Isn’t That Just Bragging?

Pull up the last update you sent your boss. Count the “we.” Now count the “I.”

If your numbers look like mine used to, “we” won by a landslide. Maybe “I” never showed up at all.

In 2022, six years into leading technology for my district, I sat down to write our application for the Indiana CTO Council‘s Tech Team of the Year. I expected the hard part to be remembering everything we had done. It felt a little unreal to see six years of problems solved, all on one page. But the hard part turned out to be a single word: “I.”

The sentence I didn’t want to write

When I stepped into the role, the tech team felt like technology had been done to them, the same way it had been done to teachers and students. Most of them only walked into a classroom when something was broken, so they had never seen what a device in a student’s hands made possible, especially once we went one-to-one.

I worked right alongside them. I brought ideas, they added theirs (and sometimes brought their own), and I made sure they saw what we were all working toward: teachers and students doing more because technology got out of their way.

So when the application asked how all of it happened, I had a choice. I could write “we” all the way down. Or I could explain that I was the catalyst, because I was. Writing that sentence felt uncomfortable. It also made the application make sense.

We won. Our board recognized the team, and more importantly, so did our peers. Even that felt a little awkward. We knew the other nominated teams, and they were doing incredible work too.

The humility trap

Education rewards the leader who deflects. We hand credit to the team, the teachers, the kids. That instinct is a strength, and I would never ask anyone to give it up. The trouble starts when the leader disappears from the story entirely.

When your name comes up for the next opportunity, whether that’s a promotion, a state board, or a conference session, somebody has to make the case for you. Sponsors and supervisors need something specific to point to. “Her team is great” gives them nothing to work with.

A vague “we” hides everyone

It took me years to notice that a vague “we” doesn’t protect your team. It hides them too.

Vague: “We rolled out new rostering this fall.”
Specific: “I brought together the cross-functional team that chose the platform, and I set the timeline and managed the project. Two of our technicians (name them) built the automations, so teachers no longer wait days for student accounts.”

The second version names your decision and their work. Nobody disappears.

If speaking up has cost you

Some of you have worked for someone who made you pay for being seen. That cost is real, and I won’t pretend otherwise.

If that’s where you are, start smaller. Write it for your team first. Describe what they did, specifically, and let your role show up as the person who made room for it. That’s still visibility, and it still serves the people who depend on you.

It was never about you anyway

Very few kids grow up dreaming of running technology for a school district. The work is fascinating. The people doing it just rarely talk about it, so nobody knows this career exists. Even teachers and staff may not know it exists!

Bragging is about you. Telling a teacher, a board member, or a student what your job actually does is an invitation.

That’s also why professional communities like CoSN and your state chapter matter so much. They put you in a room full of people who already understand the work, which makes it a lot easier to practice saying it out loud. And they need your stories as much as you need theirs.

Try this before your next update

1. Count. Circle every “we” that could mean anyone.
2. Add one “I.” Write a sentence that names a decision you made.
3. Name the people. Replace “the team” with two or three names and what each one did.
4. Translate one win. Say it in classroom language: “Teachers didn’t lose a lesson to connectivity this semester” instead of an uptime number.

The award

When I cleared out my office this summer, I left our Tech Team of the Year statue behind. It belonged to the team.

A week and a half later, they threw me a celebration (part going-away party, part we’ll-miss-you party), and they brought the statue with them. Chuck, who started in our technology department in 1999 and is one of the longest-tenured employees in the entire district, had spent time polishing it. He had worked for every technology director our district ever had; there had only been two before me. He thanked me and told me it needed to come with me, because we wouldn’t have won it without me leading.

I cried. Of course I cried. I spent my early leadership years writing myself out of the story. Once I started naming what each person on my team did, and what I did, people noticed our work, and they noticed me too. That polished statue was my team’s way of telling me they never saw it as bragging.

Count your “I”s again. The people who depend on you might be waiting for you to use one.

Who’s a colleague doing work more people should know about? Tag them in the comments with one specific thing they did, and let’s build each other up.