Being Seen isn't the Same as Being Trusted

We talk a lot about getting noticed at work. Building your profile, being visible to the right people, making sure senior leaders know your name. Yes, visibility matters. But there's a version of visibility that quietly works against you and it's more common than you'd think. I know, right?

Animated image of four people holding hands in a field

Research on organisational networks has repeatedly shown that influence rarely flows purely through hierarchy. Studies across more than 300 organisations found that informal networks, the patterns of collaboration and trust at all levels of an organisation often determine how work actually gets done (not how we imagine it gets done). In other words, the people who shape your reputation may not be the ones you're trying hardest to impress.

Managing Up Isn't Enough

When high potentials concentrate too heavily on managing upwards, they risk building visibility without the credibility to back it up. They become well known to senior leaders, but questioned or quietly resented by the colleagues they work alongside every day, the people they collaborate with, who may be promoted alongside them, or eventually ahead of them. In increasingly complex organisations, that imbalance can stall a promising career before the person even realises it's happening. A leader, an influencer can be anyone within the organisation and often times those who are higher up might not actually have any authority to develop you in the way you hoped anyway.

What makes this particularly tricky? Research by Cross, Rebele, and Grant found that collaborative work, time spent in meetings, on calls, responding to emails and requests, now consumes 85% or more of most people's working weeks. That figure has risen by 50% or more over the past two decades. Yet despite all that collaborative activity, the distribution of meaningful contribution is often lopsided. In most cases, 20% to 35% of value-added collaborations come from only 3% to 5% of employees. How’s does that work? What does that look like in your organisation?

So, What Does Credibility Actually Look Like?

It's not about being liked. It's about being trusted by the people above you, alongside you, and below you. It's the colleague who gives credit generously. The team member who follows through without being chased. The leader who makes everyone around them feel their contribution matters. We have to stop calling these soft skills. They're strategic ones.

The coaching conversation I find myself having most often with ‘high potentials’ isn't about how to get more visible. It's about where they're directing their energy and whether the relationships they're investing in reflect the full picture of how their reputation is actually being built. If they are actually influencing people and making meaningful change.

A Few Questions Worth Sitting With

1. Who notices when you do good work and are those the only people whose opinion you're thinking about?

2. How do the people you work alongside every day experience working with you?

3. Are you building relationships across your organisation, or mostly managing upwards?

   
   

Visibility is a tool. Used well, it opens doors. Used without the credibility to back it up, it closes them just more slowly, and sometimes out of sight and without us even realising.

If this resonates, we'd love to hear your thoughts. And if you're working through questions like these in your own leadership journey, this is exactly the kind of territory we explore in coaching.

Research source: Cross, R., Rebele, R., & Grant, A. (2016). Collaborative Overload. Harvard Business review. hbr.org/2016/01/collaborative-overload

Further reading on the research programme: connectedcommons.com