The Most Powerful Thing in Your Career You're Probably Ignoring

Imagine this scene…a promotion awarded to someone with half your track record, again. Or this career moment: significant funding being granted to the startup with a worse product but better pitch deck theatrics. Or this one. The executive director role going to someone who's never run a nonprofit but knows how to push the right buttons, with the right people.

I suspect these scenarios feel a little familiar. Perhaps they provoke a reaction – an “oh yes” exclamation or quiet, resigned sigh. Especially so I imagine if you're someone consistently delivering excellent work. Someone whose results are undeniably solid. But in spite of this, you’re someone who finds that the success you expect (or want) elusive.

Why are your contributions not being noticed? How is it that you are invisible?

The Question That Changed Everything

Valissa Pierrelouis is one of my career heroes. Here's why. Early in her career, Valissa was working hard, being told in her performance reviews that 'she was doing all the right things" yet it was crickets when it came to moving up the career ladder. Then it dawned on her - why wasn't she a "slam dunk" for the next big promotion? WTW was she missing – if she was truly "doing the right things" as she was constantly being told, there must be something she had overlooked. So Valissa did what most of us never do — she asked a senior leader at the company she worked for, the big uncomfortable question.

"What are you hearing about me?"

To which she received silence.

Not because the senior executive was taken aback by her audacity or boldness or the very nature of the question. Rather it was because this executive had literally not heard a damn thing about her. Not a thing. Nothing. Nada about the employee with a stellar performance record of producing bottom-line results for the company.

Is Invisibility By Choice, Action or Inaction?

Here's another example.

JP was soaring in her career – not simply because she was flying coast-to-coast and across the globe –leading her firm's most prestigious and lucrative client accounts, the kind of transactions that easily made the front page of the WSJ. JP had name recognition and industry awards and even a seat at the table at Davos. But here's the catch. While she was flying high out of the office, her male colleagues were making sure they were also firmly on the ground, in the office. That is, routinely calendaring time at HQ to run into senior leadership. Building what researchers call "strategic visibility."

JP like Valissa wasn't accidentally invisible, rather in each case their visibility wasn't strategically positioned with the people who made the trajectory shifting decisions. In each case, theirs was a visibility error that didn’t need to occur, or to continue to slide, before rapidly accelerating to career disaster.

Neither case is this about being bad at visibility — it's about showcasing your visibility in front of the wrong audience. Valissa’s visibility was hidden in an HR file that was pulled out once a year at performance review time. JP’s visibility was primarily external, the internal folks, the colleagues at HQ didn’t know her. These are fixable strategic errors, not character flaws. The stakes are real, and avoidable when you course correct and redirect your visibility towards the right networks.

Now if those visibility examples aren’t problematic enough, here's another twist: Harvard Business Review research reveals that many women practice what researchers refer to as "intentional invisibility" — deliberately staying behind the scenes.

Why on earth would someone do this???

Well, seems there are three calculated (and sensible) reasons to do so: to avoid conflict or backlash, to feel authentic at work, and to balance professional and personal demands.

Consider Sharon, one of the participants from the HBR study. Sharon spoke up in a meeting only to have a male colleague tell her afterward, "God, I'm glad I'm not married to you!" Her not-so-surprising response? Sharon decided to tone down her contributions rather than confront a colleague or deal with ingrained “ha ha it was just a joke” workplace sexism.

Sometimes staying quiet, becoming invisible, feels safer than fighting a system designed to punish you.

Or Mary, also from the Harvard research, who started pursuing her professional development goals, and visibly advocating for her career ambitions, only to have her husband say, "I don't even know who you are anymore! You're making all these plans... you're not present for us." His words were enough to shut her down.

Sometimes we choose invisibility for our careers because visibility feels dangerous — both at work and at home.

Beyond individual stories, there are numbers backing up this issue of visibility. McKinsey's 2024 Women in the Workplace report shows only 81 women are promoted for every 100 men. Men are judged on visible potential. Women on past performance and too often, past performance is largely unnoticed...because it’s invisible.

As the HBR researchers put it: women end up  visibly "well-liked but under-appreciated."

Your excellent work isn't the problem. You could, for very valid reasons such as psychological safety, be shrouding your passions and potential. Or you could be trapped in a system that punishes women for the very visibility it rewards in men. Or it could just be that you may not be playing the visibility game the right way.

How to Design Strategic Visibility

Let's return to Valissa's story.

After her big, vulnerable career question of "what are you hearing about me?" was met with silence, Valissa got an answer, an action plan and a workplace champion. The executive's silence to her question was a reflection of her – the executive that is – shock! Why hadn't this employee with a stellar track record and impeccable performance reviews been on her radar? Who else on the leadership team didn’t know about her? Realizing this situation needed to be course corrected ASAP, Valissa and the executive set about creating a visibility action plan to get Valissa the recognition she had earned.

Strategic visibility isn't shameless self-promotion. It's necessary. It's essential. It's getting the recognition you have earned. It's cultivated presence in the rooms where decisions get made – to hire, to promote, to fund. Yeah, it's about asking questions and building relationships with people who will give you honest answers.

Your Next Networking Move:

🗝️ Name three people who could advocate for your next big opportunity right now. Who knows your ambitions beyond your current role? Who speaks your name when you're not in the room? Who knows how to navigate the sharks, the sh#t and whatever else is standing between you and where you want to be.

🗝️ Can't name three people? Now you know your networking challenge: find these advisors and advocates! No, I won't leave you hanging without a practical plan on how to go about this. Here are a few suggestions:

1. Identify the decision-makers in your field and figure out how to get their ear. For JP it could have been a simple as spending more time in HQ. For Valissa, it was being vulnerable enough to ask a tough question, then resilient enough to stick to a 5-year promotion plan. Think about who you could speak to (mentor, advisor, sponsor, coach) about intentionally and strategically making your accomplishments more visible in your field.
2. Join industry committees, charity projects, or not-for-profit boards where you'll work alongside potential advocates, not simply relying meet them at networking events and social mixers. Roll up your sleeves alongside them so they see your integrity, work ethic and leadership skills in action.
3. Finally, share your ambitions with your current network — your peers, trusted mentors and advisors can't advocate for the goals you're shielding from them.

The difference between being excellent and being elevated? Strategic visibility.

Need more?

💡If you're struggling to find time for strategic visibility because you're buried in low-impact commitments, start with The Power of a Strategic No - sometimes what you don't do matters more than what you do.

💡Ready to turn your network into an ambition accelerator? Read The Network Effect of Getting Your Sh#t Together - when women are clear about their ambitions, networking stops being extractive and becomes the ambition multiplier they're seeking.

💡Feeling like your career dreams have stalled? Check out Ambition, Interrupted - what if your ambition isn't broken, but just ready to be restructured?

Dig Into the Research:

🤓 "Why Women Stay Out of the Spotlight at Work" - Harvard Business Review article on the visibility conundrum women face.

🤓 Ballakrishnen, S., Fielding-Singh, P., & Magliozzi, D. (2018). Intentional Invisibility: Professional Women and the Navigation of Workplace Constraints. Sociological Perspectives, 62(1), 23-41.

🤓 "Women in the Workplace 2024" - McKinsey report reveals how fewer women are promoted, starting at the very beginning of their careers, than men.