Someone says "so, tell me about yourself" and off you go... your job title, the kids, and somehow your cat who died when you were 10, and the train just leaves the station and never stops. We've all been there!
I'm so wildly passionate about helping people answer that question, because underneath it is a much bigger one that so many of us moms skip right over: what do I actually want to be known for? And if we're gonna be more visible at all, at work or online or at the playground, I want to know... visible for what?
Am I wearing the pearls while vacuuming?
I've had so many moments of asking myself, am I mother enough? Am I enough of a mother? And then I'll catch myself picturing the pearls and the vacuum, Leave It to Beaver style, and honestly where did that even come from?! When I really peel back the layers, what I'm craving is just a bit more time with my kids, and with my daughter starting kindergarten, that means picking her up most days. That was such a cool realization, because "enough" was this big vague cloud I could never do anything with, and picking her up is something I can actually do.
We don't always have to have a rags to riches story
When people think about putting themselves out there, I find they go looking for the one big breakthrough moment, and if they never had one, they figure they've got nothing to say. A while back I wrote something on a story, totally offhand, and months later someone told me "oh, I was thinking about that thing that you said," and I was like... what? When did I say that? You just never know the impact of your words, and some of the smallest, most specific little moments are the ones that land. Those little moments add up to what you want to be known for.
"So, tell me about yourself"
A couple years ago I was coaching a client into her maternity leave, and she had a few events coming up in her last couple months, so we worked on her answer to that exact question. We talked about what she wanted to be known for in those circles, looking at where she wanted to go in her career next. At first she said she wanted to be a thought leader and write white papers and be on stages... and when we peeled back the layers as to why, what she really wanted was to be at those events, meet a bunch of people and, in one minute, share what she wanted to be known for in her next chapter. She'd come back from every single event like "it was like I got to share my story," and I was like, damn, how cool.
You're allowed to be a learner
My business coach Kristen once shared with us that she tried three different content styles before anything felt like her, and I love that, because when you're starting out you're not necessarily gonna smash it. I think about a girlfriend of mine who's a CEO and does AGMs all the time, and how she could have given herself two or three of them to try out and tweak and refine. Every time I host my breakfast club at the end of the month, I make a little note of what I want to bring or change next time. And I think we need way more permission to skip the slam dunk every single time and just be someone who's new at something, which is such a big theme with mothers... I need the reminder too!
Pick one thing and go visible on it
My husband calls me the chief analogy officer, and if I could carve out just a couple hours to help people come up with analogies, I would be in heaven, so I'm gonna go visible on that. Maybe that's your little challenge too... pick one thing you love that you wish more people knew about you, personal or professional, and share just that one side of you. It could be a LinkedIn post! Just please don't post about your dog with no punchline, tie it back to something.
Want more of this?
Steph Wharton, leadership and visibility coach, speaker and founder of the Speaker Movement, grew up painfully shy and now helps people take the mic. And she’s taking the mic on All Figured Out, where we get into the many hats we wear and whether we're "enough" in any of them, how to decide what you actually want to be visible for, her public speaking tips for easing your nerves by sounding more like yourself, and a little visibility challenge she came up with on the spot.