Being an Effective Self-Advocate

There are a few specific skills that support effective development of self-advocacy. There are personal, professional, and educational goals that we all have, and speaking up for our needs will require specific skills to get people to be on our side and assist us in achieving certain goals.

The steps to advocate for yourself depicted above are meant to be applied in a cyclical way. Self-advocacy is a practice that we can continue to work on and improve.

Keep Track of Accomplishments

• Keeping track of accomplishments helps us when we want to prove our capabilities or that we’re ready for an opportunity that we would not receive otherwise. It's a good idea to keep track of our accomplishments on a document, a resume, a recommendation letter, or from previous performance reviews. You want to keep these notes somewhere that you can find them when you need them.

Sharing your thoughts

• Sharing your thoughts is crucial to practice self-advocacy because we need to be open, honest, and consistent. People will respect when we share our ideas and speaking up helps people to know more about us and how to be an advocate for us.

Find a Mentor

• Mentorship is valuable because a mentor will get to know you and your goals well. They can give us feedback and they will oftentimes be well-experienced and can teach us unique ways to advocate for ourselves so we can learn new and useful ways to speak our needs and receive the support that we need.  

Seek Feedback

• Seeking feedback is key in helping us understand ourselves. We can only see ourselves from our own lens, so allowing others to share feedback helps us gain a valuable and different perspective. Sometimes, feedback is not easy to hear, so share how you’d prefer to receive feedback!