Ralph Waldo Emerson was a giant of American letters. He was an essayist, philosopher, poet, and leader of Transcendentalist movement of the early 19th century. But the quotation that most people associate with Emerson is this one.

“If a man build a better mousetrap, though he live in a cottage, deep in the woods, the world will beat a path to his door.”

There are two things wrong with this. One is that Emerson never said it. The other is that it is rubbish.

The fact is that you might create the greatest mousetrap that the world has ever seen, but if you don’t find a way to tell the world about it, you will not have a beaten path to your door. What you will have is a cottage, deep in the woods, filled with unsold mousetraps.

Let us segue from that to your career. You can be the best [fill in the blank] that the world has ever seen. But if no one knows, it won’t matter much.

That’s OK, if all that matters to you are the intrinsic rewards of doing good work. But if you want promotion and preferment, you need to find a way to get your horn tooted.

The First Rule of Horn Tooting is this: no one wants to toot your horn as much as you do.

I’m not suggesting that you need to turn into some raucous self-promoter. I am suggesting this: if your boss and colleagues don’t understand your contribution and value, it’s your fault.

So learn to tell your story. One way is to remind your boss of what you do. One of my coaching clients sends her boss a “What I’ve Done for You Lately” report every two weeks.

Help others succeed. If you help one person, he or she can forget you and take the credit. If you help lots of people, everyone will know you’re good. You’ll get a good feeling besides.

It would be nice if you could create a career based on the quality of your work alone. But that’s not how it is. Learn to toot your own horn. You’ll be able to get all the mousetraps out of your cottage.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 4th, 2009 at 5:32 pm and is filed under Tools and Strategies for Success. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.