Hi, and welcome to the Awfully Quiet Podcast. This is episode 90 and I cannot believe this is almost two years in the making. And in the last couple of weeks, I've had so much happening in my corporate job and also in my business. I'm in the process of launching Quiet Flex, which is my new well signature program.

And, I feel like it's been a very intense couple of weeks and frankly a couple of months. And so there is so much that I'm learning along the way. There is so much self-doubt that hits. There are so many loops that are constantly going on in my head that I feel like every once in a while, sometimes something clicks for me and I think about something and I feel like a fresh perspective coming up or a little bit of an opinion that.

Has shaped for me. And so I feel like creatively, there's a lot going on that I wanna share with you. And today's episode came from a situation just like that, and it's all about visibility in the workplace and how as introverts or quieter people in the workplace are often told to become a little more visible.

And I wanna talk with you about what that even means and why we're often. Told to be more visible in the workplace.

Now, if you're anything like me, like early into my corporate experience, this is what I've always been told in like year end conversations or like feedback sessions or, yeah. When it, when it came to getting a promotion or unlocking the next job opportunity, it would always be like, you're doing great.

You're doing fantastic work. We see how hard you work. We see that you're doing really, really well, but you need to become a little bit more visible because. People outside your immediate team, people outside the people. People who don't work with you on a daily basis, they don't necessarily know how good you are.

They don't, they have not witnessed it. They don't know about it. So it's going to be more difficult for you to get a promotion and a different team when they don't know anything about you or when they don't know. How good you are. So you need to become a little bit more visible. And I'm sure you've heard this before because this is like every introvert's feedback session or year end conversation.

it's mid-year review time, so I am pretty sure that you will be hearing some of this right about now, and I think it's important to really touch on it because. Again, when I would get this feedback, the advice I would be given next would always sound like. You need to, you know, present at the company town hall.

You need to make sure that you're out there. You need to speak to senior leaders, you know, have coffee chats with senior leaders and people who don't know you yet. present somewhere, you know, in front of a larger audience. Speak up a little bit more like I think I never had. Any reservation speaking up in a meeting that I was in, it depends a little bit on the meeting size, but if I work together with people, even senior leaders, if I would work with them or if I would be in meetings with them and I felt like I had something to say, or I felt like I had something to contribute, which was often the case, I would say it.

I would not have any reservations to speak up in a meeting or to talk to senior leaders. Not at all, but. What felt extremely hard for me was to talk to them and to chat to them for the benefit of self-promotion, for the benefit of advancing my career and for the benefit of becoming. Quote, unquote, more visible in the workplace.

So that always rub me the wrong way, asking for somebody's time just to advance my career just for the benefit of being visible to them. And at the end of the day, that put so much pressure on this situation too, because I knew that I didn't have any. Thing to necessarily talk to them about outside of proving myself and outside of showing them, look, I'm a quiet person.

I'm, you know, I'm, I'm not as visible to you, so let me show you in this 20 minute coffee connect how great I am. How much of a great job I'm doing. So, it just sets you up for failure, doesn't it? I'm not saying that visibility is not important. I'm not saying that coffee chats with, you know, actually people in the workplace in general are not important because they are, they are a great tool and there is a way for, introverts to leverage that in a way that, is not awkward in a way that is not cringey.

Where I wanna start is yes, visibility in the workplace is important. You need to be visible, but the way how we get there looks different for anyone like me. whether you would say, you know, we can call it introverted, we can call it quiet, we can call it uncomfortable with self-promotion.

Visibility is. Something that we need to work on, but how we get there looks different for us. Like I said, you will have likely been told, you know, be a little bit more visible, be louder, speak up, more present at the company town hall. Now, none of these things are going to set you up for success for the reason I described.

What I wanna offer you is a little bit of an unpopular opinion to get more visible in the workplace. And I've thought about this a lot recently because. I'm at a point in my corporate career where I've now, I'm almost 10 years in, I am in a senior brand manager role right now, so I feel like I've made a couple of steps towards becoming more visible.

I feel like I've, I am now more visible than I have ever been. And the way I got there was quite different to the way I had envisioned or the way I had been told to get there. And so I feel like I can share with you some of the things that haven't worked for me, but also some of the things that have worked for me and they are a little unpopular because.

