Women at Work - Step into the Spotlight

Episode Date: April 22, 2019

Visibility at work is important for our professional advancement — and tricky, especially for women. In this live episode, we talk about navigating the risks and rewards of being in the spotlight, as well as the best ways to increase our visibility. Guest: Muriel Maignan Wilkins. Our theme music is Matt Hill’s “City In Motion,” provided by Audio Network.

Over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at Work. Can I ask you about something that I have found makes me very uncomfortable with visibility? You're listening to Women at Work on stage at Sixth and I, a synagogue and cultural center in Washington, D.C. We were there to talk about ways to raise our visibility at work, because opportunities come to us when people in power see us and know what we're up to. But like Nicole's saying, visibility's work. Because opportunities come to us when people in power see us and know what we're up to. But like Nicole's saying, visibility's tricky. You know, I've always been told that my work should speak for itself. And you shouldn't, you know, brag about things that you're achieving

or try to draw the spotlight to you. And I wonder if you see that and if there's a way to overcome that discomfort. Muriel Wilkins was our guest expert. Muriel's a managing partner and co-founder of Paravis Partners, a consulting firm that helps people develop leadership skills. She co-wrote the book Own the Room. Thank you. Here's our producer Amanda Kersey starting us off. Thank you, Sixt and I, for hosting us.

Thank you, everybody who came out tonight. I had a really good time chatting with some of you before we came up on the stage. So we wanted to have a conversation about workplace visibility because it is this thing that can really advance our careers, but until recently, I didn't really know how one thing led to the other. I'm hoping we can connect the dots about how visibility can lead to promotability. So we like to think that our work speaks for itself,

but I think it's helpful to see the connection between visibility and promotion or career success with an example. So let's take Nicole, for example. Let's say Nicole works on a really fabulous video project at HBR. Her manager, Maureen, knows she does that, is very excited about it, but most of the other people who work at HBR don't know about it. They know the project exists. Maybe they know Nicole works on it, but they're not sure exactly what she does. So Nicole maybe has the opportunity to speak in front of a larger group at HBR about that work. In doing that and in essentially promoting the project, promoting her work on it,

then other people know, okay, Nicole's affiliated with that project. Next time those people are in a room with Maureen, her manager, they might say, hey, that sounds like a cool project. What's going on with that? And so they might learn more. Or Nicole's name might come up when Maureen's in the room and someone says, wow, Nicole's working on a lot of things. How is she handling all of that work? And how I think about it, or how I've started thinking about this too, is that many people who have decision-making power over your career and your advancement in your firm probably don't know what you do on a day-to-day basis like your manager and like your colleagues do. So speaking out for your work and making sure that that work is visible

helps you ensure that your value to the team and your contributions will be recognized and rewarded. Well, there comes a point in your career where, you know, you've made yourself kind of known to the organization, you get promoted, and then stepping into the spotlight becomes part of your job, either organizationally, sometimes you go out in public, you speak for your organization. So you're also building these muscles that will come in very handy as you move up. Exactly. Muriel, how has the way that you have tried to be visible at work changed since earlier in your career to now? Yeah. You know, I wasn't somebody who like early on in my career had a hard time with trying to get visibility. Somehow it just,

it just occurred to me that I needed to form good relationships with those more senior than me in order to be able to make my life a little easier. But when things got really complicated was when I got further into my career. And I remember my first leadership role where I sat at the executive table and I get so frustrated because I felt like I was just banging my head against the wall to get things done.

And I personally thought they were really good ideas, but it didn't seem like anybody else was willing to do them. And I remember going home day after day and telling my husband, and we were newlyweds at the time, and telling him, you know, it's so frustrating dealing with these people who were my peers in terms of getting these ideas. And one day he calmly said to me, you know, did you ever think maybe the problem is you and not them? And we're still married. And of course I said, absolutely not. It's not me. But he was right, right? Because what I hadn't realized was that visibility early on in my career had to deal with this one-on-one relationship with my boss or those more senior. And as I gained influence in the organization, visibility was much more about bringing other people into the spotlight. And the more I could share that spotlight with my peers, actually,

that's what gave me traction to be able to get things on board, to get things moving. And then it expanded to my team, and then it expanded to my team and then it expanded to others and fast forward to now where I have my own business it truly is about it's not even about visibility on me it's visibility about my team my clients my partners and the Community and that in retrospect then shines the light back on me. So it becomes a very reciprocal relationship So it was a hard lesson to learn But thankfully it happened and I was able to carry it forward. So I want to bring in a couple of research findings. They're

from a team of researchers then working at Stanford who followed groups of women over two years and they were trying to understand how these women navigated workplace visibility. And here's one of the researchers, Swetha Balakrishnan. The one thing that my co-authors, Priya Fielding Singh, Devin Magliosi, and I found was that women constantly across these groups said over and over again that they used a strategy of invisible, behind-the-scenes leadership. Of course, they didn't always use the word invisible, but they would frame their leadership style as incremental advancement without calling attention to themselves.

