Make your work visible to gain promotions

If you aren't proactive about reporting your accomplishments, you may not get recognised for your good work. Even great managers who proactively care about your development can have a lot on their plates and it's helpful to make relevant information visible to them.

Have you ever felt that there's a disconnect between your performance and your job outcome. Some people who are terrible at their jobs still get promoted, while others who are great, get stuck or quit because they're blocked from advancing.

There are many other forces at play. Your achievements don't line up all orderly and dutifully for you to collect your rewards. Good work doesn't necessarily speak for itself. Somebody has to speak up for it, and it makes the most sense for it to be you.

'Do things, tell people' is one pithy formula for success. What's so often overlooked, of course, is the 'tell people' element.

Just as artists hire managers to get their work in front of the right people, you must do this for yourself. Visibility is the vital key to becoming the kind of person who gets promotions, raises, and access to rewarding opportunities.

You miss out when you wrongly assume that other people will know about your great work without having to tell them.

Believing that pointing to your achievements is overly self-promotional and that good work should be enough on its own is, ironically, selfish thinking.

You're almost always on your mind - but that goes for everyone else too. Everyone is busy with their own concerns, problems and lives. That means people, including your boss, have little time to discover what you're actually accomplishing.

Accomplishments

If you aren't proactive about reporting your accomplishments, you may not get recognised for your good work. Even great managers who proactively care about your development can have a lot on their plates and it's helpful to make relevant information visible to them.

Focusing too hard on getting stuff done produces more that needs to get done, and that's a trap. Yes, productivity means you get more stuff done - but moving that work forward to be noted relies on communicating about what got done.

Nobody is a mind-reader. The tricky part can be how to tell people so that you feel authentic to who you are. For many people, the thought of being more proactive about sharing accomplishments at work can be daunting and a real turnoff.

Take a few minutes on Friday and jot down a simple description of what you accomplished that week. Your boss will see the progress you're making and appreciate not being left in the dark wondering whether you're doing your job.

Every Friday is just a suggestion. Feel weird about sending something every week? Do it every two weeks or every month. Deliver something in your boss's language, at whatever frequency and style she or he will understand.

Alternatively, start keeping a record for yourself. It's easy to get swept away with the daily grind that you forget what you get done and progress and achievements slip away from your mind.

Capture your accomplishments by keeping a running record. You'll have information at your fingertips when it comes to review time or when you're thinking about the next step.

This light tracking also helps you keep what you get done at the front of your mind, making it easier to figure out where you want to go and how to get there.

Visibility

Work preferably on things you can show, where people can see you and on things you can own. Why? Because when your work is in public, you can show it to people. That's often the best way to demonstrate that you're able to do work.

To sum up: 'Optimise for impact and visibility'.

The nature of knowledge work makes it inherently difficult to see the fruits of your labour. You may have go outside your office to gain visibility. Maybe you have a side project, or maybe your work culture isn't a healthy environment to pursue visibility.

Promoting yourself doesn't have to be on someone else's terms. Write a book, start a blog, make a side-project, collaborate with new people outside of work, or speak at panels and conferences.

Tell people about what you've done, what you're doing, why it's important, and how you did it. Give talks, teach others, raise your hand for new projects.

Whether you're an entrepreneur, an employee, a boss, or looking for work, when you "do things, tell people." You open doors because people know where to knock and why.

Those people may be customers, potential partners, or powerful leaders who can act as sponsors and mentors. You hold the magic power to make the invisible visible to help yourself and your work create more impact and opportunity.