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So… our team picked up a national award at the NAGCAS Conference last week. That’s right — a national award. Not a certificate of participation. Not an honourable mention. An actual trophy-shaped piece of validation.
And here’s the fascinating part: Professionals absolutely hate talking about success. Yo. You won an award. Just say it. But we don’t. Because we’ve been conditioned by decades of “team mindset” to believe that taking credit is basically the same as kicking a puppy. So instead, we default to:
And look — I’m all for teamwork. I genuinely believe the magic happens when people with different strengths collaborate. But here’s the secret most professionals never say out loud: You can acknowledge a team effort AND still own your contribution to an award-winning project. Both things can be true at the same time. It’s not Highlander — there can be more than one. So… what the heck was our award for? We produced a video series centring students with lived experience — students navigating disability, LGBTQIA+ identity, and other stories that often go unseen or unheard. It wasn’t fluff. It wasn’t performative. It was genuinely for our students. And it also happened to be so well executed that it won a national industry award. And yes — a portion of our team made it happen. (Not me. I actually didn’t contribute to this one.) But those who did each played a specific part that contributed to the outcome. Here’s the mindset shift I want every professional to walk away with: You don’t need to pretend you carried the team on your back. You also don’t need to pretend you had nothing to do with it. The middle ground is where credibility lives. Let me show you what that looks like in practice. How people usually write about award-winning work: “Supported a student storytelling project.” This translates to: “I was vaguely in the vicinity of something that happened.” No scale. No context. No hint that it mattered — let alone that it won an award. How it should look on a resume: “Co-created nationally awarded student storytelling video series amplifying lived experience across the university community.” And underneath that? Add one or two sub-bullets outlining your specific contribution — stakeholder coordination, accessibility input, content shaping, script development, etc. Still humble. Still team-based. But now it shows:
This is what hiring panels need in order to understand what you actually did beyond “being present.” The worst version though is the interview confession. When someone says: “I can’t take credit for it — it was the team.” Professionally speaking: This is character-building, but career-destroying. Because when you avoid owning achievements:
If you’re wondering why a hiring panel is overlooking you … I’m just saying. Claiming your contribution isn’t bragging. It’s context. And context is what turns: “I did tasks” into “I drove impact” regardless of my position and level of authority in the organisation. ~Lisa |