And Swetha pointed out that although invisibility isn't a good strategy, it is a strategy. Women aren't just doing this because poor women don't know that visibility is important. It's not this agency-less action. Women recognize that visibility is probably going to get them forward, but they also know that visibility is not serving them the same way it can serve other actors in the organization. So to respond to this biased environment, they employ intentional invisibility. And there were three main reasons why these groups of women didn't do workplace visibility. The first was women just thought the dominant leadership style was assertive, it was individualistic,

it was very self-promoting, and they didn't see themselves as being that sort of leader. The second is it was not just authentic, it was also effective. So women felt like when they were aggressive, when they did take on these roles of individualistic, self-promoting selves, there was a backlash because that doesn't reconcile with the expectations of feminine norms that they are attached to. The third reason was it helped them feed different kinds of family stability, right? So we followed women who had families and who had responsibilities not just at work, but were also balancing incredible pressure from partners to make specific choices about their careers.

So, Muriel, let's start with authenticity, this first reason why these women chose to not do visibility at work. How do you coach women who say that being visible at work feels inauthentic, feels out of character for them. Right. And that comes up a lot, right? This question of it doesn't feel like I'm being me or it feels like I'm self-promoting, which in and of itself is very loaded to come in with that story around visibility, right? The fact that that's your starting point, that it's self-promoted. And by all means, when I work with my clients and coach them, it's really important that they do keep a level of authenticity. And what I try to help them to understand is that there's one thing

about being authentic. The real question is, how can you be authentic within the context that you're in? Because you're not working in a vacuum, right? You choose to work in a particular organization, you choose to work in a particular culture, you choose to associate yourself with a particular team, and so how do you keep your authenticity within that context? So in order for them to be able to do that, it often starts with them starting to think about

what is it that's uncomfortable about trying to get visibility? And you know, like I think about what is it that's uncomfortable about trying to get visibility. And, you know, like I think about a client I have who's an extreme introvert, and she's like, I will not go to any networking events. And I said, me neither. Like, I'm the one with the, you know, fake talking on my phone in the corner. And I said, all right, so let's rule that out. What would make you feel comfortable? She said, the one-on-one conversation. All right, so let's focus on that as your way to build visibility. I'm not promising that you'll never go to a networking event, but let's try to maximize the things that make you comfortable.

And so as they start thinking about what makes them comfortable that's truer to who they are, then they can start thinking about the conditions that actually will increase the probability that they'll work on their visibility. So it's never about being inauthentic. It's about finding ways that makes it comfortable for you. Can I point out one other thing we heard in the recording was that these women that they had studied, they avoided the spotlight as a way to avoid conflict. I think that came up as a big barrier, a big obstacle to visibility. Amy, since you are our conflict expert, what did you make of that? I'm not surprised to hear that. And I think there's two things going on, one of which Swetha talked about,

which is that self-promotion or being visible tends to violate what we think of as feminine norms. It's the same reason I put 18 exclamation points and five emojis in every email I write, right? I'm like, I must be likable. And if I don't do that, it feels aggressive. So I think there's this sense that when you're not adhering to the gender norms, that you're somehow being aggressive or assertive.

So I think that's one. It does feel like a violation of the norm, so it feels like a conflict. The second is I think there's sometimes a notion that visibility is a limited resource, it's a finite resource. So by you getting the spotlight, you're taking it away from someone else and therefore it can be set up as a fight. And I think that might be true in some organizations, but my experience is that, to Muriel's point earlier

about sharing the spotlight with others, it does not have to be aggressive, it does not have to be a finite resource. Sometimes promotions and raises might be finite, but visibility doesn't have to be. What about the fear that making some people visible will make other people feel bad? That's a good question. Do you want to answer that?

Sure. Did you notice I was sharing the spotlight? Yeah, I've got an emoji for you, Amy. So I want to understand the question better. Is it that if I, as a manager, say, look at what Nicole did, isn't this wonderful, that I'm going to make the other people in the room feel bad? Yeah. So I have a couple of thoughts about that I never want the fear that I might hurt someone's feelings inadvertently keep me from giving you the praise you deserve, the public praise you deserve. And then for you as the recipient of that spotlight, of that glow, you cannot worry about that unless you feel that the credit needs to be shared.

