If you come in on time, keep your head down, do your work and show you are a team player – surely your boss will realize your dedication right? And there’s no way your company will be able to overlook your hard work and above and beyond contributions right?
WRONG!! In today's world new age corporate, hard work, team player, depth at what you do, professionalism are baseline standards expected from all employees. Promotion, recognition and rewards more often than not land on people who have learned to maximize their exposure to the right people up the ladder and find the right opportunity to use as a stage.
Oh so you're saying I need to be "visible" in the organization which means kissing or sucking up or brown nosing. NO! Hell NO! I am against people who run around trying to make themselves look and feel good by getting approval from their peers and their mangers. They might even try to call it “networking” or “making connections” in disguise. Such activities reduce peoples trust and faith in you. Visibility should really be about positioning yourself in the right place to make your next best career move. Savvy professionals take the initiative to be relevant, contribute, and make sure their efforts are visible to people of influence (with real skills) within their industry and organization.
When you are part of a team, being able to provide visibility on what you are doing is far from trivial. Moreover, being able to provide the correct amount of visibility to each of the team mates is even harder. Yet, this is one of the most important principle in order to achieve a progress. It doesn't matter if you are an MD or a new joinee, each employee should strive to find himself the right path for visibility.
Thinking back from my experience, I have understood a few things about Visibility. Companies and Organizations can often force employee into some kind of artificial visibility by using enterprise networking platforms, portals, tools, procedures etc. Here are some things HRs recommend at a high level to "stand out" and "get noticed".
However, the best visibility is achieved when it comes naturally and organically. And really for this to happen 2 things are essential.
1. You should be excited from your work, from your creation, from what you’ve been spending hours of hours to accomplish it.
2. You should have audience who is excited you've done, from your creation, from what you’ve been spending hours of hours to accomplish it.
When you have that spirit in your workplace, visibility will come naturally without a notice. Often forced visibility is determinantal to productivity of employees and may even bring disparity and discontent among employees. Instead what we should do is create an environment which is conducive and comfortable to have a good discussion with anyone and everyone in the organization and be able to contribute to it. Take steps to curb unnecessary and shallow visibility. Visibility is important, but by itself, it won’t create credibility or profitability.
I would urge everyone to think about this.....
