to demure yourself so that you're not seen.

“It's that wonderful place right in the middle that I call healthy entitlement.

“You are entitled to be treated well, to be paid fairly. And a lot of times, confidence is what powers those breakthroughs and those conversations.

How confidence shows up between generations at work

One of Selena’s content pieces that went viral last year was her speaking about how employees should take their PTO (paid time off) even though many tend to put it off or even feel as if they are going to be seen negatively and not as dedicated to their work.

This is a perfect example of the kind of message Selena wants to help get out to the world: that you can, and must, advocate for yourself at work and that it’s not selfish to do so; in fact, it’s healthy and necessary for better organizational outcomes.

I shared with her that as a Gen Xer, I struggled a lot with advocating for myself and deferred a lot of PTO time when I was working within companies.

In our generation, we are often conditioned to work our way up the ladder, stay committed to companies for a long time and not rock the boat too much in our careers.

But later generations have shifted the employee mindset a great deal in recent years.

So I asked Selena, what is her outlook on how much the old guard leaders (Boomers, Gen-X) will change their view as it relates to being more healthy and open to the different needs that employees have for their careers?

She shared, “I think there is a clash between the two bookends of generations at work.

“And that's not to say they can't work together and collaborate, but I think there are very different ideals known research differences.

“To give baby boomers credit, they have had to fight or be expected to suffer in some cases to pay their dues.

“And I think there is still an expectation that in turn, other generations should do that. I don't agree with it, though because I think it perpetuates hierarchy in a really unnecessary way.

“I believe it quiets the voices of younger generations and less tenured employees.

“Gen Z and millennials have a lot more confidence around identifying boundaries, for example, and delineating them and enforcing them.

“They don’t see their jobs as their identity or productivity as equating with their worthiness as a human being.

“That can create a rub in the workplace that's real right now, because people have very different views on that kind of employee role agreement.

“But what’s critical for any generation in leadership roles,” Selena shared, “is how they maintain the connection with their people.

“That’s where it really starts and ends. Because regardless of generations at work, you can try to enforce shiny, exciting workplace trends, but it’s that connection with your people and that ongoing feedback loop that's going to make you an emotionally intelligent leader.”

Getting out of the victim mentality

As we got deeper into the concepts in Selena’s book, I told her I resonated deeply with her lessons on what she calls moving from “victim to creator.”

By the word victim, that’s not to say someone who is struggling with confidence is crying wolf or looking for pity; but rather it’s the idea of feeling as if you don’t have any agency over the confidence-minimizing situations that emerge at work.

And Selena’s advice is to keep thinking about how you can create, build and engage with others in new ways, rather than feel as if you have to stay in a reactive and deferential position.

Among many examples of how this plays out, I asked Selena about those times when you are interrupted by your colleagues in a meeting.

Selena expanded on this section by sharing, “Interruptions - I'd like to say they don't discriminate, but they do.

“There's data that we don't all experience interruptions at the same frequency. And so women are more likely to be interrupted.

“But there are things we can do as individuals when it's happening to us no matter what your gender.

“And there are things you can do as that ally to somebody else who is being interrupted when you see it playing out.

“One of the things I encourage people to do is a little counterintuitive to some, but it's to keep right on talking.

She continued, “often what we see is people will stop, yield to the interrupter and ask permission to talk again.

“And I'm of the opinion that there's a permissionless way to keep your power which is to not stop talking.

“But I think another way is to make factual observations because they may not know they’re doing it.

“You might say something like, ‘Hey, Tim, that's the third time Brenda's been talked over. I'd really like to hear the rest of her idea.’

“This has a way of quickly reflecting back to the group that this isn’t right, even if it’s becoming the norm.

“Maybe people are desensitized and maybe others do notice it, but they're too uncomfortable to speak up and say something.

Selena continued, “I'm a big fan of that kind of non-judgmental observation where you're stating the facts and asking for a cure, which is you're asking the group to do one better.

“And then I think one of the most underused ideas - if this is rampant on your team - is to develop new meeting norms.

“Really great organizations have meeting norms because they know we all have wildly different ideas of how to be good teammates and how to show up and contribute in a meeting.

“For instance, I heard about one organization who set up a norm where they said, we encourage brave conversations in these meetings and embracing discomfort.

“So when that’s you wanting to say something, start your statement with, ‘I'm going to take a risk here.’

“And that became a helpful and powerful tool to give someone their due that they're going out on a limb and maybe they're feeling vulnerable but are about to share something.”

“Lastly, one thing is we can do more round robins so that everyone is getting airtime.

“You can say, ‘You all just heard the plan, let's go around and hear one opportunity you see and one concern you have.’

“And baking that into our agendas and into our processes, I think, really sets a powerful norm that everyone speaks here, everyone's voice is valued.

When in doubt, call it out (with some levity)

I asked Selena whether there are downsides to advocating for yourself.

For instance, what happens when you stand up for yourself and are in the right, but if you naturally show a glimpse of defensiveness, people can patronize you and make it seem as if you’re the troublemaker, not them.

Are you supposed to just stay quiet or truly lean into the change you want to see?

Selena replied, “I think you can do both. You can read the room and the moment and know you have more than one tool in your toolbox to deal with this situation.

“It’s difficult at times, but you can speak up for yourself or others in a calm, neutral way. I don't think that needs to be angry or like a drill sergeant correcting folks. A really effective tactic is to use a little levity and humor.

“For instance, maybe one of your colleagues is an over-talker who's cutting people off left and right and taking over.

“You might say something like, ‘I'd really like to make a point next - that is, if it's okay with you.’”

Selena continued, “Basically, you're making a point to say, this is absurd. You've anointed yourself the leader here. So it’s like you’re responding in a joking way like, ‘Your majesty, I'd love a moment.’

“Sometimes just making it about the absurdity of the scenario rather than extremely personal to the individual, makes the difference.”

*****

So, in your career journey, take some time to reflect on whether you are practicing self-advocacy to the degree you would like and if not, gauge whether there are some techniques from Quick Confidence that you could start applying.

And you may even find that you as you start standing up for yourself, you set the tone for others to get more of what they need in the process too.

Selena told me that ultimately, whenever you’re advocating for yourself, you must think about the other person's goals, passions, and struggles. Try to understand, whether whatever you're proposing is going to also benefit them in some way.

If you can further their goals or objectives, or advance a passion or interest of theirs, it enables better outcomes.

She shared, “What I really like about doing that is if you're known as the loud squeaky wheel, then this approach moves the conversation away from ‘me, me, me’.

“For instance, take a clause in your contract you may be negotiating. Yes, you’re saying, ‘I’m requesting a family-friendly benefit to be added in my contract, but look, here's how it's going to help us meet our goals: we have this passion to be an employer of choice and by adopting this, having more competitive benefits, we're going to become more of a destination for talent.’

“I think it's up to us to stand in their shoes when we're making these pitches and proposals or even complaints. Because at the end of the day, it's going to go further if we show them it's a win-win.