workplace visibility

Each day, you and your team are consistently delivering quality work. But one day you look around and realize: No one is telling you that you did a good job, no one is giving you more opportunities, and your peers are moving ahead despite all of the success you feel you have achieved. Likely what is happening here is that you are not getting noticed. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, as they say, and it’s absolutely true when it comes to getting visibility at work. You need to take action and speak up to be noticed for the work you do. What can you do to start getting more visibility for you, your team, and what you contribute at work?

Not getting noticed and not getting recognized at work for the work that you do is likely through no fault of your own. Workplaces aren’t designed to make sure all employees get equal visibility from leadership, and many leaders are too busy with their own work to make sure they are giving recognition equally to the people who are working for them. (This is something to keep in mind as you move up the ladder.) 

I used to work with someone who I was not a fan of personally or professionally. But one thing he did really well was that he promoted his accomplishments and he got noticed. He made himself known and that resonated with people. As a result, he was given more and more opportunities. Even though I did not like him or his abrasive management style, I learned a few things from him when it comes to getting visibility and recognition.

The reality is that your work does not always speak for itself, you have to put in work to get noticed. Being noticed is an excellent first step to helping yourself get the recognition you deserve for all the work that you do. Through this visibility, your contributions are more likely to be valued, and you are more likely to get new opportunities for growth. It also feels good to be acknowledged!

Before you start working on promoting your accomplishments, consider these three items as “prerequisite” steps to getting noticed at work –

• Do your job well: This might be a given, but you can’t get noticed for your accomplishments unless you have accomplishments to be noticed for. Get your work done, be reliable, think ahead, and help your coworkers. Deliver quality work.
• Track your accomplishments: I recommend keeping an informal and personal weekly status report that tracks what you accomplished each week. Set a reminder to complete this task every Friday. It helps get you in the mindset of thinking about what you accomplished each week, and it also pays off to have this recorded come performance review time.
• Give credit to your team: If you have people working for you, by acknowledging their accomplishments, it helps their morale and it shows off your team’s work without feeling too self-centered. Always look to boost your team up.

Now that you know you are delivering quality work, keeping track of your accomplishments, and boosting up your team – What can you start doing to get noticed at work? Here are three tactics you can incorporate that will increase your visibility at work:

When given the opportunity, Use it

We have existing status meetings or workplace interactions that we are often not using to the full potential to describe our accomplishments to others. Consider if there is already a forum where you can get more attention for your work. If there is, are you using it to your advantage?

During your status update or your watercooler conversation about what you did this week, think about the wording you’re using. Does it really show off the work you’re doing in a way others can understand? The wording you use to talk about your work should be descriptive and exact. Use numbers or data to explain what it is you are working on. Instead of saying “I continued working on this topic with customers,” you can try something like, “I met with 10 customers this week on this topic.” The wording you use does not have to be exaggerated or melodramatic to make an impression on people. You can resonate with people and be memorable just by being more descriptive in the forums you already have available.

I had the task of giving a monthly update on behalf of my team on a company-wide cross-functional status call. Some managers would opt out of providing an update each month depending on their functional area. But I recognized that the work my team and I were doing needed to be in front of people every chance we got because we were not getting the promotional top-cover we needed. I would make it a point to report on this call every month. By giving an update each month, no matter how small, it kept me (and my team) in front of everyone’s minds. Everyone knew what my team and I had accomplished each month.

If the opportunity doesn’t exist, Create it

If you don’t already have a status call or an interaction as part of your day where you can talk about your accomplishments and be noticed, you’re going to have to put some effort into creating that forum. This takes a little bit of work but it might be easier and more natural than you think. 

Think about who you want your work to be noticed by. If this is your boss or someone you work directly with on a regular basis, a request for a regular check-in meeting should be a fairly simple request. If you want to be noticed by someone who you don’t work with on a regular basis, perhaps you don’t have any direct projects together, you can still make a request for a monthly or quarterly meeting. If it feels too awkward to have a meeting one-on-one, consider a small group that you can form to share ideas. Many people will respond positively to a request to have a regular check-in to share experiences or ideas on projects.

I was part of a small group of people who met monthly to discuss and learn from the projects we were working on. We were all working on the same type of projects, but we were not working together on them. The primary purpose of this forum was to share knowledge about our projects, and the approaches and lessons we had to share with each other. The secondary purpose of this group was that it provided networking and much-needed visibility for each of us. Most of the work we did was individual, and otherwise there would not be much notice to our work. Through this group, we learned from each other and benefited from the visibility.

No matter what, Be yourself

If you are extroverted and love talking to people, then a lot of advice around visibility and getting noticed at work might come easily. Speaking up in meetings, talking to new people, and attending large networking events might be your specialty. 

If you are introverted or reticent, you might feel uncomfortable taking the initiative to get noticed at work. You do not have to force yourself to become someone else to get workplace visibility. You can find your own way of showing off what you have accomplished, and it can be done within a style that feels most natural for you. It will take some trial and error, but you can be successful no matter your personal communication style. 

Some people are great at this, but it is really difficult and unnatural for me to meet people at networking events or cold-email someone and say “let’s have coffee,” as a way of getting attention for me and my work. Connecting through these methods feels awkward. Over the years, I have learned that my style is connecting with people who share my interests or passions. From that starting point, it is easy to keep a conversation going. If there is a person who I want to get to know in order to get visibility for my work, I will see what they are interested in and if there is any overlap with what I am interested in – usually this information can be found on their LinkedIn or articles about them. A great forum for this kind of genuine connection is also at company-sponsored service events or interest groups. Since you all share a common interest at these kinds of events, connecting with people, expanding your network, and increasing your visibility at work can happen naturally.