Why You Keep Handing Away Credit You Earned

A little while ago, I was coaching a leader who is, by every external measure, excellent. Strong results, respected by her team

The person leadership leans on when something important needs to get done. And in one of our sessions, she told me that her VP had sent her a text out of the blue, just a few lines saying how impressed he was with how she had handled a recent project.

And I asked her how that felt. She paused and she said, "Honestly, my first thought was, I wonder if he actually means it or if I really did enough to deserve that." That pause, like that small flinch when someone hands you praise, is what I wanna talk about today because it's one of the most common patterns I see in high-performing people, and most of them don't know that they're doing it.

I'm Ramona Shaw, and this is the Manager Track Podcast.

So, the habit we're talking about is deflecting credit. Handing every win to the team and then quietly keeping every loss for yourself, right? You never pass that on. You're just like, "Yeah, loss, blame me. Credit goes elsewhere. Mm, wasn't really me.

It was luck. It was the team. It was teamwork. It was something else." Now, on the surface, this looks like humility, and humility is a good thing, so it actually hides really well. This is one of those where We can all wrap it up in something that is seen as a positive.

But I wanna make a distinction because that is not actual humility or modesty. What it really is is a recurring recalibration of your own internal scorecard always moving in a negative direction. So every day, in small ways, you might move the wins into the team's column, and you move the losses into your own.

No one's looking at the ledger but you, but it runs all the time, and over month and years, this starts to add up to a very distorted picture of your own contribution. And it's pretty clear, like, let's not be fooled. That is going to have an impact on your confidence and how you project yourself, the story that you tell when you're being interviewed, how you talk about, yourself and your expertise.

Now, there is a reason why your brain does this so willingly. We are wired with a negativity bias, which means we notice and hold on to negative information about ourselves, and others, and the world far more readily than positive information. Because positive, good things weren't jeopardizing our survival, and being driven by a survival instinct means that negative things could be scary, could mean that a real threat is happening.

So that's where our energy and attention goes. Very normal. So when the evidence says you did well, like that text from the VP, and your internal filter is set to, "I am not quite there yet," the praise may just slide off. Like, "Yeah. Thank you, but it wasn't all me." It does not stick.

And if you discard the very data that would update your own self-assessment in a more objective way, and you keep only the data that confirms that you have further to go, we start to see there's going to be a bias. It's a skewed perception of what's actually going on. Now, most people, when I name this, will say some version of, "Well, I know, I'm just hard on myself.

That's just who I am or how I am." I understand why that feels true, that you're just hard on yourself or you have high standards, but calling it who you are removes your ability to change it, because now you've sort of like solidified it. This is like the rock, and you can't change it. It's just taken that form.

And then when you think this is a fixed trait as, "I'm just hard on myself, and that's the way things are," there's nothing to do. You're kind of like a victim of this rule that you've created. And so the more useful version is that is how you have been doing it.

That is how you've run your life or how you've been successful so far. That does not mean you cannot change, and there's plenty of example all around me, all around you, where people had an identity, a mindset, and then something happened, and they changed that. And you know it, and I know it. There is plasticity, the ability to change our self-beliefs, our patterns, our ways of thinking.

That is what we see. There's plenty of evidence for it, and the same applies to you. So if you think, "I'm just hard on myself," and that is fixed like a rock, cannot change it, I'm gonna challenge that and say, "Wait a second. What makes you hang on to that so much? What is the payoff that you get by believing that it's a fixed thing?"

There's a reason why you do it, because the reality is, the fact is, no, it's just a choice that you hang onto. If you wanted to, you could change that. The method has been something that you've been running with, that strategy, but it is not a personality that you're stuck with.

Now the reason why this matters at work is not just about how it feels in a moment when you receive recognition. Recognition systems in most organizations are actually not fair, and they're also not thorough. They do reward the people who are visible, who name their wins, who frankly squeak a bit.

And if you have trained yourself to never squeak, to always redistribute credit before anyone can even register that it was yours, you are actually slowly becoming invisible to those systems that reward visibility. Not because your work is invisible, but because you keep filing it under everyone else's name.

