HOW TO GET PROMOTED AT WORK FAST - Importance of "Visibility" at work (fast track your promotion)

Hey guys, this is Heinrich from FromLearning. Welcome back to my channel. I'm just back from a nice long run that I did with my wife. We are preparing for our next marathon this July. And now we are ready to get some nice food. So I'm gonna eat that before I do the actual video for today. But just as a spoiler, it's going to be about visibility. It's going to be about what you need to do in your workplace to actually stand out and be perceived by the senior leaders and thought leaders in your organization as actually somebody who really adds value to your team and your organization. Visibility is a key concept that you need to understand in order to advance in any corporate organization of any kind. So hang in there with me. It's going to be interesting. It's going to be very important. So once again, welcome to another Coffee Break with FromLearning. My name is Heinrich and today we talk about visibility. Visibility is really a game changer. Visibility can make or break your career. So it's super crucial and important that you understand what visibility is all about. And the reason why I chose this topic for this video is the following. I recently recalled back about a conversation I had with some colleagues at an internship I did at a tech consulting company many, many years ago. I was still in university, still in my undergrad. And I was working at a large German DAX corporation with a big blue chip stock index in Germany. And this consulting firm was working for this large company. So we were on the client side almost every day. So I noticed that in a period of a couple of weeks all the colleagues were getting a bit more nervous. There was some kind of tension in the room that I didn't observe in the earlier weeks of my internship. So I asked a bit around what is going on and I learned that actually now it was designation season. So they had a process where two or three times a year each colleague got evaluated. They met certain criteria both regarding tenure but also regarding performance. They would be designated to the next level and then of course get higher salary, more benefits and so on. And this was obviously a big thing for everybody. So everybody was a bit nervous of course trying to make the very best impression at work at this time. Trying to perform as good as they could. And then I overheard a conversation that two of the more senior colleagues on the team had. Which really made me think. And this conversation they had was about visibility. And what do I mean by that? What happened? They were talking about another client on the team who was a bit more junior. And they were discussing him and they were saying, Hey this guy, he is a good guy, he is doing good work but he is just not visible enough. This is what they were saying. So they were doubting whether he would make the cut and actually get the part. And for me this was something completely new. Of course I was very young and maybe also a bit naive. And the way I was thinking about the work was that if you do a good job, at some point this is going to be recognized. And then at some point your team lead or your supervisor will pick you and then will designate you. And then this is how you advance in your career. Do the job as good as you can and this will be enough. But the reality is it is not always working like that. This is far too simplistic to really describe how these kind of things work and happen in especially larger corporations. But I trust this is not very different from a small sized corporation. And yes of course doing a good job, having a good and stellar performance at the things that you do is of course important and will make a difference in one way or the other how far you get in your career. I think it doesn't matter how much politics are going on in the company. In the end how good you do your job will always somehow influence your chances in terms of getting along and doing the next step in your career. But and this is a very basic truth that is probably hard to understand when you join a company just starting out in business. It is not enough. Other concepts, for instance visibility, is very, very important. And let me give you an example how that could play out, why that might be important. So if you think about how these designation processes work in all companies of course there are differences from company to company but in general how this works is that once or twice every year the HR community will meet with the business leaders of the organization and they will ask themselves the question who can I designate to the next level, who makes the cut to now advance to the next position. And yes of course this is more like this in roles like consulting or banking where you have a cycle of constantly being designated every couple of years if you are good enough. This is a slightly different industry where it is more opportunity based and there is now a role that is opened up for them to ask themselves who can be put in this role but there as well you will have a variation of cycles like this that also work somehow in this manner. So the HR leaders work together with the business leaders, they are having a discussion and they ask themselves who can I designate. And usually how this works is that somebody tells the case for the individual who can get this customer and kind of makes the case, he proposes to designate the person or not and what the reasons are that this person is worthwhile. Now think about the role of this person. Usually it is a senior leader in the organization, he will have several more junior colleagues working for him, maybe not all of them are directly working for himself so he needs to reach out to maybe an in-between boss who then has more direct exposure to the person in order to understand if this guy is a good guy or not, if this guy is worth the designation. So often in this kind of situation the person actually makes a significant