132 | Why High-Performing Women Often Minimize Their Own Success
episode
Career Growth for Working Women | Career Advancement, Visibility, Promotion, Raises
13 min
1 speaker
8 chapters
transcribed 1 month ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Why do high‑performing women often downplay their own achievements?
Have you ever accomplished something significant at work? Only to describe it as Oh it was nothing. Or I was just helping. A lot of high performing wit women do this without even realizing it. But over time, downplaying your impact teaches leadership to underestimate it too. In today's episode, we're talking about why women minimize their achievements and how that habit quietly affects promotion, visibility, and compensation. Ready? Let's go.
Welcome to Career Growth for Working Women. If you're feeling tired in a way rest alone won't fix, or successful on paper but unsure what's next, you're not broken. You're not alone. I'm Shannon, a promotion and compensation coach, and this space is about helping women grow their careers with clarity, confidence, and sustainability, not pressure or hustle. Take a breath, settle in, and let's talk about what's really going on beneath the surface. Hello, welcome back to the show. I want to start today with a moment from a coaching conversation that perfectly captures something I see all the time with high performing women. A woman was walking me through a major initiative she had just completed at work.
And while she was explaining everything that happened, she casually said, Oh, I was really just helping support the project. The second she said that I paused because I've learned something after doing this work for a long time. Whenever a woman says I just helped, it was nothing, I was only supporting, I was just doing my job, there's usually a much bigger story underneath those words.
What does the coaching story reveal about hidden leadership contributions?
So I asked her to slow down and walk me through what she actually did. And little by little the real picture started coming into focus. She coordinated communication across multiple departments. She solved timeline issues before leadership even noticed them. She redesigned part of the workflow. She managed conflict between teams behind the scenes. She kept the project moving when deadlines started slipping. She handled emotional dynamics nobody else wanted to deal with, and by the end of the conversation, I remember thinking, you didn't just help. You carried a huge portion of this initiative. But somewhere along the way she had learned to describe leadership level contributions as they were tiny supportive tasks.
And this happens constantly with high performing women. Not because they lack accomplishments, not because they lack talent, but because many women have been conditioned to make their success feel smaller. Smaller language, smaller positioning, smaller visibility, because staying small often feels safer. Safer socially, safer professionally, safer emotionally. She told me that there was one moment that really made her realize how often she minimized her work. Her manager complimented her during a meeting in front of leadership. And instead instead of simply saying thank you She immediately started redirecting credit. She said Oh well everyone contributed. The team really made it happen. It definitely wasn't just me.
How does constant self‑monitoring create emotional labor for women at work?
And afterward? She sat there thinking, Why did I do that to you? Again. Because the truth was she had led the project. She had solved the problems. She had carried difficult conversations behind the scenes. She had done the strategic thinking. But the second the attention landed on her Her instinct was to move it away. That realization hit her hard. Because she realized she wasn't minimizing herself occasionally. She had built an entire professional identity around people making sure other people felt comfortable with her success. And I think a lot of women listening to this episode know exactly what that feels like. I think many women learn for from a very early age that confidence could change people how people respond to them.
So instead of clearly owning their expertise, they soften it. They cushion it. They minimize it before anyone else has the chance to react to it. Eventually, it becomes automatic. You can hear it in tiny workplace moments everywhere. Someone compliments a woman's work and she immediately says, Oh, it was really a team effort.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why do high‑performing women often downplay their own achievements?
0:00–1:55
2
What does the coaching story reveal about hidden leadership contributions?
1:55–3:39
3
How does constant self‑monitoring create emotional labor for women at work?
3:39–4:59
4
Why does the language women use to describe wins affect leadership perception?
4:59–6:26
5
How does minimizing success distort a woman’s self‑perception and confidence?
6:26–8:04
6
What mindset shift lets women own their impact without seeming arrogant?
8:04–9:43
7
Can visibility and humility coexist, and how does that change career advancement?
9:43–11:33
8
What simple weekly exercise can help women stop shrinking their contributions?
11:33–13:29
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Career Growth for Working Women | Career Advancement, Visibility, Promotion, Raises
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144 | Becoming Impossible to Overlook
143 | Why High-Performing Women Become the Default Problem Solver featuring Eric Dingler