Every time you deflect, you hand your manager a small data point that says, This win was maybe not really hers. Now, you do that a few hundred times a year, and do not be surprised when the promotion conversation treats your contribution as smaller than it actually was

When you have a belief such as your identity is like a rock and you cannot be changing it, that you're actually holding yourself back from certain growth areas, and there's probably something else that's motivating that.

I'm actually getting really to the point of how that applies to you at work, and the price that you pay when you deflect praise.

So that thing is real.

If this is hitting home, this stuff is a big part of what we cover in our Executive Presence Intensive. This is a program that we run for mid-level managers and senior leaders who are ready to take on bigger responsibility, show up with confidence and strong presence in high-stake situations, where they learn not just how to project confidence, but actually feel more confident, including what we've just talked about, how to visibly self-advocate and advocate for the team, how to manage stakeholders, how to communicate effectively with stakeholders, and how to present so that your competence and your confidence and conviction truly come through.

It's an eight-week program that will kick off again in the fall. We're gonna drop the link to it in the show notes, so check that out if you wanna secure your seat.

So let's get back to it. Here is what to do instead of deflecting recognition. The skill is being able to give an accurate account of your own contribution, not to brag to everyone, but an accurate account, neither inflated nor deflated. And the place it matters most is in conversations with your manager.

So here's how I would approach it. Start by being honest about the internal experience, because pretending the confidence is already there usually doesn't work. So you can even name it, something like, "Hey, I will be honest, my instinct is to hand all of this to my team, but I wanna give you an accurate picture."

Then state the facts of your role plainly. Not a pitch, just the facts. "On this project, I made the call to restructure the timeline. I led the client through the hard conversation, and I caught the budget issue before it became a problem." That is not bragging. That is just true. Then once you've had numerous of such conversations, having the promotion conversation is going to be easier because you can say, " given all of the contributions and the impact that I had in the past six month,

I would like to talk about what comes next because I think I'm ready for more scope than I have been claiming in the past."

Now, there's also a version of this in the other direction that you have to watch for, which is when a peer or a boss is happy to absorb credit that was actually yours.

You do not fix that by competing or getting territorial. You fix it the same way, by simply stating your contribution as a simple fact. So in the meeting, you can say, "The approach you're using came out of the analysis I ran last month With no heat in it at all. But if you start to feel, insecure about it because someone else is trying to claim it, what we might do is like, "Yeah, it's the analysis that we ran last month."

Did you? Was it a we or was it a you? So yeah, we wanna highlight the team aspect, and there's a lot of like, "As a leader, you have to always think of the team." That is true until you start to deflect on praise and are not fully owning your contributions in the process. Now, you can't do one or the other.

You have to highlight the team, you have to present the team, advocate for the team. Think about it as we and doing the teamwork, and at the same time, when you're being compromised and when someone's trying to impact how visible you are and how accurate, and how credit is distributed, don't shy away from fully claiming what is yours.

Put the facts on the record. Now, in the moment when someone actually praises you, you're going to feel the urge to deflect right away, probably 'cause it's been a pattern, right? So here's a small practice. When someone hands you a compliment, hold it for three seconds, one, two, three, before you do anything with it.

Just a few seconds of letting it land before you redistribute it or mention other things. That little pause matters because the deflection is so automatic that it fires before the credit can even register. Sort of delaying that in- instinctual response to deflect will just make you more aware of the process.

Also, you can just say, "Thank you. I appreciate that." And at the same time, and then you can mention everyone else. Not but, also. We're not using but. And at the same time or get used to saying things such, " thank you. I'm proud of that one myself."

That is a complete sentence and response to someone giving you praise. If you now as you hear this feel some kind of dissonance, either because you start to feel like, "Oh, I'm not sure if I agree with this," or because you think intellectually you get it and you agree with it, but it seems really hard to do, there's something there for you to take away.