part of the decision namely by making the recommendation whether to designate the person or not. It is not even doing that based on first-hand experience with working with the candidate but rather only maybe drawing from hearsay, drawing from conversations he had with other people to actually give a more or less favorable opinion of the individual. So what is actually visibility? Visibility is how visible you are, as the name says, to the senior leaders in the organization. Do they know that you exist? Does somebody maybe two levels above your boss know that you exist? Does he know where your strengths are? Does he really know what you did for the organization, what the projects were that you were working on, how you did in these projects, what other initiatives might be that you were driving and really how important you are to the organization as a whole. Is this visible to the people to whom this matters, namely the senior leaders in the firm you are working for? So now put yourself in the shoes of the person who needs to do these kind of thinking processes and maybe knows you a little bit, maybe not, but it becomes obvious that how visible you are to this person is super crucial and super important in the specific decision he needs to make about what the future is in the organization and whether this needs a designation or any kind of other review process or other just perception that the person has about you. But how visible you are to the person clearly makes a huge difference for you and your career. And while doing a good job might be helpful for that, might be a necessary condition for that, it's not the only thing, right? And this alone for sure will not make you visible to a person several steps up in the ladder above your team lead for instance because he just might see the performance of the team lead and the team as a whole and notice that actually it's going quite well. But it's very hard for him to judge just by looking at it outside in what the contribution of individual team members in the team might be So is this a bit unfair? Yes, it is. For sure it's unfair. I mean, in a perfect world, the only thing that should matter is how good you do your job, how reliable you are, how well you deliver on the things you're supposed to do. This should be all that's relevant when these things are decided. But the truth is, it's just not how this works. This is just not the truth. Just doing a good job alone won't do it. One sentence that is very often described in order to really make this graspable is the sentence, perception is reality. Perception is reality. Think about that. What really is the reality, at least in such a business context, is not so much what you really do. I mean, you can sit at home and then talk to your partner all the things that you did and how great of a job you did and how important you are for the corporation. But if the perception of everybody around you is that actually you're not really doing a good job and you're not really adding value to the business, then this won't help you at all. Perception is reality. What you need to be good at and what you need to become good at is the management of the perceptions of the people around you. And yes, for sure, this is politics, right? This is what's going on in these large corporations and this is also what makes these places kind of annoying or maybe tiresome to work in because they are full of politics like this. But the truth is also that it's not necessarily better in smaller organizations. In shades of grey for sure, but things like that happen everywhere. And if you want to be successful in your job, and I would say not only in your job but in almost everything you do in life, in the end what matters is understanding this principle of perception is reality. Do a good job, this is the reality, but make sure that other people have the perception that you're actually doing a good job because if other people do not perceive that, do not have the perception that you're doing a good job, then actually doing a good job is no help for you at all, especially in a context where you are an employee and do not directly benefit from the results of your work. So now I would like to give you three tangible tips what you can do, especially if you are a new joiner, if you are in a position that you just started your work life, what you can do to actually improve your visibility. So guys, if you're getting venues so far from this video, please press the like button and please also subscribe to the channel if you're on the subscribe button below, in case you are not subscribed yet. This would mean a lot to me, I have many more content planned for the next days and nights. Are you ready? Three tips. Number one. First, clearly communicate your success. And very often we have this mentality of maybe we are a bit shy, we do not want to speak out about what we actually accomplished at work, what we actually did in the last days or weeks, because we feel that we do not want to brag about our achievements, especially not towards your boss, where you may be even afraid that this is perceived as arrogant or something like that. And while this is very understandable and for sure you would need to be careful to not overdo it, it's important that you let other people know that you did something great that is really adding value to the business of your team. Do good things and talk about that. And this is an important principle. Don't just do good things and then not talk about that, but do good things and then do also talk about that to your colleagues, to your boss, not in a pretentious manner, but rather just letting them know what you did in your next team meeting, in the next one-on-one with the chef. Just recap with them the deliverables that you accomplished in the last days and just make sure that it's really clear to them what you actually achieved, what you got done in the last days. Don't just keep this to yourself and just assume that maybe over some other ways they will kind