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You can be respected, competent, and indispensable, and still be invisible where power and influence are actually shaped. You do great work, deliver on objectives, carry responsibility, and when the strategic conversation shifts, your voice isn’t helping to shape it. Not because you weren’t invited to the table, but because you assumed your contribution would speak loudly enough on its own. Then, when decisions move ahead without your perspective, disappointment lands with a thud.
VISIBILITY IS NOT SELF-PROMOTION
Many leaders carry the limiting belief that seeking better visibility equals ego. It's as if the desire to be seen gets tangled up with the idea of performative posturing, self-promotion, or 'playing the game.' If we value substance, humility, and doing work that actually matters, that association feels off-putting, distasteful, or risky. So we keep our head down and trust that our good work will speak for itself.
For a long time, that approach worked. It doesn’t anymore. Not because organisations have suddenly lost their values, but because the system has changed. Complexity has increased, decisions move faster, work is more distributed, and influence now depends not just on contribution, but on whether that contribution is visible, understood, and connected to what the organization is trying to do next. Think of visibility not as noise, but as legibility.
WHEN GOOD WORK STAYS INVISIBLE
Most leaders who struggle with building their visibility aren’t disengaged or insecure. They’re often deeply committed, values-driven, humble, and thoughtful about not centering themselves unnecessarily. They don’t want to dominate airtime or oversell. And they definitely don’t want to be mistaken for someone who talks more than they deliver.
So they wait until the work is perfect; until they’re asked; until the moment feels fully earned. And by the time they speak, the conversation has often moved on. This isn’t a personal shortcoming. It’s a mismatch between how leadership actually works now and how we may have been taught it works.
Decades of research in organizational psychology show that decision makers rely heavily on what is accessible in the moment, not on what exists elsewhere in the system. This cognitive shortcut is known as availability bias, and it shapes far more leadership decisions than anyone likes to admit. If your contribution isn’t present where meaning is being made, it doesn’t shape the outcome, no matter how solid it is.
EXECUTIVE PRESENCE IS FELT, NOT PERFORMED
Executive presence is often misunderstood as polish, confidence, or gravitas. Like a jacket you put on, a tone you adopt, or a posture you perfect.
In practice, presence is something other people experience. It’s the sense that you’re here, that you’re tracking what matters, and that you’re willing to offer your thinking into the shared space in service of the work. Presence helps people orient by providing context and making complexity easier to navigate.
While it may feel like restraint or good manners, when leaders pull back in the name of humility, the system doesn’t experience it that way. It experiences them as absent, and that absence has consequences.
THE COST OF BEING UNSEEN
When capable leaders remain unseen, organisations pay a price: decision-making narrows, risks go unnamed, and familiar patterns repeat. Over time, the same voices shape the future, not because they are always right, or even the most insightful, but because they are the most present. This is how organisations end up under-leveraging talent while wondering why innovation feels harder than it should.
It is also how leaders begin to disengage. Being overlooked rarely triggers anger first; it more often creates doubt. You may start questioning whether your perspective is wanted, if your instincts are sound, or if it feels safer to remain in execution than to step into influence.
That internal contraction is easy to miss, but over time, it steadily erodes confidence, connection, and impact.
VISIBILITY AS LEGIBILITY
Here’s the reframe that changes the conversation: visibility isn’t about drawing attention to yourself; it’s about making your thinking, contribution, and intent legible to the system you’re part of, so others can work with it.
By 'legibility', I mean making your thinking visible enough that others can easily understand what you see, what you’re prioritizing and why, and how you’re making sense of the situation. Legibility answers questions people are often already carrying, whether they say them out loud or not. What are you noticing that others may be missing? What do you believe matters most here, and why? How does this decision connect to where the organization is heading? Who will be most impacted and how?
This kind of visibility is about presence, and doesn’t require broadcasting or self-promotion. It requires the willingness to place your perspective into that shared space early enough that it can still shape understanding.
Sometimes that presence shows up as naming a pattern no one else has articulated yet, or as linking today’s decision to a downstream consequence that others haven't considered. Or it can look like offering context that helps the group see the situation more clearly. None of this is about elevating yourself; it’s about stewardship of the work and the system you are responsible for.
