Do You Want More Visibility as a Leader? Here’s How to Do It.

Leadership

To have a greater impact as leaders, we need to be more visible. I know that you would prefer the scenario: “Who needs to know, they know” or “Our product is going to speak for itself”, but the truth is that getting people know about what you do is something that’s not just happening.

We need to speak up about our ideas, about what we’ve done, what we’ve designed, what we want to change, or what we’ve changed already, because nobody’s going to notice that on their own. Nobody’s going to guess that it is important, to assume that it’s somehow valuable. Harsh, but true.

So today I want to focus on what we can do in practice to build more visibility. I’m going to share with you some of my own strategies, so you can just take, copy, and paste them, adding a little bit more flavour to your individual situation.

We are going to divide those things into internal and external leadership visibility strategies.

How to Build Visibility Inside the Organization?

If you’re working in the organization: It can be a big organization / a corporate world, or in a smaller organization, but you are inside, what can you do to build your visibility?

First, you have your team level. I’m sure that you have some team meetings, knowledge sharing sessions, weekly meetings, retrospectives; depends on the setup that you are working in. These are the places that are already designed for you to share knowledge, experiences, lessons, mistakes, or failures (with lessons learned) that you can show to others. When you speak up, this is always something that makes you more visible. So even if you’re a Base Imaginer, Base Thinker who has the preference to not speak up very much, I would like you to challenge yourself a little bit to be more verbal.

I know that you believe that if you work hard in silence, you create valuable solutions to the problems the organization or clients face, the other people will notice you. I don’t want to be a dream-crusher here, but it’s just not going to happen. People are very focused on their own things and don’t have much spare energy to look around. You need to show them.

So, I invite you to do one thing like that per week, in a bi-weekly meeting, or once per month. Start small: The goal is for your brain to see that it makes sense and is worth the stretch. Share something that you’ve created, optimised, or automated recently. Don’t make it complicated, just use what you’re already doing in your work.

The second thing you can do is to share knowledge by sending some links to the podcast episodes that were interesting for you to others, a book you’ve read, a YouTube video you watched, or a digital course you’ve taken. I’m sure that you have some Teams / Slack / WhatsApp group in your company where you share some stuff.

Leverage that: Share links to YouTube videos, to TED Talks, to podcasts, to books, to articles, to documentation, to Reddit, basically anything that you’re using to get knowledge. Share that with others with a short comment like: Hey! I’m sharing this as something interesting…, It helped me in a way that…, Check it out!”.

Easy. You don’t even need to speak up verbally; you just copy and paste a link. But again, it puts you on the map that you share things with others. That way, you can become a go-to person for people who are looking for a certain answer or a source of knowledge. Being a go-to person builds visibility.

Start with the team level and then move up. What can you do on the organizational level?

Be the voice. The voice of the change or a project. Engage yourself in the project or initiative team, even if there is some extra work to do. You can always make a contract with your boss to be redirected when it comes to your work to a little bit to some project that is maybe like a matrix project in the organization. Maybe this is something different. Maybe this is something that you never done before. Being more visible by creating value is one of the most important things in organizations.

The good news? It is not about speaking up all the time. It’s about being visible by being engaged. Of course, you can make some presentations, being a face of the project or initiative, during the Town Hall meeting, some other online or onsite gatherings. Even better! Check out what kind of possibilities there are in your organization that you can leverage. Be a mentor or a buddy for new joiners, or let others shadow you. There are more things you can do than you think. Choose what works for you, start with one thing, and then move to another one if you want.

How to Build Visibility Outside the Organization?

If you are outside of the organization: Maybe you are a consultant / a Fractional CTO / COO, etc.; if you are running your own business: you’re an entrepreneur, a Founder, you can do many things. And if you’re inside the organization, you can use some of those as well (these strategies are not reserved only for “the externals”).

First, blogging. You can say that blogging is dead, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. People like to read, especially short forms. Because if you are a visual person, what you read sticks in your brain. So, blogging can be your visibility builder, especially when you take care of the SEO. It can be very well-positioned in Google and in AI tools where people are researching things. It is super easy and low-cost to start. Just start writing down what you know about. Share your expertise, research, pieces of lessons that you have, failures, and success stories. People love reading about those things.

The second thing is podcasting. You don’t need to have fancy equipment to start. You can have only your iPhone, iPhone headset, and just start talking. The cool part? You can do it in your pyjamas; you don’t need to show your face to anybody.

There are programs and platforms right now that you can use on your own to record and edit it, so you don’t even need more people that will support you when it comes to post-production. You can do a lot of things on your own. Very little knowledge and tech skills are needed. Most of the job is to record the episode, in fact.

Just start doing it: Start talking, sharing it in LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, or wherever your people are. It depends on who you are and what your niche is. Share knowledge.

You can also do it on video: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram stories, or Facebook stories. It is going to look good because the positioning in the search engines is very well designed for video content. And let’s be honest: People love watching things (look at the YouTube or streaming platforms numbers). If you want to be a leader in your expertise niche, in your industry, or in your country, you need to use more leverage to be in front of more people.

The last building visibility strategy I want to give you today is to be on stages. There are so many onsite and online events that you can join. It can be in your own town, your country, or globally. It can be a webinar that you organize yourself or join as a guest. It can be a panel discussion during a town event. It can be a keynote speech during an industry conference. Choose your poison. If you don’t have any stage experience, start small. Research your local communities, join some of them, and just ask if they’re looking for speakers, so you can share your experience and create value for them.

The Bottom Line

Remember this: Building visibility is about supporting people. You give them value; they give you attention. In this world where we have a trust recession, we’re looking for authenticity, real stories, and honesty.

Grow yourself, learn, be better in what you do, and show it to others. You know that keeping it only to yourself is selfish, right? You don’t let the world see all those things you’ve created with your team, for your clients. Why are you doing that to them? Because you’re afraid of looking like a fool? Because “you’re not a speaker”?

C’mon.

Be brave, be better. Build yourself as a person whom others want to be when they grow up.

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