Harsh reality #1 — As much as you’d like to believe that good work should stand on it’s own, it doesn’t.
Building credibility and trust is essential. But you can’t have credibility if you are invisible. You also can’t have credibility if you are annoying!
People with high credibility get more done.
They face less challenges to their honor and their budget. They face less stupid questions. They get to work faster because they don’t have to slow down to deal with attacks and doubts about their decisions, plans, investments, and actions.
This is what I mean when I talk about DO Better, LOOK Better and CONNECT Better in my book. Good work is not enough – don’t forget the LOOK Better part.
I want to be clear: I am never advocating creating a publicity campaign for your career instead delivering excellent results. (We all know people who promote themselves without delivering good work, and we don’t like them.)
You must deliver excellent results first. But then put those results where others can see them.
As long as the visibility is based on good work (DO Better) it is not annoying. Not only is it not annoying, it creates value for others. People like to be kept in the loop. They like to know what is going on. If you make them aware of your team’s good work, they appreciate it.
In my Personal Leadership workshops, I talk about being visible with stakeholders and influencers.
Your stakeholders are the people who depend on your work in some fashion — your boss, your team, your peers, and all the people in the chain of events that your work touches.
Your influencers are people who may not have a stake in your work but have a stake in your career — people like your boss’s peers, and your bosses counterparts in other organizations.
Harsh reality #2 — The people whose names are known get more goodies than the people who are invisible.
Here is an example: I have been in many executive staff meetings (think about the meeting your boss or your boss’s boss goes to) where some juicy benefit is being discussed – a promotion, a bonus, a special project. I often knew all of the people a level or two down being discussed and considered, so I had a clear view of who was most competent and deserving.
I can tell you that the person who got the win was not typically the one who was most deserving. It was the one whose name was known by most of the people in the room.
Ouch!
Many people feel that if the goal is to gain visibility on purpose that it feels false, shallow, showing off, or political (or annoying).
Because you need to communicate on purpose, by definition people sometimes feel that just because you are doing it on purpose it is false or forced. There are two reasons you need to communicate on purpose to build credibility and visibility:
With these influencers, if the real goal is just to be visible, and they really don’t have a stake in your work, how can you make yourself visible and add value, if your work has no direct value to add to them? Here are some ways to be genuine, add value, and get your name known (and build credibility) – all without being annoying or false.
If this still all sounds political to you – making a connection with someone who is not directly dependent on your work — you have a choice. You can call it political and use that as an excuse to stay isolated and invisible, or not.
My view is that if your intentions are honorable — if you are creating visibility based on excellent results, and your goal is to add value — you are doing a positive thing.
The reality is that you will have a much harder road ahead of you, and you may even get stuck or sidelined in your career, if you don’t make the effort to LOOK Better.
This was originally published on Patty Azzarello’s Business Leadership Blog. Her latest book is Rise: How to be Really Successful at Work and LIKE Your Life.