Whether you disagree with it or not, there's something underneath that you believe. Not saying it's wrong, but just pay attention to what that might be. 'Cause I've seen plenty of times over and over these patterns show up, and they make it harder for people to be visible in organizations and actually get the recognition that they truly deserve.

And I don't mean the praise, I'd say it out loud, but the recognition in terms of compensation, titles, and actual scope of responsibility. Sometimes what modesty actually is, is a way of staying safe. So if you discount yourself first before anyone else can evaluate you, then you never have to feel the exposure of being seen and judged on your contribution.

It's almost like you pre-lower the bar so you cannot be knocked off it, right? If I come in, I say like, "Oh, I know, I know I screwed up. I know I messed this up. I know I didn't do well. I could do so much better," this may be me trying to create a safe space, because if I own that first, then no one gets to attack me.

If I come in and I say, "I think I did well here," then I might be vulnerable to someone saying like, "I disagree. That was not good." And this like then having this gap, this discrepancy show up in a conversation may feel really vulnerable. So sometimes it's actually a safety strategy that we've built and developed over time.

But then, of course, the other side is that it stinks that nobody actually sees you and your contributions when you're the one hiding it or pre-lowering the bar. One other thing that you can do is to keep an attribution log, like a daily log where at the end of each day you write down one thing that went well that you personally owned.

We're not deflecting, And it's also only for you at the beginning. This is not, oh, what did my team do? This is not what did my boss do. This is what did you do and personally own. And just starting to see it and developing a bit of, or building up this log can start to change the perception that you have and bring way more awareness to it.

It may feel uncomfortable at first and slightly arrogant for about a week, and then it starts to rebuild your scorecard with sort of one more honest entry at a time. Don't worry, you're not trying to be someone who overclaims and brags.

That's not the point here, and if all of this resonated with you so far, you're far away from being someone who would actually be bragging or overclaiming. What we're simply trying to do is becoming someone who can hold an accurate relationship with their own work

If you assume good work speaks for yourself, you're putting a lid on yourself. Leaders make their contributions legible and visible, not because they need the applause, but because the people making decisions cannot act on what they cannot see.

And the higher up that you go, the busier people are and the more, not distracted, but the more diverse all the things that they're supposed to be keeping attention to. If you have one manager who has three people on their team, they are probably keeping up what everyone is doing.

They have pretty good visibility in what you contribute to and what you don't. When you're a senior manager and your VP oversees five senior managers, and each of the senior manager oversees five other people There's no way that your VP can keep up with who does what all day long. They're worried about what their manager is seeing about them, and they're just expecting you to funnel information upwards so that they know what actually is going on.

They can't keep track of it. And then you multiply this, this, you know, you add, the 10 or a few hundreds in, in the back of the numbers, and you quickly start to see there's just no way that doing good work will speak for itself. Impossible. So own the lecture accurately, or someone else will do the balance for you when you're not in the room, and that usually doesn't play out well.

Now, I leave you with one more final tactic. One tool that we share in the Leadership Accelerator it's a weekly update email that you send to your manager.

In that email, you talk specifically about what was achieved this week, what progress was made, what are, challenges or questions that you have for your manager, what do you need, and then what is your plan for the following week? Now, while there's some nuances to this and a few more details, but that, in essence, is the information that you want your manager to have at the end of every week.

If you don't get a lot of airtime with your manager, and your manager is someone that does read emails, even if they don't respond to it, creating this information flow upwards on a regular basis is a practice that I encourage you to experiment with. And make it part of your leadership system, like your operating system on how you lead yourself, your team, and your relationships.

And with that, we'll see you next week for another episode of The Manager Track Podcast.

If you enjoyed this episode, then check out two other awesome resources to help you become a leader people love to work with. This includes a free masterclass on how to successfully lead as a new manager. Check it out at archova.org/masterclass. The second resource is my bestselling book, The Confident and Competent New Manager, How to Quickly Rise to Success in Your First Leadership Role.

Check it out at archova.org/books or head on over to Amazon and grab your copy there