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This article covers why the gap between what you contribute and how clearly the right people can see it exists at senior level, why capable people tend to make it worse, and three specific ways to close it.
Why capable senior managers end up underestimated
Let’s assume you’re good at your job. You know you’re good at your job. Your manager knows you’re good at your job.
And yet, when you look at the people who get pulled into the important conversations, the people who are being considered for the next step up, the people who your seniors think of first when something significant is being discussed, you’re often not one of them. Or at least, not as consistently as you’d expect at your level.
And the frustrating thing is that you can’t point to a specific situation where something went wrong or a specific reason why that might be. It’s not like anybody is actively undermining you.
You’ve just somehow ended up with a reputation that doesn’t quite match your actual contribution.
You may have a reputation for being reliable, capable, a safe pair of hands. All great things to be, but not the things that get you a seat around the table when decisions are made.
That gap, between what you’re actually contributing and how clearly the right people can see it, is what this article is about.
And when I say the right people, I don’t just mean your manager. I mean the people who mention your name and sing your praises in rooms you’re not in.
The people who advocate for you when an opportunity comes up and you’re not there to advocate for yourself. That’s sponsorship. And you can’t be sponsored by someone who doesn’t have a clear picture of what you bring.
Why your work becomes less visible the more senior you get
The first thing you need to understand is that this isn’t usually anybody’s fault. This is for the most part structural and reflect simply how organisations work at senior level.
Earlier in your career, you would have been doing a lot of the doing, so the connection between you and your work would have been relatively direct. You prepare a report, you present that report, and people then associate you with that report.
At senior level, that changes, because your work increasingly happens through other people. You brief up rather than present, you shape thinking in conversations rather than documents, and you influence decisions in ways that don’t leave a clear record of who originated what. In other words, your input becomes less tangible.
And the more capable you are, often the worse this gets. The best senior people tend to be the ones most comfortable operating in the background, who care more about the outcome than taking credit, and who assume that doing good work consistently is going to speak for itself.
It won’t. Not because the organisation is unfair, but because the people above you are even busier than you are. They work with a lot of capable people and you’re not going to be top of mind for them, so they’ll form their impressions of you based on what’s in front of them. And if your contribution isn’t visible to them directly, it simply won’t be part of how they think about you.
What makes this genuinely hard to fix for a lot of senior people I work with, is that letting the work speak for itself isn’t just a habit. It’s a value. It’s how they define what it means to be a professional.
Taking credit, making sure people know what you did, actively managing how you’re perceived, all of that feels a little distasteful. Like something other kinds of people do. The kinds of people they judge.
If what I just said resonates with you, I’d push back on it. Because the issue isn’t whether you care about credit. It’s whether the people who have influence over your career have an accurate picture of what you contribute. Those are different things. One is about ego, while the other is about information.
So, the reframe isn’t about caring more about credit, but about accepting that visibility and integrity aren’t in conflict. You can be genuinely good at your job and make sure the right people can see it. In fact, at this level, you probably need to do both.
Three ways to become more visible at work as a senior manager
There are three approaches that make a genuine difference, and none of them involve the type of self-promotion most people instinctively resist.
1. Get yourself into the rooms where reputations are formed
Identify specific situations where the people you want to impress are most likely to form a view about your capabilities.
This means getting yourself invited into high-stakes meetings, strategy sessions, post-mortems, volunteering for cross-functional work, the kinds of places where people more senior than you might form an opinion of you.
And when you’re in those places, make sure you’re contributing something of weight, not just sitting there looking pretty. One well-timed, well-judged contribution in the right room can do more for your reputation than a year of being reliably present in the wrong places.
2. Build a professional reputation beyond your job title
At senior level, the people who progress most consistently tend to be known for something beyond their role. A particular expertise, a point of view, a way of thinking about a specific type of problem.
Maybe you’re the person who’s extremely good at spotting organisational risk when commercial decisions are made, or who’s always highly strategic in a room full of tactical people. Or the one who asks the question that reframes how everyone else was thinking about the problem.
This is about cultivating a professional brand, so it’s worth knowing the qualities you want to be associated with and making sure your contributions reflect those qualities consistently.
A good question to ask yourself right now: what’s the first thing the people above you currently associate you with?
If you think the answer is your function or your team, rather than a specific quality of thinking, then you probably need to work a bit more on your brand.
If you’re not sure what that quality is, think about the moments when someone senior said you handled something particularly well. Or the problems people bring to you specifically rather than to your peers. Or the observations you make in meetings that tend to shift the conversation. That will point you towards where your differentiating quality lives.
3. Build sponsorship relationships before you need them
This is worth pausing on, because most senior managers and directors already have mentors. Someone senior who gives them advice, challenges their thinking, helps them navigate difficult situations. That’s valuable.
But while a mentor gives you advice, a sponsor will advocate for you when you’re not in the room. Those are very different things, and most people invest heavily in the former while neglecting sponsorship entirely, so the relationships I’m talking about building here are the second kind.
The most authentic and useful way to do this is through the interactions that already exist. Identify two or three people at that level whose work already overlaps with yours in some way. When you’re in the same meeting discussing a topic where your work intersects with theirs, make that connection explicit. Do this consistently.
So for example, if you’re in a meeting and a senior leader is presenting a challenge their team is facing and you’ve been working on something directly relevant to it, say so in the room. Not in a way that hijacks their agenda, but something as simple as: “That connects to something we’ve been working through on our side, it might be worth a conversation.” You’re not trying to impress anyone. You’re simply reminding them that you exist and that your work is relevant to theirs.
I do want to flag something quite common, which is that your manager can sometimes be a barrier by, either consciously or not, keeping you at arm’s length from the people and conversations that would move things forward for you. That’s a different problem with a different set of responses, and it deserves its own article.
Also worth addressing here is that a lot of people are scared of coming across as someone climbing the greasy pole, or a sycophant.
This isn’t about flattering people with baseless compliments. It’s about engaging on the basis of mutual interests and always bringing something of value to the interaction. The people on the receiving end will know the difference immediately. What they remember is whether you had something interesting to say, not whether you said it to them specifically.
Visibility at work isn’t the reward for good performance, but the prerequisite.
The reason your contributions aren’t always as visible as they should be is usually not because anyone is working against you. It’s because organisations at senior level are structured in a way that makes individual contribution hard to see.
Most people make it worse by assuming the work will speak for itself.
The three approaches covered here, being deliberate about where you show up, building a professional reputation beyond your role, and building sponsorship relationships before you need them, aren’t about self-promotion.
They’re about making sure the picture the people above you have of you is accurate.
Most people treat visibility as something they’ll focus on once they’ve earned it. Once they’ve proved themselves a bit more. But that’s the wrong way round.
Visibility isn’t the reward for doing good work. It’s a precondition to doing good work. It’s what gets you the opportunity to do more of it, and those who wait until they feel they’ve earned the right to be seen tend to wait a very long time.
If visibility and influence are things you’re actively working on and you’d like support, the coaching services page has more on how that works.