Establish Your Competence: Talk First and Often!

Your Bad Boss won’t give you any help in distinguishing yourself from the rest of your co-workers, yet you’d dearly love to rise above peon status. You’ll have to pull yourself up by your own boot-straps--that’s a given--but how?

Talk first and often!

Anderson and Kilduff’s research (University of California, Berkeley) showed that: “dominant participants tended to offer more suggestions to the group, and that these individuals were perceived by the group, plus those observing the group, as the most competent.

 “Crucially, though, the study showed that not only did a leader's dominant behavior of itself encourage others to see that person as competent, but this was true even though their suggestions to the group were no better, or even worse than others. In reality the leaders did not always make the best contribution to the task, but their voices were usually heard first and most often.” When you find yourself in a meeting, don’t hang back.

Give suggestions, speak up before others do, even if you don’t think your suggestion is the brightest offering of the day. Go for it, with gusto. Speak with confidence, regardless of how brilliant or not-so-brilliant your offering is. Signal your competence to others, just by speaking up.