Do you feel always the same people are presenting and talking in every meeting?
Those same people that everyone is always talking about and those same people are constantly getting promoted while receiving tons of rewards and recognition.

There is one thing they are doing brilliantly.
Do you know what that one thing is?
That one thing is called visibility. Visibility at work.

How to get visibility at work

“You need to increase her visibility for the promotion to happen”

That was the feedback I got from my direct manager regarding the potential promotion of one of my team members.

At that point in time,
I had no idea what visibility at work meant or how I could increase the visibility of my team members and myself.

What does visibility at work mean?

Visibility at work basically means getting recognized by the leadership not only for the contributions to the business but also for the contributions to the organization.

When you are visible and you are performing in your role,
people naturally will want to work with you.

Your name will be on everyone’s mind

When there is a vacancy, your name will come to their mind.
When there is a project and they need someone passionate who delivers, your name will come to their mind.
When they need someone to represent the team, your name will come to their mind.

You need to ensure your name,
it is the name that is coming to everyone’s mind when positions are available at the higher levels.

Importance of visibility at work

If you get proper visibility – in the short-midterm run, you will be earning more money.

Why?
Visibility is the crucial element that together with good performance will allow you to escalate higher and higher in the hierarchy by taking over more responsibility and consequently earning more money.

Performance plus proper visibility means promotion.
Promotion means more responsibility and consequently more money

How to improve visibility at work

Only performing your day-to-day tasks is not enough.
This way you will not be visible to your organization or to your leadership.
You will be only as visible as your peer, who is performing the exact same job as you are doing.

If a position is available at higher levels,
why choose you and not your peer? when both of you are doing a comparable job.

I bring you here my three favourite ways to increase my visibility in a corporation.

Speak up and show yourself in meetings
The pandemic appeared,
and suddenly we all moved from sitting at our desks in the office
to sitting in our beds while wearing our pyjamas (or at least half of our pyjamas)

The consequence of this?
Nearly 90% of people in online meetings – do not turn on their cameras.

And that’s precisely your opportunity – ensure you are part of that 10%.

Once you are with your camera on and questions such as:
Any comment? Any feedback? Anything to share?
Jump into those questions – and share your perspective. Do not be afraid to share your opinion.

The more you will share, the better you will get at sharing your opinion.

And people will start to recognize you as someone who is not afraid to speak up and share the opinion

Lead meetings that impact several teams
Think about your daily work,
there must be at least one meeting that is impacting several teams.

Did you identify that meeting? – I hope so.

What is stopping you from leading that meeting?

Have you ever asked yourself that question?
The fact that the same person is always leading that meeting,
it does not mean that it cannot be changed.

Challenge the status quo, ask for support from your manager, and be vocal about your needs.

What are the benefits of leading a meeting that impacts several teams?

• You will be visible -with a purpose- not only for your team but for a larger part of the organization.
• You will develop your leadership skills by owning the agenda, managing the dynamics of the meeting and
• You will develop your communication skills while talking to a large audience

My homework for you,
when you finish reading the post think about which meeting you can take over … and you will see the nice consequences of just that simple gesture.

You will thank me later!

Demonstrate your expertise – Lead training for the organization
Find a topic that:

• You are passionate about it
• Many people in the organization could benefit
• And you could master

Few examples of topics that could fall under these three conditions.
Excel, Outlook management, Public speaking, Effective email communication … you name it.

I can give you my example with Outlook.

When I started my first job in a corporation,
I realized that I was spending endless amounts of time working in my Inbox, heavily impacting my productivity and performance

Building on this inefficiency – I needed to act on it if I wanted to take my productivity to the desired levels..
Then it is when I got completely obsessed with Outlook.
My obsession was about becoming the best possible version of myself regarding Outlook.
Reading every post I could find online, seeing YouTube tutorials, asking people around how they were organizing their inboxes…
after more than 200 hours in the Outlook topic,
I was having an understanding of Outlook higher than 95% of the organization I was working for.

And then it is when the magic happened.

At that moment I realized,
If I managed to reduce nearly by 60% the time I was spending in my Inbox,
why not share it with the rest of the organization?

Since then,
I run monthly the effectively Workload Management with Outlook training, where more than 1000 people have been trained – you can read more about the training here.

Benefits of this:

• I am being recognized as an Outlook expert by the organization
• I am the go-to person for any Outlook-related question
• I am building my network by providing training outside of my camp (even travelling overseas…)
• I am constantly improving my communication skill…

And many other benefits that concluded in me getting promoted to the second managerial level in a record time. (This adds up to a good performance in my role – remember performance + visibility)

There is no secret recipe,
it is all about putting in the effort, putting in the hours and not being afraid to call yourself an expert,
an expert ready to run training for hundreds or even thousands of people.

After more than 200h on one topic,
remember you will know more than the vast majority of the people you know – leverage on that.

Recommended next steps to increase your visibility at work

• Identify the meeting you would like to lead
• Identify that skill you want to master and train the rest of the organization
• Find a mentor
  If you are not sure how to find a mentor, you can find more details here.