They're not the sexy career advice that you would often get in other forums, but, well, it's awfully quiet. So you're here for this, I guess,what I wanna offer you beyond, you know, just be louder, speak up more, you know, go into meetings and, and say something is, be easy to work with. Do the early career tasks, whether they are operational tasks or admin tasks really well, and be in service of others and manage up.

Now, Me two years ago, I would've hated this list because I always thought to myself, well, you know what? I'm not here to be anyone's assistant. I'm not here to do the early career work. I'm here to go beyond the operational tasks. I'm here to go beyond the tedious admin tasks and do some more strategic work, and do some sexier work, some more attractive work, some more visible work.

And I wouldn't have quite seen how some of these things that we easily think about as tedious tasks can actually help get you more visible. Now, what was also always true for me is that I am an extreme people pleaser, and I am not proud of that in the workplace. What does that mean? It means that I would always try and.

Obviously, you know, please my bosses or superiors in a way that whenever they came to me with an ask or with something that they needed, I would say, sure, I'll do it. Even if it was something that was, you know, not quite my, my area of responsibilities, whether it was something that I felt like somebody else could do or that was a little bit beneath me because.

Frankly, I've, you know, I've done this for a while and I wasn't, I wasn't a junior at the time, so I never said no to anything. I would sometimes, challenge or push back when it comes to workload and setting some boundaries around, look, this is what I have on at the moment. This is going to be difficult to take on unless I let something else drop.

So, yes, I've had some of these conversations, but I have never pushed back on anything or an opportunity for development or. a project that I wanted to go on, but I have always felt like,I wanted to, I, I was always the one asking for, for more or asking for a bigger project or asking for more responsibility on something.

I, I am that ambitious and I am that career hungry in a sense. I don't actually think it's a bad thing, but people pleasing at work. I think, the healthier version of that, and I've had, melody on the podcast who talked about this beautifully and wrote a book on managing up, which I would recommend everyone to read.

I think that's the healthier version of it. But for me, being this person that my managers or senior leaders could trust to, to do things and to do things really well. That has always given me more visibility than any of the fancy project I really wanted to be on, I guess. So funny really, that all of the, all of the projects or campaigns that I've worked on that.

Prior to stepping into them, I thought to myself, well, this is going to be great for visibility. There's going to be lots of stakeholders in this. There's going to be lots of, lots of buzz around. This is, this is going to be great for me. Whenever I thought this, it never ended up being great, but the nitty gritty, tiny little projects that I didn't want in the first place and that.

I thought were just so tedious. but I did them anyway, and I did them well. Those were always the opportunities that ended up with extreme visibility, where some senior stakeholder somewhere took an interest in this project for, for whatever reason, and then it got, you know, blown out of the water and it got presented here and there, and.

It w it just worked out beautifully and I would've never imagined it. It would, so that kind of taught me to always give it my best, even though I don't really see yet how it's going to turn out for me. It's just to, it's just this mindset of doing your job really well, going above and beyond, and not shying away.

From some of the tasks that feel more like an early career task. I have recently taken on a development project at work and it involved a lot of admin. It involved a lot of creating PowerPoint slides. For, for meetings and for presentations that I am not even in. It involved a lot of scheduling and like getting, the right stakeholders in the room for things.

setting up team meetings, making sure that you know, the right people are in checking calendars, all of these kind of things. And I'm frankly, I'm now at a point in my career where I'm at my highest level ever and. These are tasks that frankly, I, I would, I would consider admin tasks or, but, well, very operational tasks.

But what I did is I made them a little special. I gave them a little flavor. Like for a team meeting, I would, I would place, you know, this is, you know, don't roll your eyes, but I would play a little music before. I would send out a little, like a little agenda before in the teams chat. I would say, this is what we're doing today.

Here's what, what we're planning on, on uncovering today. And if you wanna join for some Taylor Swift in the first two minutes. be free. Feel free to join on time. You know, things like that. Just making things, me making slide presentations that I was asked to create, you know, making them, really putting a lot of effort into, into them because frankly, this is something that I obsess over.