Then there's something you can do about that. You should really not worry about making somebody feel bad. You should be worried about exacerbating them already feeling bad so most individuals walk in already with a certain feeling now if you're exacerbating basically by saying look at me look at me I got the spotlight right like that's a very different notion than you in your own credit getting the spotlight you and so that's where there's a difference between making somebody feel a certain way,

which is very hard to make someone feel a certain way, versus exacerbating how they might already be feeling. So Muriel, how do you apply that thinking to the manager who's handing out the warmth of the spotlight? Yeah, to the manager who in terms of... You know, if I manage a team on which Nicole's a member, and I am about to say, you know, this is amazing, Nicole's going to step up and talk about this project she's been working on, what is my job regarding that person who's

feeling a little pissed off? That's great. So I think the role of the manager is to create equal opportunity, right? So the role of the manager is to lay the foundation for individuals to be able to step up. Who steps up, the manager can't control. So if the manager is providing praise to one individual and it's worthy of it, that's absolutely fine, as long as if somebody else is deserving of praise, they're also getting it. The manager has, you know, it's worthy of it, that's absolutely fine as long as if somebody else is deserving of praise, they're also getting it. The manager has, you know, it's almost like I'm presenting to you

the plate of cookies. Whether you grab one or not is up to you, but I'm going to keep presenting it to you until you tell me you don't want it. And then if you tell me you don't want one, then I should explain to you that's fine, but here's why I think you should have one, right? Because nobody wants to be blindsided by the fact that you didn't get, you know, learn two years later that the reason you didn't get that opportunity is because, oh, I didn't know you wanted me to be visible to all these people. I think where we start running into issues is when there seems to be laser focus on one individual who has earned it, and then somebody else who has also earned it, right? It's not unwarranted, is not getting any

of the credit. So for the manager, it's being very conscious of how they are doling it out. I think the other role, the other thing that the manager is responsible for is also managing themselves, right? I had a client once who got feedback from her manager that she should be more visible. And then she went out and got the visibility. And then he said to her, you need to stay in your lane. Because he was starting to feel a little threatened, right? Like she was showing up at the stuff that he went to. But they had to talk it out for him to recognize, no, this actually looks good for you, too. Right. For me to be at these things. So he came around. But as a manager, you've got to you've got to have your own self-confidence, too.

Right. That one of the best things you're doing as a manager is actually raising talent and developing talent and pushing people forward. What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the Thank you. And you should listen to TED Business, hosted by Columbia Business School professor Madhupe Akinnola. The show features TED Talks about everything from setting smart goals to the latest on DEI in business, followed up with a mini lesson from Madhupe on how to apply these lessons in your own life. Listen to TED Business wherever you get your podcasts. How do you help people, women, who want to be more visible gain visibility?

Right. Everybody wants kind of the 10 rules on how to become more visible. And I think it takes practice just like anything else and it's not just about going to the event or going and having that meeting although that's a good place to start but you want to think about it at a couple of different levels the first place is you want to think about your mindset going into it how are you even thinking about visibility if you think about visibility as a bad word guess what it's gonna be a bad experience and you're not gonna do it right so's going to be a bad experience and you're not going to do it, right? So you want to be thinking about how is visibility actually beneficial for me, for others? Why am I doing it?

There has to be a purpose behind it. And I think that's especially important for women because we tend to be more purpose-driven, that there is a purpose even larger than us as to why we want to be visible. The second thing is once you've... Let me ask a question about that because I think the purpose, from what I understand, cannot be because I'm supposed to, right? Like the purpose has to be something bigger. Right.

That'll get you in the door the first time and then it becomes quickly unsustainable, right? The minute it goes wrong, you're like, I'm out, I'm done, right? I shouldn't have, I wasn't supposed to, and it got me in trouble. So it really has to be something, again, authentic. And that might be very different individual to individual, but there should be a reason why you're going to do it, not just because it's a nice check the box thing to do. I think the second area that you want to pay attention to and think about is what are you actually going to do when you have that visibility?

Again, when you raise your hand and you get called on, what do you do? And here's where how you communicate becomes really important. Are you able to get your point across in a clear, concise way where people actually understand what you're saying? And I think this is where preparation is key. If you're going to that meeting, think about what you want to say. Don't wait till the spotlight is on you and then be like, oh shoot, yeah, I think I had something to say, but I'm not quite sure. Right? So think about it. What are the three points that you want to get across? And then lastly, there's also a physical component to visibility. With some of my clients who tend to be the ones who will walk into a

meeting and be the ones who sit against a wall or sit catty corner or not take the seat, I literally tell them, I want you to pull that seat up to the table, do what your mama taught you not to do, which is put your elbows on the table and look at everyone and start talking. And that's to help them physically feel like they are at the table because they are. Right? They are. And so thinking about all of those components and practicing them all together is what really helps versus I just need to show up. Muriel, how have you seen a woman do visibility badly?