of know and understand what the good things and the skills are that you have, but aggressively let them know about the good things that you do. Because if you do not advocate these things, who else is supposed to do that, right? Maybe your colleagues say, yes, this guy was really helpful and he helped me a lot in my work, but I mean, come on, you cannot rely on that. And again, perception is reality. It's not enough that you just do it, but you need to make sure that there's also the perception on the other side of the table that you actually got these things done. And again, this is really at the benefit of your career. The second tip is related to that, and it's about how you communicate your achievements to your team colleagues, but also to your supervisors. And there's a pretty natural tendency, I'd say, that if you work in a team, you always talk about the we, right? We did this, we achieved this last week, we worked on that, we got that done, and so on and so on. And while this is, of course, often fair, while you often just want to make sure that you do not take the compliments for something that maybe not you but your team achieved, very often this leads to the perception that actually your specific contribution wasn't that large, but it was rather a team effort, right? Everybody did something. Yes, of course, you also did something that was an effort of the team. I think what's important here is to always also stress what your specific contribution to that design was, right? So yes, you can talk about what you achieved as a team, but then also say, I did this, I worked on that, and through my efforts last week, because I called somebody up last week, this is then what happened. And this is not about you making something up, right? This is not about something else or somebody else did it, and then you just claim that you did it. This is, of course, not at all what I'm recommending you do. But the many things that you did do, the many things where you really did take ownership and did make an effort to really bring that success to the team, make it transparent that this actually was your contribution. You actually did that. And I think this is an insight and tip that not only applies to how you communicate, but also in, for instance, written applications, job interviews, you know, it's supposed to describe what you achieved in the past. Again, it's very common for people to say, we did this, we did that, and so on. And then for you as an interviewer, you know, try to put yourself in the shoes of the other guy. It's really hard to understand, okay, but this guy, Heinrich, what did he really achieve? What can he do for us, right? So always also stress not only what the team design was, but what your specific contribution to that result has been, just to make it visible and also make the impression that you as a person really advantaged. My third tip is to pick up initiative and organize some things beyond your daily, day-to-day job. And what do I mean by that? Often in a team or in an organization, there are things where you can volunteer or where you can take the lead and do something, which might not directly be expected from you, right? It might not be that your team comes to you and tells you, Heinrich, this is what I want you to do, right? But still, it just adds value to the team and if only to the spirit and kind of the team feeling as a whole. Some examples here could be that you organize a team event. You just organize events for your team where then you organize everything and then the team goes maybe to an off-site in the evening or somewhere just to have a good time. And then hopefully everybody comes back in the office the next day and it feels like you're all born with a better team than everybody. This would be one example. Maybe you organize some kind of sports event in your office or you take ownership of any kind of other initiative that is going on. So these are little things where this is likely going beyond your job. This is not directly expected from you, but you show ownership, you show initiative, you show that you want to contribute beyond what is necessarily directly expected from you. And by that, this will be visible, right? So now you have a team meet and you continue to see that now the team is going to a team event with or without him, you will very quickly put up with it. You also organize that you made this effort for a better team experience for everybody. And of course, your main roles, your main responsibilities will always be more important. Don't do these things. It puts you in danger of actually delivering against things that you're really supposed to do that are really expected from you, because if you do that, then it doesn't really matter if you organize a great team event, your actual job is not done, right? So prioritize correctly, but very often you will find yourself having a bit of spare time, having a bit of extra capacity that you could invest in these kind of things. And then it is super valuable that you take initiative, take ownership, and then do something good for the organizations will be recognized. So let's recap. Visibility is super important and it means how visible you are to the senior leaders in your organization. Do they know that you exist? Do they know what you are doing for the team? Do they know why you really add value to the organization as a whole? Perception is reality. It doesn't matter. It's not enough to do just a good job. You need to make sure that other people understand and see that you do a good job. Otherwise it's just not worth it at all. So make sure that this perception is there. Make sure that you are visible. I hope you follow these tips and this will help you. And if you really enjoyed this, please click the like button and subscribe to this channel below. This would really mean a lot to me if you just subscribe to my channel. I have many more content pieces lined up for in the next days and weeks. So I would love to keep you here on the channel. Thank you.