Has your mum or your boss ever told you, “keep your head down, work hard and it’ll get noticed” or “your work should speak for itself”.

Possibly combined with telling you that you should be modest and not toot your own horn? Just do your work and wait your turn… how’s that working out for you?

If you have an amazing manager who talks about you in rooms you’re not in, it might work!* Otherwise, you’ll probably work hard, not see anything happen for years, assume you should work harder, still no promotions or wider recognition on the horizon, work even harder until you burn out… At some point you have to notice this classic strategy doesn’t really work. Maybe it never did in the first place.

After a little reflection time, I think we can agree that what keeping your head down actually does, is it mainly gets you overlooked and taken for granted.

What should we be doing instead?

Let’s leave asking for promotions for another time and focus on increasing our visibility. If you’ve just visibly recoiled at this suggestion, you might be someone who likes working in the shadows. You might think talking about your achievements is actually kind of rude and that nobody likes a braggart. Especially if you’re a woman, you’ve probably been brought up to be polite, not too loud, and to take care of others before you take care of yourself. And while that will most likely make you a lovely person, it won’t necessarily put you on the radar of whoever decides the pay rises, development opportunities, and big value projects at your workplace.

Let’s see if we can balance this out – talking about our achievements, sharing best practice, and shining a light on others while we’re at it.

Become more visible.

Just like being more visible on the road in winter can help you stay safe, being more visible at work can help you stay relevant. Make sure people know you’re still there, doing an amazing job. Depending on your level of comfort and confidence, there are various things you can do to make sure the right people know about you in the right context.

Finding a way that feels authentic to you will help you show up as your best self, but it is worth getting out of your comfort zone, too.

1. Volunteer.

Has your team been working on something and now they need someone to present their results in front of an audience? Volunteer!

Does your manager prepare a presentation once a month to present in front of the leadership team, but is looking for someone to delegate this month’s report to? Volunteer!

There’s a new task force/committee/initiative being put together in your organisation? Volunteer to be on it!

What if there’s nothing like that to join? If you have an idea for something that could benefit your company and your colleagues, volunteer to organise it!

Maybe you’re passionate about wellbeing, inclusion, or anything else – talk to your manager, start organising and give people a chance to volunteer to help out!

It’s likely that all of these things will put your name on a lot of people’s radars for the right reasons.

2. Speak up.

You might have the best ideas about improving processes, innovating how your business operates, or how you should spend your team day. If you don’t mention them at just the right moment, chances are other ideas will be taken into consideration, and you won’t get a chance to push yours forward.

If you’re not the type to push through other people already speaking up in the meeting, consider asking others for support – maybe someone can introduce you and ask for space for you to present your point of view?

3. Share.

Find a space where you can share and give something back to your colleagues.

• Maybe you’ve read an interesting article that has something to do with what you’re all working on and could be useful for others – drop a link and a few words in the group chat.
• Maybe you’ve figured out a way to solve a problem all of you have been struggling with – throw together a few screenshots into a tutorial and share widely!
• Maybe your team always follows a process for certain tasks, but it’s never been written down – be the one to document it! New starters will love you (and possibly remember you for the rest of their careers – how’s that for visibility!) and you’ll make life easier for anyone who might need to do something similar. Documenting processes also proves that you understand them well, so it can also remind others that you’re an expert in your field.

You can also share your ideas and successes with your wider network via platforms like LinkedIn or other socials where people from your industry hang out. I know some people who dismiss LinkedIn as a place where everyone keeps patting themselves and each other on the back all the time, and where the algorithm hides your posts, but remember the end goal – if you want to remind people about the great work you’re doing, share those successes, share the learnings you took from whatever you’ve gone through, share what you learned during a workshop or a conference and how you’re putting that new skill into practice!

And speaking of workshops and conferences…

4. Get yourself in front of an audience.

I bet there is a conference focused on your industry or even your specific niche.

Presenting a talk that helps lots of your colleagues with a challenge they all face, presenting new solutions to known problems, talking about how you and your team did something interesting and relatable – all of these will definitely get you noticed. If you think you have nothing to say or you’re not sure what people would like to listen about, think back to the last time you had a long conversation with someone in your field – do any topics stand out? Maybe there is something you’ve always been passionate about and you think people should hear about it? Or maybe you’ve devised an especially efficient way of doing something that everyone does in the same old way? Go on, fill in that submission form.

If that sounds extremely overwhelming, you can start on a smaller scale. Do that talk for your team. Offer to organise a workshop or a webinar for colleagues from your department… That will help you practise, give you a confidence boost, and again – help position you as someone who really knows what they’re talking about!

5. Talk to people.

This bit of advice is particularly hard to swallow for introverts like me, but if you want to increase your visibility, you will have to talk to people. That common belief about working hard and waiting for someone to notice you is especially comfortable for all of us quiet types, who would rather bury ourselves in deep work, spend hours on end doing design work or tinkering around spreadsheets, etc. But even if your spreadsheets are the best, you can’t expect them to speak for themselves while you avoid meetings and video calls (not unless you literally are the Banksy of spreadsheets, then you probably can).I haven’t quite got the hang of this myself yet, but here are a few things I’ve seen work.

• I once watched a colleague approach someone new at a networking event and just say “hi, we haven’t had a chance to talk yet, what have you been working on lately?” and it blew my introverted mind. People are actually eager to share things, especially If they’ve come to a networking event, this is kind of what they expected to happen anyway!
• Another thing to do is ask someone you already know to introduce you to someone who either you would like to speak to, but you’re scared to just strike up a conversation, or someone they think you have something to talk about with. If all of this sounds terrifying, prepare a little intro for yourself ahead of time – you don’t have to talk about your whole career and mention all your credentials, think about what difference you make or what your mission is for example:

“My name is Aggie and I help new and emerging leaders get the skills they need to get the best out of themselves and their teams”

6. Become a mentor.

I’ve already mentioned helping others, for example by sharing solutions to common issues or by creating tutorials and processes. One more thing you can do is to take someone under your wing.

If you’re in a position to pass your knowledge on, or help someone else succeed, you can create a real, long-lasting impact, by supporting a junior colleague.  

Which of these ideas resonates with you?

This might still feel a bit too much like tooting your own horn in a very selfish way, so I have one more bit of advice. While you’re talking about your own achievements, don’t forget to shine a light on others.

Be the person who mentions people’s wins in rooms they’re not in. Tell your boss how that colleague of yours came up with the best idea. Share a story about what you learned from that person on your team. Give shout outs in Teams chats often and be generous about it. Lifting others up won’t dim your light, it will enhance your reputation!

It’s January, for some people this is the time for resolutions, changes, and reinventing yourself, is this the year you show the people around you how great you are at what you do? If your public image is something you’ve already taken care of, it could also be the year you start highlighting the achievements of others!

Either way, try it out and let me know how it worked out in a few months (aggie@peopleunboxed.co.uk or connect on LinkedIn)!

*Shoutout to Ben and Jenny from my previous job for mentioning my name in rooms I wasn’t in ❤️