Dear Reader ,
There is a belief many of us were raised on:
Keep your head down.
Do excellent work.
Someone will notice.
It is a decent way to raise a child but it is a poor way to run a career.
Melody Wilding, author of Managing Up, says it plainly:
“Good work does not speak for itself.” and she is right; Your leaders are not mind-readers.
When you stay quiet about what you have done because you are afraid of sounding like you are showing off, you are not always being humble. Sometimes, you are withholding information the room needs to make good decisions about you.
Read that again.
Visibility is not vanity.
It is part of the job.
A story will be told about your work; with or without you
This is a truth that needs to sink in:
A story is already being told about your work.
It is being told in the review meeting you are not invited to.
It is being told in the corridor conversation after the meeting ends.
It is being told in the one word your manager uses when your name comes up in rooms you are not in.
Reliable. Sharp. Quiet. Promising. Difficult. Helpful. Not ready.
A story is already forming.
The only question is whether you are shaping that story or leaving it to chance.
Because when you leave it to chance, even good work can get watered down.
Your six weeks of careful work becomes: “Yeah, they helped with that.”
The nuance disappears.
The judgment disappears.
The hard call you made at 9 p.m. disappears.
The thing you caught before it became a problem disappears.
...Not because people are wicked; sometimes, it is simply because the person telling the story did not have the words.
You on the other hand; had the words. You just never handed them over.
So stop waiting to be read correctly. Start giving people the language to describe your work properly.
The Tiny Update That Helps Your Work Get Remembered
You don't need to turn yourself into a walking personal brand.
You don't need to dominate every meeting.
You don't need to turn every “How are you?” into a pitch.
You just need one small structure you can keep ready for the moments when someone asks: “How is it going?”
That is a question most people waste.
They answer with:
“I'm good.”
“All fine.”
“I'm pushing through.”
But that question is an opportunity to make your work visible without making it awkward. All you need is three lines.
1. Name the project
Name the thing clearly; not the activity. The project.
For instance, Say: “The reconciliation fix.” Not: “Some finance stuff.”
Say: “The campaign performance review.” Not: “Some marketing reporting.”
When you name the project clearly, you help people place the work in their mind.
2. Add one detail that shows judgment
This is the most important part.
Do not list everything you did.
Pick one detail that shows you were thinking, not just completing tasks.
What did you notice?
What did you question?
What did you catch?
What did you decide?
What did you prevent?
This is the line that separates someone who simply did the work from someone who understood the work.
3. Share the result in a number
Numbers always lands. Numbers always stick
Words like “better,” “faster,” “cleaner,” and “improved” can disappear quickly. But numbers have weight.
See some examples below
“Error tickets are down 40%.”
“Response time dropped from three days to one.”
“We closed the loop on 27 pending enquiries.”
“The campaign generated 62 qualified leads.”
“We reduced approval time by half.”
The number does not have to be dramatic, it just has to make the impact easier to remember.
A Playbook You Can Use
Imagine your manager sees you in the lunch room and asks:
“How are things going?”
Instead of saying:
“Busy, but good.”
You can say something like
“Going great. We have finally reconcilled the account. The real issue was a rounding bug nobody had traced, so I rebuilt the check around that. Error tickets are down 40%.”
That is ten seconds of Project, Judgment, and Result.
It's naive to call it bragging... You simply share a status report; something your manager can readily recall or repeat in the room you are not in.
A Tip to Make it Feel Less Awkward
If naming your own wins still feels uncomfortable, and for many of us it does, use what researchers call dual promotion.
That simply means you lift someone else while naming your own contribution.
For example:
“Adaeze caught the pricing bug; I rebuilt the check so it can’t happen again.”
Or:
“Tomi helped pull the data together; I spotted the pattern and turned it into the recommendation.”
Or:
“The team moved quickly on the campaign; I tightened the reporting so we could see what was actually converting.”
It makes you look sharp, your team looks good, and nobody feels like they are being sold to.
Generosity and visibility are not opposites, done well, they can live in the same sentence.
The shift to hold this week
Move from:
“Let the results speak.”
To:
“Give the results a script.”
Because if you do not narrate your work, someone else will narrate it for you, and they may get it wrong.
Not out of malice, but out of not having the words.
Your job is to give them the words.
One Move To Practice ASAP
Before your next conversation with a senior leader, prepare one pocket update.
Use this structure:
The project.
One detail that shows judgment.
The result in a number.
Then say it out loud the next time someone asks how things are going.
Watch how differently it lands.
You have done the work.
Now give the work the words to speak.
Still learning,
Eyitemi
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