Selling Yourself without Selling Out: A Leader's Guide to Ethical Self-Promotion

High-performing individuals and groups are often not adequately recognized for their contributions. The antidote to being overlooked or underestimated is self-promotion—the act of generating personal visibility in service of your work and career. In this guidebook, we discuss how you can benefit from self-promotion and maintain your integrity and authenticity. We help you reframe common beliefs that get in the way of effective self-promotion, and we provide numerous strategies and activities that can become part of your repertoire.

This series of guidebooks draws on the practical knowledge that the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) has generated, since its inception in 1970, through its research and educational activity conducted in partnership with hundreds of thousands of managers and executives. Much of this knowledge is shared-in a way that is distinct from the typical university department, professional association, or consultancy. CCL is not simply a collection of individual experts, although the individual credentials of its staff are impressive; rather it is a community, with its members holding certain principles in common and working together to understand and generate practical responses to today's leadership and organizational challenges.
The purpose of the series is to provide managers with specific advice on how to complete a developmental task or solve a leadership challenge. In doing that, the series carries out CCL's mission to advance the understanding, practice, and development of leadership for the benefit of society worldwide.

Gina Hernez-Broome is a senior associate at CCL’s Colorado Springs campus. She trains and is the program manager for the Leadership Development for Human Resource Professionals program. She holds a Ph.D. in industrial/organizational psychology from Colorado State University.

Cindy McLaughlin is a senior program associate at CCL’s Colorado Springs campus. She trains a variety of open-enrollment programs, designs and trains custom programs, and is a certified feedback coach. She holds an M.S. in business management from Boston University. Stephanie Trovas is an open-enrollment manager at CCL’s San Diego campus. She manages and facilitates the Looking Glass Experience program. She trains several other CCL programs and is a certified executive coach. She holds an M.B.A. from the University of Colorado.