Do you take up space?

Have you ever wondered how different your life and career would be if you did a better job of advocating for yourself? Maybe you’ve let coworkers take opportunities you deserved because you didn’t want to cause conflict. Or perhaps you had an idea to enhance your team’s workflow but hesitated, afraid of being dismissed. You’re not alone. Many people struggle with speaking up for themselves, whether due to fear of rejection, consequences, or self-doubt.

The good news? Self-advocacy is a skill you can build.

In a recent Forbes article, researcher and professor Kate Vitasek describes self-advocacy as “taking a more proactive role in ensuring that things proceed in a way that better aligns with your goals.” Here, we’ll explore how you can develop this essential skill. From the benefits of self-advocacy to how it makes you a stronger collaborator and communicator, we’ll cover practical ways to consistently advocate for yourself.

The Benefits of Self-Advocacy

Self-advocacy is a valuable tool in all areas of life—from your career to your personal life to interactions with strangers. (In fact, the skill is so important that the Boys & Girls Clubs of America are now teaching self-advocacy skills!) So what is it exactly that makes self-advocacy so valuable?

Learning how to advocate for ourselves helps us:

• Develop greater self-confidence and self-esteem.
• Become more open and transparent communicators.
• Strengthen our problem-solving capabilities.
• Better understand our challenges and how to overcome them.
• Inspire others to self-advocate.

These benefits can transform not only how you relate to yourself but also how you collaborate with others—especially at work.

Self-Advocacy Makes Us Better Collaborators

When you advocate for your own needs and ideas, you’re also laying the groundwork for stronger collaboration. Here’s how:

1. Communicate with clarity: Advocating for yourself sharpens your ability to clearly express your thoughts and concerns, which opens the door for more productive conversations with fewer misunderstandings.
2. Foster mutual respect: When you honor your own needs, it demonstrates that you value yourself—and that energy is contagious. By doing so, you set the tone for mutual respect, which strengthens team dynamics and creates a more collaborative environment.
3. Set and maintain healthy boundaries: Healthy collaboration doesn’t come from overextending yourself. Self-advocacy means setting boundaries that protect your energy and well-being, leading to more sustainable and balanced teamwork.
4. Model inclusivity: When you practice self-advocacy, you inspire others to do the same. It encourages an inclusive atmosphere where everyone feels empowered to share their perspectives, making the decision-making process richer and more diverse.

Whether you’re an employee or a leader, remember how self-advocating can transform how you and your team collaborate and enjoy better productivity, team cohesion, and innovation.

Self-Advocacy at Work

One of the most critical areas where self-advocacy is essential is in the employee-employer relationship. Whether you’re asking for a raise, discussing a promotion, or setting boundaries, it can feel challenging to communicate openly with your boss, especially when power dynamics are at play. You may worry about repercussions, but consider this: Do you really want to work in an environment where transparency is penalized? Do you want to make decisions rooted in fear rather than growth?

Let’s consider a scenario. Imagine your boss has been assigning more projects to you lately. Initially, you may feel encouraged by the trust they’re placing in you. But as the workload grows, it starts to impact your well-being, and you realize something needs to change. Part of you wants to speak up, but another part fears it will make you seem incapable of handling responsibility. That’s fear-based thinking in action.

So, how do you shift from fear to confident self-advocacy? This transformation is central to my work (you can learn more about my coaching here). It starts with understanding where that fear originates, which can be challenging, emotional work—especially if you’ve experienced past trauma. But by examining these fears with mindfulness or professional support, you can gain the self-awareness needed to reframe them.

In the example above, the fear-based thought might be, If I tell my boss I can’t manage this workload, I’ll be seen as unreliable. A reframed thought could be, If I clearly explain how a more focused workload aligns with my strengths, my boss will appreciate my self-awareness and honesty. It’s not about rethinking once,  but consistently practicing these reframes until self-advocacy becomes your default. This shift not only earns respect but builds your confidence and allows you to set healthy boundaries.

Tips for Becoming Your Biggest Advocate

There’s always more we can do to practice a skill. The following are some tricks for strengthening your self-advocacy skills everyday:

• Positive Self Talk: The words we hear impact our inner monologue. It starts when we’re young and don’t understand the lasting effect of how other people, like our parents and teachers, speak to us. As adults, however, we can work to replace harmful narratives with helpful ones, even when we’re the ones creating them. If you feel silly talking to yourself in front of a mirror, try writing a kind letter to yourself in a journal.
• Improve Your Skills: When we learn how to do new things and get good at them, we do more than build skills; we build our confidence. This is called “building mastery,” a Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) technique that helps patients build their self-esteem by accomplishing challenging, but doable tasks. Meanwhile, you build tangible skills that can help combat barriers to self-advocacy like imposter syndrome.
• Track Your Accomplishments: It’s hard to dispute your value when it’s written on paper. Even if you don’t need to list your accomplishments to self-advocate in the moment, knowing them makes it harder to doubt yourself when those moments arise.
• Practice in Low-Stakes Situations: Opportunities to self-advocate arise beyond the workplace, like in friendships or interactions with strangers. Perhaps you struggle telling waiters when they bring you the wrong order or speaking up when a joke rubs you the wrong way. These scenarios are perfect opportunities to build your self-advocacy muscles so you can flex them in higher-stakes scenarios.

I invite you to try out some or all of these practices to uncover which work best for you!

Conclusion

Becoming a strong self-advocate is a journey, and like any skill, it takes time to develop. You may not get it right every time, and that’s okay. The key is to approach it with patience and a willingness to learn from each experience. As you strengthen your self-advocacy skills, you’ll not only enhance your career and relationships but also deepen your sense of self-worth. Remember, every time you stand up for yourself, you’re reinforcing the message that your voice matters—and that’s a message worth repeating.