Crystal's Notes 11 May

How can you become more visible at work? Is it really necessary?

A member of my community reached out during my weekly AMA on Instagram to share that her bosses said she needed to be more visible in order to be promoted. She also shared that two colleagues she felt were ‘poor-performing’, were perceived by her bosses as being ‘visible’, because they were the emcees at a lot of company events.

If your boss is telling you that to be promoted, you need to be more visible, then you do have to take that seriously. In our culture, being visible seems to come with a lot of negative undertones; our local language for it will give you an idea! But being visible doesn’t mean flashy antics. It is all about self-advocacy and being a clear communicator of your value.

This becomes even more crucial when you rise up in leadership, because you can’t expect to go to a global leaders meeting, and expect your team’s good work to silently speak for itself when more vocal counterparts are fighting for their teams.

In today’s world, you can no longer choose to either be a good performer or a good talker. You need to do both. Start by speaking up at meetings, seizing public speaking opportunities, or creating social capital for yourself by networking within and beyond your department. If you have the opportunity, speak at industry panels too. Use footage of yourself at these events on social media. This not only amps up your visibility, it creates in people’s minds that you are the go-to person in your area of expertise.

If you’re still working up the courage to speak up, take small steps to get there. Mention to your boss in your 1-1s that you would like to explore presenting as one of the skills you’d like to develop, or speak to your boss privately about whether you can do a sharing in the next meeting. You could also email your team your insights after attending a conference or training, to share key learning points with them. Another thing you could do is to attend our Deep Human masterclass series on confidence, gravitas and influential communication when we run it in the second half of the year. I’ll post more about our upcoming events once we are done renovating our new office space!

Hard workers get rewarded with more work. But hard and smart workers make sure their work is visible and acknowledged. We have to destigmatise showcasing our accomplishments, so that we can advocate for ourselves and those around us. No one is asking for you to stick up your hand during the next meeting to shout, “I will be your tribute!!’, but get comfortable telling your story and being in the spotlight, because you should always own your story, and never leave it for someone else to tell.

Much love

Crystal