I love a PowerPoint presentation, so it's not something that, I have to be asked for twice, but it's just giving it my best. And, and not feeling bad for, for being given a task that that feels, that feels operational. And I kid you not, this has given me. So much visibility. I have had compliments from people within the team.

I have been recognized more broadly beyond the team. People reach out to me because they say, look, I heard that you did a killer presentation for this. Can I steal some of this? How did you approach this? How did you run this forum and this meeting? How did you facilitate here and. So, and, and it's just great and, and it's, and I've not been loud and I've not gone out of my comfort zone.

What I've done is I set aside my ego and I went all in on something and I put in my flavor. I put in my take on things, my secret sauce, and people can tell, and this is something where I'm thinking now 10 years into my corporate job. I figured this one out. I figured out visibility without the noise. I figured out how you get visible in front of senior stakeholders without just, you know, grabbing coffee with them and telling them how great you are.

It's, it's a lot more subtle, which obviously very on brand for me. It's, it's quietly strategic and it's not this. You know, I'm out there, you know, I'm telling everyone how great I am. I'm not, you know, networking. It's not, it's not that energy at all. It's, it's really doing a great job and making sure people see it.

I think this is where what sometimes trips us up and what I talk about very often is you can't just be putting your head down, do great work and expect people to notice. More often than not, this does not really work out well for us, but make sure that your work is being seen. Don't think of visibility as shining a light on you and putting yourself into the spotlight.

Think of visibility as shining a light on your work. On what feels meaningful for you and on where you have really moved the needle. These are the type of things that you want others to know. These are the type of things that you want visibility on, and so I actually think that this is a career hack. Be easy to work with and be in service of others.

Quite frankly, it sounds like.

I, I think it might sound kind of weak to begin with. I, I would've thought of it as weak because it's not the, you know, be, be the boss and, you know, make sure that you delegate some of the tasks that are beneath you and make sure that you get. The high, high visibility and high profile projects and, you know, say no to things that, take away from your time that you could be chatting to senior stakeholders in the cafeteria.

being easy to work with is so underrated, is so underestimated, and I've talked about this with Haley Dawson. From Let's Talk human skills. And she has this beautiful take and she talks all about how important it is to be easy to work with. And frankly, now that I am in a more senior role in my corporate career, I feel it.

I feel it because now for the first time in this corporate experience, I feel how I, some I, I perceive people coming in. From more junior levels and being demanding and wanting to be, you know, wanting the big bad projects and wanting to be the badass that I wanted to be two, three years ago. So I do emphasize, I, I do emphasize a lot and I sometimes think to myself, look, this is where it's gotten you.

Now you're one of the people who tells others, you know, you need a little bit more experience or you need a little bit more gr. But, it is really like that, isn't it? So I see some of of those people come in and, I now think to myself, this is not the way you get noticed and this is not the way you get remembered Coming in and just kind of thinking, you know, you, I am in this role now, so you give me the great project so you make sure that I am going to, get great career opportunities.

No, at every level. In your corporate career and any career, it is your responsibility to do a great fucking job and to be somebody other people wanna work with. It's always a people business. It's people working with other people, and it's always making sure that you, you can offer something you bring value you.

You try and help where you can in the team. And whether that be a task where you set up a meeting or you take some notes or you do a follow up or create a presentation deck, or it's something that feels, you know, extremely strategic, high profile, has a lot of eyes on it. It doesn't matter. What matters is the mindset.

What matters is the grit. And at the end of the day, this is going to take you so much further than. A chat or being a little louder or speaking up in certain forums and meetings. This is what I wanna leave you with. And, I honestly think it's the holy grail. I might try again another time to, bring more examples because now this, this is something that has just clicked for me honestly.

And looking back, this has helped me extremely en evolve into the position that I'm, that I'm in today, and it helps me appreciate I. The small things, it helps me appreciate some of the things that I would've previously thought of as tedious, that I would've previously thought of as beneath me. And maybe it helps you too.

Maybe you look at some of these tasks that you have ahead of you this week or next week, and you think to yourself, how can I do a killer job at this document? How can I kill it with this follow-up email? How can I bring my take and my style into this presentation deck so people will notice? I think this is how we're quietly going to be taking over.

You're welcome and I'll see you next week.