Ever sat down to update your CV, or apply for a promotion, and wondered why it’s so hard to write about your successes?
As humans, our focus on the here and now means we often struggle to see our long-term achievements. This is the case with business owners too, who often underestimate their own success because they are so busy dealing with tedious issues on a daily basis.
This inability to brag about ourselves is actually much more prevalent in Australia and New Zealand. Within the ANZ region, we are at higher risk of underestimating ourselves due to the Tall Poppy Syndrome that permeates our cultures.
What is Tall Poppy Syndrome?
Tall Poppy Syndrome is a societal attitude whereby individuals are criticised or disliked due to their successes.
This attitude brings people down, and leads individuals to believe that they should not celebrate their wins or even recognise them. When someone stands up to shout their success from the rooftops, others feel like they need to “cut down the tall poppy” so they don’t get too egotistical.
However, we must remember that it IS important to celebrate our successes, both as individuals and business owners.
Why should we celebrate our successes?
As individuals, celebrating our achievements, whether short term or long term, can improve our overall wellbeing.
As humans, we are hardwired to focus more on the negative aspects of our lives than the positives, which is what Psychology Today calls negativity bias. Even though remembering and focusing on our successes requires more cognitive effort, the positive reflections can help build self-esteem.
As a business, reflecting on financial, operational and marketing successes can provide you with unique insights into your business that can be rewarding in themselves. Articulating the milestones you have achieved, like your FY revenue growth and NPS, or less quantifiable successes like employee engagement initiatives, means you can recognise your wins and areas for improvement.
Further, once articulated, you’ll be able to enter your business into a variety of different business and industry awards that you may never have thought possible.
Recently, after creating an awards strategy for one of our clients, with recommendations on the awards we believed they had the best chance of winning, we got this response:
“My day-to-day is so jammed with website updates, responding to enquiries, handing out coffees, social media updates etc. I rarely get a chance to put my head above water, take a breath and look at what I’ve achieved. Now, after reading your doc and reviewing past winners, I feel like I could be in with a shot!”
This is not an uncommon response.
Gaining an outsider’s perspective
Reflecting on your wins may seem out of reach when you’re managing a company that deserves recognition. It may feel like there is no time to recognise and celebrate your wins with your team, let alone to brag about them.
Unless you have a copywriting expert on your team, articulating your achievements can be a difficult task, especially when it comes to entering awards. Taking Tall Poppy Syndrome and our psychological disposition to focus on the negatives into account, you can see why it’s often more beneficial to hire the experts to write about your successes.
Outsourcing the awards process to an agency like Green Door Co will give you the best chance at crafting the most compelling argument as to why you deserve recognition. Gaining an outsider’s perspective on your wins give you a birds eye view of your business. It will help you hone in on your strengths and weaknesses, to help you stand out from the crowd.
Having your achievements recognised and celebrated through awards is an extremely rewarding process, and is worth the effort. Check out our awards hub to purchase your customised awards list, and find the awards best suited to you, that can provide incredible opportunities for your business.
Finding it hard to write about your successes?
Writing about your business success is a very niche process. It takes lots of experience to do so in a way that includes a lot of information in a succinct brand pitch. It is a very specific type of copywriting, which can be difficult to nail.
If you are not a copywriting expert, integrating your successes into this niche writing style in a way which is captivating to read can be really tricky.
At Green Door Co, we partner with you to become the true experts of your business, holding in-depth interviews and crafting compelling copy that cleverly articulates your success. Our team includes experienced and professional awards writers who have crafted hundreds of award submissions celebrating the success stories of clients from around the world.
If you’ve thought about entering an award or want to brag about your achievements, but you’re finding it hard to write about your own successes, get in touch with the experts at Green Door Co.
