Latest / Career Coaching with Fexingo: Professional Coaches, Career Counselors, and Guidance for Workers / Why Your Best Work Is Invisible to Promoters
Transcript
- Lucas: The most frustrating thing I see in mid-level management isn't a lack of skill or effort. It's the gap between what people do and what leaders notice. You can spend six months delivering flawless projects, yet still get passed over for a promotion because your impact wasn't visible in the way the committee measures it. Luna: Right, and it's rarely malicious. Decision-makers are just overloaded and rely on heuristics that don't always reward quiet competence. Lucas: Exactly. They use what I call impact proxies. These are observable signals—like speaking up in meetings, mentoring juniors, or owning cross-functional problems—that stand in for the actual work you're doing behind the scenes. If you aren't generating these signals, you become invisible to the promotion process. Luna: So the issue isn't just working hard; it's working in a way that creates noise for the right people. Lucas: Precisely. And here is where it gets tricky. Many high performers think they can just 'do better work' to fix this. But if your superior work happens in silos, no one knows about it. The system rewards transparency and narrative as much as technical execution. Luna: That feels unfair, though. Shouldn't the best results speak for themselves? Lucas: In an ideal world, yes. In a large organization, absolutely not. When a VP is reviewing ten candidates for one role, they need quick ways to differentiate. Visible contributions are easier to quantify than hidden excellence. So the candidate who writes a clear post-mortem on a project failure gets more credit than the one who silently fixed the bug. Luna: It’s like marketing your own labor instead of letting the product speak for itself. Lucas: Spot on. And this brings us to the first major gap: the communication gap. This is where employees assume that their manager sees everything they do. They don't. Managers have blind spots. They only see what you tell them or what shows up in shared documents. Luna: I’ve had friends who thought their boss knew exactly how many hours they put in. Turns out, the boss just saw the final deliverable. Lucas: And that final deliverable might be great, but if it doesn't tie back to the company's current strategic priorities, it gets filed away. The second gap is the scope gap. High performers often stay in their lane too tightly. They solve the problem they were assigned, not the problem the business actually has. Luna: So you’re solving the wrong puzzle efficiently. Lucas: You are. Promotion committees look for people who operate at the next level already. That means looking upstream to understand why the task exists, not just executing it perfectly. If you can articulate the 'why' and connect your work to revenue or efficiency metrics, you signal leadership potential. Luna: But that requires a lot of political savvy, which some people find exhausting or uncomfortable. Lucas: It does. And that leads to the third gap: the narrative gap. Even if you have the skills and the visibility, you need a coherent story about your career trajectory. Are you the expert in X? The fixer of Y? Without a label, you’re just a generalist, and generalists are harder to promote into specialized leadership roles. Luna: So you have to curate your identity as much as your resume. Lucas: Yes. And curation isn't lying. It's focusing. You highlight the experiences that align with the role you want, not just the ones you enjoyed. Let me give you a concrete example from a recent case study I looked at involving a senior engineer at a tech firm. Luna: Tell me about it. Lucas: This engineer was brilliant at coding but never spoke in design reviews. He got passed over twice. On his third attempt, he started writing brief summaries of his architectural decisions and sent them to the engineering directors. He didn't ask for anything. He just made his thinking visible. Within six months, he was promoted. Luna: So the work was the same, but the packaging changed completely. Lucas: The work was the same, but the friction for the decision-makers dropped to zero. They could see his strategic mind without having to dig for it. Now, let's talk about how to actually fix this. The first step is mapping your stakeholders. Who makes the decisions for your next role? It’s rarely just your direct manager. Luna: Usually it’s a committee or a skip-level leader who hasn’t met you. Lucas: Correct. So you need to identify those key influencers and find low-friction ways to add value to their worldview. Maybe it’s volunteering for a cross-team initiative. Maybe it’s sharing a useful article with context. It’s about building relevance, not just asking for favors. Luna: That sounds like relationship building, but framed as strategic alignment. Lucas: Exactly. It’s professional empathy. Understanding what keeps your leaders up at night and positioning your work as the solution. The second step is documenting your wins in real-time. Don't wait for your annual review. Keep a running log of achievements, especially those tied to business outcomes. Luna: Quantifiable outcomes. Revenue saved, time reduced, errors eliminated. Lucas: Yes. Numbers cut through bias. When you present data, it’s harder for someone to dismiss your contribution based on personality or preference. It forces the conversation onto objective ground. Now, before we go deeper into the documentation strategy, I want to pause for a moment. Luna: Sure. Lucas: If we've helped you think through a career move or decision, and you found value in this episode, consider supporting the show. Listener support is what keeps Fexingo Business ad-free and allows us to keep producing these deep dives for free. Luna: It really helps sustain the independent voice we try to maintain here. Lucas: You can find that link at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. Any amount helps us keep going. Luna: Thanks for considering it. Now, back to that documentation strategy. Lucas: Right. So, the document should not just be a list of tasks. It needs to be a narrative of impact. Use the STAR method—Situation, Task, Action, Result—but focus heavily on the Result and the broader implication. How did your action change the trajectory of the project or the team? Luna: So it’s less about what you did and more about what changed because you did it. Lucas: Exactly. That shift in perspective is crucial. It moves you from being a worker bee to being a strategic asset. The third step is seeking feedback proactively. Don't wait for the review cycle. Ask your manager, 'What specific things would I need to demonstrate to be ready for the next level?' Then, act on that feedback immediately. Luna: It turns the promotion criteria from a mystery into a checklist. Lucas: It does. And it shows you are coachable and ambitious. Both are highly valued traits. However, there is a risk here. Some people become so focused on visibility that they start performing rather than working. That’s the danger zone. Luna: Looking busy versus being effective. A classic trap. Lucas: Right. You have to balance visibility with substance. If you’re all talk and no delivery, you’ll burn out fast. The goal is to ensure your substance is seen, not to create fake substance. It’s about clarity, not clutter. Luna: Clarity of intent and clarity of outcome. Lucas: Yes. And finally, you need to build your external brand too. Internal visibility is important, but having a reputation outside your company gives you leverage. Write about your industry, speak at events, contribute to open-source projects. It validates your expertise independently of your employer's approval. Luna: It de-risks your career. If something changes internally, you’re not starting from scratch. Lucas: Exactly. It gives you optionality. Which brings us back to the core idea. Visibility isn't vanity. It's a functional requirement for advancement in modern organizations. You cannot climb a ladder if no one knows you’re on it. Luna: A sobering thought for anyone waiting for recognition to happen automatically. Lucas: It is. But once you accept that you are responsible for your own narrative, the pressure lifts. You stop wondering if you’re enough and start figuring out how to show them you are. Luna: And maybe that’s the most empowering part of career growth. Lucas: Absolutely. It shifts the power dynamic from passive waiting to active shaping. What’s one small thing you could make visible this week?