THE CANADIAN CONTEXT
There is an additional layer worth naming here. Our Canadian culture is steeped in norms of politeness, humility, and not drawing undue attention to ourselves. Standing out can feel uncomfortable, even suspect. Speaking too directly can feel impolite. Naming one’s contribution can feel uncomfortably close to self-promotion. These instincts, baked into us as Canadians, are cultural strengths that support trust, collaboration, and social cohesion.
The tension shows up when those same instincts mute our leadership voice. Withholding our perspectives in the name of humility, particularly in organizations that rely on consensus and shared decision-making, doesn’t protect the collective; it leaves the group working at a disadvantage, with less information, context, and perspectives.
Think of it this way: visibility is not about individual advancement; it’s about serving the collective intelligence of the group. Making your thinking legible to others helps others orient, connect dots, and make better decisions together. This is not the self-oriented, ego-driven personal branding cliché that many of us find so distasteful. It’s a contribution to the collective act of leadership.
Seen through this lens, presence is not about asserting yourself. It’s about contributing your share of clarity so the whole system can function more intelligently.
WHY VISIBILITY FEELS UNCOMFORTABLE
For many leaders, discomfort with visibility isn’t about capability so much as deeply personal patterns formed early in their careers or lives. Some learned early on that speaking up carried risk. Others learned that being visible attracted scrutiny they didn’t want. For some, visibility became associated with being judged, misunderstood, or sidelined rather than supported.
Those patterns don’t dissolve just because we have a senior title. They often travel with us, shaping how much space we take up, how quickly we offer our perspective, and how long we wait before entering a conversation.
When these instincts run the show without being examined, they begin to limit impact. Not in obvious or dramatic ways, but through a gradual narrowing of influence and participation. The work isn’t to override or bulldoze those instincts. It’s to look at them honestly and ask whether the cost of staying invisible now outweighs the risk of being seen. In most senior roles, I can tell you it does.
CONTRIBUTION WITHOUT BROADCASTING
There is a middle ground between disappearing and showboating, where we find the most effective leaders contributing with intention and grounded in relevance rather than self-protection or self-promotion.
It often looks like offering our perspective early enough to shape direction, rather than waiting until it feels completely safe to share our opinion. It means speaking to the work and the system, rather than narrating our own effort. It also means trusting that our thinking adds value, even when it is still forming.
Leaders who work this way don't necessarily speak more than others. They speak when it matters, and in service of clarity. Presence, in this sense, is not about volume or dominance. It is about timing, orientation, insight, and contribution.
YOUR COACHING CHALLENGE
This challenge is not about becoming louder, more polished, or more visible for visibility’s sake. It is about allowing more of your thinking to be seen in places where it can genuinely make a difference for the work and for the collective.
Treat this as a practice rather than a personality change. The aim is to experiment with presence, not to perform or self-promote.
CHOOSE THE RIGHT CONTEXT: Select one recurring meeting, forum, or decision-making space over the next two weeks where direction is set, priorities are shaped, or meaning is being made (not a purely operational or transactional update meeting).
NOTICE YOUR HABITUAL PATTERN: Before the meeting, take a few minutes to reflect on how you usually show up in this space. Where do you tend to hold back? Where do you wait until you are asked? Where do you assume your work will speak for itself?
IDENTIFY YOUR LEGIBLE CONTRIBUTION: Ask yourself the following reflection questions: What am I noticing here that would help others orient? What context, pattern, or implication might be missing from the conversation? How does this decision connect to what we are trying to achieve more broadly?
Choose one observation that feels useful to the system or to the collective knowledge of the group (not impressive to you).
PLACE YOUR THINKING EARLIER: In the meeting, offer that observation earlier than you normally would. Keep it simple and grounded. Avoid over-explaining, justifying, or softening your point with excessive caveats. Your task is to make your thinking legible, not to massage or defend it.
OBSERVE THE IMPACT: After the meeting, reflect on two things. First, what shifted in the room once your perspective was introduced? Second, what did you notice in yourself when you chose presence over restraint?
This practice is not about ego or performance. Practiced this way, visibility becomes a generous act of leadership and a contribution to the collective intelligence of the system.
If this article resonates, and you want to grow your leadership visibility, reach out for a free exploratory Executive Coaching conversation at www.leslierohonczy.com