Keeping our heads down and thinking people will notice us doesn’t make sense, and yet…
“Good work gets noticed.”
Does it though? By who?
It’s about as big of a fallacy as “If I just work harder…”
Keeping our heads down and waiting for recognition will leave us waiting for a loooooong time, both missing out exciting opportunities that more visibility into our work would have afforded us, AND preventing others from benefiting from the work we’re doing.
Whether we learned this myth from our parents or picked it up along the way when we entered the workforce, it’s about time we let this go personally, and help our teams build the skills for bringing visibility to their work.
For a long time, I believed the “more is better” narrative. When something wouldn’t land at work or I wouldn’t get picked for the cool project or exciting opportunity, I thought, “I’ll just work harder, then they will see.”
And then….wait for it… they didn’t!
It was only when I reframed my relationship with talking about my impact that I saw just how much this limiting belief was working against me.
In the workplace, we have to tell the story of our work, bringing visibility to our work is part of the job. For many of us, not having the skills to talk about our work is the single greatest factor as to why we’re feeling stuck.
If you want to get the visibility your work deserves, start the process by doing three things:
(1) Tuning into our superpowers – This means not only getting in touch with the qualities we bring to our work that make us stand out and that others benefit from, but using these as proof points when we talk about our work.
For example, “As a dot connector, I pride myself on being able to build strong relationships across stakeholders who otherwise wouldn’t be connecting, surfacing areas to drive more efficiency across the work.” Don’t just say you’re awesome, give an example of your awesomeness at work.
(2) Shaping the narrative – with our trusty superpowers in hand, we want to connect what we’ve done, do, and could achieve in the future in the context of how it benefits our organization. How does our unique impact and work help advance the agenda of the organization? Why does what we landed matter – what was the result?
Building on the example above, it’s time to talk results. “One of the core priorities for my company in 2022 was to maximize customer experience. Leveraging my skills in dot connecting, and bridging communication across stakeholders, I was able to launch XYZ solution resulting in a gain of ### positive reviews from our customers.” Can you tell I don’t work in sales or customer experience? Yeah. But you get the idea.
(3) Watch your language – sometimes the words we’re using get in the way of landing our impact. “Helped out”? Nope. “We” when it was “you”? Try again. “Just”, “might”, “maybe”? No. Thank. You. This language puts you in the backseat and downplays your impact.
Use action oriented verbs to talk about your work, remembering even when you were a collaborator it’s often important to make it clear what your unique role was in landing something (this is especially important if we’re talking job interviews, where the whole freakin’ point is to show how you stand out).
If you’re feeling stuck when it comes to talking about your work, keeping your head down waiting for people to finally see your greatness, reframe your approach. Tell the story about your work, focusing on your superpowers and avoiding diminishing language and you will start to see doors open.
And better yet – for ambitious women out there eager to accelerate their careers, practicing strategies for bringing visibility to their work so they’re tapped for high impact opportunities, along with how to overcome overthinking decisions and take bolder risks so we can move faster in their careers, check out The Unstuck Career Accelerator that I’m launching on September 27th. In this live, interactive, cohort-based course, you’ll have the opportunity to practice reframing talking about your work, overthinking decisions, and fear of failure while building an awesome community of women eager to accelerate their careers and support each other.
Looking to strengthen how you or your team represents their work and impact so the awesome work happening gets the visibility it deserves? Email me at lia@liagarvin.com or learn more at www.liagarvin.com
