aeh, it sounds as though your style and mine are quite similar.
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It's evolved over time into a complete communication strategy, though, and I have some trouble being assertive enough to just turn it off and be me.
Yes. My personality was already oriented this way, and then my graduate training involved collaborative consultation, and of course, colleagues and superiors are much easier to work with when they realize that you will use your skills and intelligence to advance institutional and client outcomes without necessarily demanding credit. There's a lot of selective pressure to maintain this communication style.
I'm blessed to have had supervisors who valued this enough to offer me incentives to increase the attractiveness of the position (not financial ones, of course, in public education! but scheduling and support resources that were important to me in terms of lifestyle and being able to be the kind of professional I want to be), rather than merely taking the credit. I think it helps that, though I never have to voice this, they know that I have no desperate need to hold onto any given current position.
It's only in the last few years that I've begun to learn a better balance between being my essential self and adapting to my communication/work partners.
