Tag Archives: self promotion

Manage the Media: Blow Your Own Horn, Project Your Achievements

As a woman moves up the ladder, she can and should gain media attention—and it’s her responsibility to see that it’s positive. Media is an extension of communication; it’s critical in shaping the public’s attitudes. Women’s achievements are woefully underreported, and when women are spotlighted, it is often in a stereotypical way—as a geisha, homemaker, little helper, floozy, vamp, dominatrix, witch, or male clone. Although a few women manage to deal with the media and their image in it with ease and flair, others find their relationship with the media a daunting challenge, although ultimately winnable. As women aim higher, the roadblocks become higher and more hazardous, and the scrutiny usually becomes brutal.

  • Shape and control your image and put it out there for the media; don’t let the media do it for you. Carly Fiorina told an aide: ‘When you’re starting a revolution, the first thing you do is seize control of the airwaves.” Upon arriving at HP, she immediately did so, and she crafted her message on the company web site, in speeches, white-board presentations, mass e-mails, and in the HP in-house publication. In fact, she was catapulted to national prominence and became the center of a head-hunting frenzy because of a single Fortune magazine article (in 1998), which captured her pithy aphorisms, pegged her as “The Most Powerful Woman in America,” and defined her as “at the center of the ongoing technology revolution that’s changing how we live and work.” No doubt Fiorina suggested this to her interviewer, which is a perfectly legitimate approach to establishing your own image in the media.
  • Develop your own signature style, hone your image, and gather support. For example, the author has always picked new frontiers, fed a hungry press, and defined the benefits of the work I was doing. I also developed an upscale, innovative style that carried through, from eye-catching brochures and invitations to large and glamorous opening parties: for example, to promote my vineyards, I had a white-tablecloth catered dinner on a West Texas mountainside, with a symphony orchestra playing, and private planes ferrying in high-profile movers and shakers in state politics.
  • Leverage high-profile events and call press conferences to put your spin on any event in an arena where you have expertise. Gloria Allred, a women’s rights and employment discrimination attorney (who represented Amber Frey in the Scott Peterson case), maintains consistent high visibility. Ms. Allred is particularly outraged by Michael Jackson and frequently calls press conferences to tear into him—which simultaneously raises her profile.
  • Keep in mind that a sense of humor helps deflect criticism—and that the media finds reporting it irresistible. Hillary Clinton (who has been through many many struggles over her presentation in the media) exemplifies the challenge to get it right. After being elected New York Senator, she stood at the podium to thank her supporters and said: “62 counties, 16 months, 3 debates, 2 opponents, and 6 black pantsuits later, because of you, we are here!” She did whatever she had to, to get her message out and her ideas across—and she won that election.
  • Don’t let the media trivialize you by talking about your recipes, your hobbies, or your cat. When former Texas Governor Ann Richards was photographed by Annie Liebovitz for a magazine spread, the media wanted to characterize her as a grandmother and motorcycle rider, as well as the former governor of Texas. “Absolutely not,” Richards responded. “I don’t know why we [women] continue to trivialize ourselves.”
  • Don’t let the media use your husband or family against you. Put your own positive spin on it. Women who seek to run for public office are often trivialized in ways sometimes condensed and characterized as “the three H’s: hair, hemlines, and husbands.” Consider the example of Barbara Lee, a Cambridge philanthropist who established The Barbara Lee Family foundation to help move women into elective office. She has raised funds for Hillary Clinton, and she launched an initiative to reach and encourage the vote of the 22 million single women who did not vote (and 16 million of those had not even registered to do so!).

She also mounted the Revolutionary Women Boston 2004, a program to help women as candidates, activists, and voters during the Democratic National Convention in Boston,with the battle cry, “Engage, Mobilize, Empower, Elect.” For this event, Lee gathered such speakers as Senator Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, former ambassador Carol Moseley Braun, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and Sheriff Andrea Cabral of Suffolk County, Mass. (the first African-American female sheriff in Massachusetts). In discussing the 3 H’s, she says the final “h” can be particularly prickly : “If you have a husband, they think you’re neglecting him. If you don’t have one, they wonder why. If you’re divorced, they say you drove him away. And if you’re a widow, you probably killed him.”

Senator Patty Murray also turns the family issue (which is frequently a liability) into a virtue: “Mothers can be politicians too,” she declares, running as “a mom in tennis shoes.” And Barbara Boxer deflects the issue with humor: “My husband thought he married Debbie Reynolds, and he woke up with Eleanor Roosevelt.”

Speak Up: Get Verbal, Get out There, Exude Power and Purpose

A major turning point in most women’s careers comes when they recognize that self promotion is part of the game of business. To most women, who are socialized in humility since very early childhood, boasting is anathema. But, as one woman leader put it: “Modesty doesn’t create opportunity.” If you want recognition, you must start promoting yourself. You will soon feel comfortable doing it, and equally important, you will begin to realize you deserve it. Communicate your vision, detail the benefits, and exude a can-do attitude to engage and motivate your audience. Determine to become a master of the visibility game: Document your successes and pass them along to see that they get noticed and recognized. Two women professionals who partner on career advancement advise “Keep a log or a notebook filled with all your work successes. Whenever you get a rave letter, close an important deal, have stellar results in your quarterly report, [you should] pass along the quote or statement to your company newsletter, e-mail updates to associates [and] professional publications, and weave the positives into regular press releases for your company.”

Develop what deal makers call your “elevator pitch,” something you can say that summarizes your value and achievements in the 30-60 seconds it takes for an elevator to move between floors. Wendy Kinney, the founder of PowerCore (a networking organization that also teaches professionals how to network more effectively) recognized that the difference between business success and business failure often has more to do with effective self-promotion skills than with technical competence. So she developed a profitable answer to the question “What do you do?” She opened the Atlanta office of PowerCore in January of 1995; there are now 34 PowerCore Teams, with more than 600 members.

To move up, address big problems and formulate bold solutions. Women are not at work to be handmaidens or helpers who are easily “disappeared” by devaluing their activities, as researcher and author Joyce K. Fletcher points out. An executive is at work to become a change agent, to positively impact the success of her company by setting strategic goals aligned with that company’s mission. Learn how to speak in public. The author’s first try at public speaking was a disaster: at the time, I didn’t understand what to focus on and how technical to get, so my presentation was way more technical than the audience wanted. One man said about me, “Ask her the time, and she’ll tell you how to build a clock.” I had to learn a style that worked for me—so I did, and I’ve since made successful presentations at high-level conferences all over the world.

Learn to weave your successes into a pithy story, which becomes as much a part of your repertoire as a handshake. Eunice Azzani, partner & vice-president of Korn/Ferry International, the executive search firm,says : “Don’t take an interviewing course; take a storytelling course. Sit down and write your story. Write about the times when you’ve felt great about yourself, the times when you’ve made a difference.” That’s the story you need to weave into all your public speaking—and even your casual conversations with colleagues.

Focus on becoming a leader, developing a vision, and inspiring and motivating people to follow it. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you need to know everything: there are many technical experts who can tell you how to do things, but few who have strong leadership skills.Rayona Sharpnack teaches leadership to businesspeople and has a track record of turning out successful change agents. Some of her participants describe it as a life-changing experience. She has shared her vision at Apple Computer, Boeing, Compaq, Gillette, Hewlett-Packard, Levi Strauss & Co., and Wells Fargo. Sharpnack insists you shouldn’t concentrate on facts and mechanics – you can get those by the truckload from Amazon.com. Instead, concentrate on transforming your mental framework.