Someone was just give your name.
You and they are a good fit – you offer what they are looking for, and they are exactly the sort of person you love working with. It’s a match made in heaven.
They do what any sensible person would do when given a name, they search you on their favourite browser.
The question is, what will they find?
While you are pondering that, it’s an interesting thought experiment to compare what they would find online, with all the years of great work, experience, and successes you’ve had.
How close are those two things?
The Marker Left the Room
For the first couple of decades of your life, the recognition took care of itself.
You did your homework and handed it in, and your teacher marked it. You sat your exams, and it was someone’s job to read everything you wrote and score it. When you did well, be it homework or exams, the people who mattered were informed about your work (your teachers, your parents, they all found out how good your work was, without you having to tell them).
If you went to university, the pattern continued – you did the work, someone else marked it, and your results were shared. Those who needed to know found out how good your work was, without you saying a thing.
Then came work, and the same thing still happened – appraisals meant your bosses found out how good your work was and they told you (and others) about it.
The rule you learned over your first couple of decades of life was simple, powerful, and unwritten – do your work well, and the work will be discovered by those who need it.
Unfortunately, at some subsequent point, that rule changed, and nobody told you
Maybe you started your own business, or you because a specialist, or even changed fields completely.
At some point, the person marking your work and telling everyone about it left the room, and you never noticed.
Yet from that point on, your work only gets known when you shout about it.
Fifteen Years of Referrals
Let’s confider Priya. She is a specialist consultant of 15 years experience. She’s had plenty of clients, and the vast majority come to her via referral. They all rate her very highly after working with her, because she is excellent at what she does.
If you asked Priya how she gets known, she’d say with some pride that “My work speaks for itself.” Priya was proud that her work stood on its own two feet, and that she wasn’t like so many she saw in her field who talked a great talk but rarely actually delivered. She never wanted to be like them, so was happy to stay quiet and let her work do the talking.
After a while, the inevitable happened. The people around her started to move on – new jobs, new locations, retirement, all the usual things which happen in life. And with each change, the referrals became fewer and fewer. Eventually, one day a prospective client was passed her name by someone who didn’t know Priya as well as people used to in the past, so the prospective client looked her up online. He found a two-line profile and that was pretty much all he could find about her. So naturally, he went elasewhere. Priya only found out about this some time later by chance.
That’s when it dawned on her. For 15 years she’d been letting a small handful of other people talk about her work, and she mistook their voices for her work’s voice.
Her work hadn’t spoken for itself, others had spoken for it – others who had since moved away and stopped speaking about it, with nobody assigned to take their place…
If the people who recommend you stopped doing so tomorrow, how would anyone new discover your work?
Why The Best Work Waits Longest
There is nothing intrinsically wrong with wanting your work to speak for itself. Not wanting to be the sort of person who makes claims they can’t back up is an admirable trait.
The problem is not with who is speaking for your work. The problem is that you are not.
That rule you learned in your first 20 years affected the most capable people the most. If you were good at school, it served you very well – the better your work, the more reliably those who needed to know found out about it. Which in turn meant that the stronger your work, the stronger your belief that your work gets found without you shouting about it. Because to start with it did. To start with…
It feels like a virtue. Modesty. Letting your work speak for itself without you shouting about it. Which is why questioning the rule can feel like questioning your own integrity.
It gets even worse for some capable people, the ones who I call “Perfectionist Prodigies“. Their belief runs even deeper, and evolves into something along the lines of “If I get everything right, nobody can reject me.” Which is why letting others shout about your work fits – you are not shouting about it, other people are. Which means nobody can blame you for it!
Unfortunately, there is a cost to all of this, and it arrives rather later than is helpful, and usually invisibly. Referrals stat to thin out. The stranger who hears your name in passing searches you online and finds almost nothing and so moves on.
Wait to Be Noticed, or Choose to Be Visible
There are two separate positions here, even though they feel like one and the same when you are inside them.
Waiting to be noticed gives the job of being known to other people; the client who recommends you, or the manager who puts your name forward, or the colleague who mentions you in the right meeting. All of these work, and you get noticed, but they only work while those people are still within your circle. Unfortunately, it all feels like just getting on with the work, and the work does come, which is why you never actually feel like you are waiting. Priya certainly didn’t. until it was too late.
Choosing to be visible, on the other hand, means accepting that you now have the job which the old marker used to have. It’s making the decision to be proactive, rather than passively living in hope that others will continue to do it for you. And it can start very small – it doesn’t have to be anything dramatic and grand. Maybe a few sentences here and there, by you, in your own name, about something relevant in your field. A good enough start that means you will get seen when people search your name.
Not sure whether you are waiting or choosing? There’s a quick test you can do, and that is to think of the last time that somebody new found out about your work. How did it happen? Was it something you said / did? Or was it, as is so often the case, something someone else said? If it is indeed the latter, then you are waiting. No matter how busy you might think you are, you are waiting.
The Job Changed Hands
It’s important to understand that none of this is your fault as such. nobody told you that the marker had gone. Nobody told you that the rule you were following, the rule which had served you well for so long, was no longer in effect.
It’s simply that the job changed hands.
It’s probably worth taking a little time to let that fully sink in before you rush to do anything about it, of course.
While you are letting it sink in, here’s something to ponder – if your work if only ever going to be as known as you make it, what is the one thing about your work which you would most want a stranger to find when they searched your name?
This is what the Being Seen on Purpose course in the Club explores: the decision underneath being seen, and what staying out of view has already cost. Check it out.
And if you’d like a lighter first step, take The Overachiever Quiz to find out what kind of overachiever you are.
Connected Podcast Episode
In the accompanying episode, I look at how recognition worked when someone’s job was to mark your work, and what changed when they stopped.
Episode 041 – The Visibility Gap
Is your work excellent but barely known beyond the people who refer you? Discover why good work stops travelling on its own, and whose job it is now.
Relevant Related Blogs and Episodes
Authority versus Arrogance
Afraid of sounding arrogant, so you water down what you know? Authority and arrogance are two separate settings. Here is why that matters.
Episode 018 – The Visibility Barrier
Discover why visibility, not marketing, holds overachievers back, and how to be seen without risking burnout.