When have I seen it done badly? What's an example? What's a story? You can tell your own story, but I imagine you've worked through this issue with some of your clients. So what's an example of how we should not do visibility? There's a couple of ways.

One is I have an example of actually a client I'm working with now who has done a phenomenal job in terms of getting her ideas out there and getting buy-in from a certain group of people and being visible to them. But she's completely ignored a whole other set within the organization. And it's coming back to bite her. So in that particular situation, it went badly because she didn't define visibility in a large enough scope. So one is, who are you trying to be visible to and is that really again going to help you? I think the second way that I see it go badly is not necessarily about the who but the how. So it is, and that's where we start to draw the, you know, cross the thin line between being assertive and abrasive. And that usually starts with the intention is probably not good,

but when it's not done well, it is about taking all the glory. It's overly done. And it is very much reflective, like me, me, me, me, me, until realizing, oh, I've actually gotten enough. Now, how can I start sharing the spotlight with others? So it becomes much more about the how and cutting other people down too. That is not good. So you've drifted into that. How do you know? I mean, it's easy enough to identify when someone else does it, but how do you know when you're doing it? Yeah. Wouldn't it be nice if we just knew? If we had some alarm clock that said, oh, you're overdoing it. Or a husband who tells you.

So, you know, I think that if you don't have that level of self-awareness to realize that, oh, wow, you know, some people, it feels like they're avoiding me, which at times happens. They're walking away from me in the hallway. I think this is where it's actually really important to, it sounds ideal, but it's critical, is to ask for feedback. And I highly, highly always encourage people to have one or two or three or a set of advisors within your organization, if you can, people who you trust, that will tell you the truth.

And you can ask them, right? Like, am I overdoing it? Am I, you know, I know I got praise on this thing, I know I got credit, I know I'm pushing for that next promotion, or that next project, or that next opportunity, is it too much? Is it a little too extra? And look to see what they'll share with you back.

Over time, though, you do want to build that internal self-awareness to recognize, hey, I'm pushing too hard, or I'm talking too loudly, or I'm doing X, Y, Z, because that should be your main cue at some point. What if you're blindsided by suddenly being in the spotlight and you just don't want to freak out, you don't want to recede? How do you have the mindfulness to just stay in it, let it be on you, like shine? How do you endure the spotlight? How do you enjoy it?

So that's really interesting because I think, you know, it's one of those things, like some people finally get the spotlight and because they never thought they were going to get it to begin with, and then they're in it. And then it's like, no, no, no, no, I don't want it anymore, but you're in it. So what do you do? And, you know, you are in so much more control at that point because you're there. And I think for those individuals, I encourage them to again, think back to the why, right? What's the purpose? And that purpose may have changed at this point. It might be for a different reason. So one is to think about the why and then the second is to also go back to this question of what conditions need to be in place to make this sustainable for

you. And so in a very concrete way, let's say you know I had a client who really needed to work on her external visibility, but she also had young kids at home. She couldn't be out five nights a week at different events. And so she gave herself a quota, right? She said, I'm doing one a week. That's for a month. And what it forced her to do is be really focused on which ones she was going to choose to go to. It wasn't this fear of missing out,

let me go to everything, let me be aimless. Let me be really clear about which ones I'm going to not only benefit from the most, but they're also going to benefit from me being there. It's the same with meetings. It doesn't even have to be an event. And it caused her to be laser focused. And then when she was there, make the most of it. So she actually got more in return from lasering in and being really clear and conscious about what she was doing than spreading herself thin. And it helped her just from an endurance standpoint. She didn't have to be at everything all the time. What about if you screw up in the spotlight? How do you bounce back? Yeah, pick yourself back up. Dust yourself off, right? Look, I think that resilience is key. And not just with visibility, but anything, right?

That's life. I think one of the biggest differentiators in individuals is this factor of resilience that one has. And it is a muscle that you build over time. And the thing with if you screw up on the visibility front, nine times out of ten, your perception of how big you screwed up is probably much more magnified than how others see it. So what you literally have to do is be able to get back out there again

because that's the best practice you can have to overcoming any type of screw-up. Finally, why is visibility, ironically, this hidden phenomenon in the workplace for career advancement? It's not, at least in my experience, a term that anybody had ever talked to me about. Why is it a mystery?

I don't necessarily think it's a mystery. It might just not be what's being talked at our tables, right? You're hired in for your technical skills. The things like visibility are things that differentiate you over time. It's not written in your job description, but it's what makes a difference. It's what differentiates the folks who are really good and the folks that are considered really great. And it's things like visibility, like communications, like presence, all the soft skills, which is why people end up saying those are actually the hardest things to learn. And if you haven't been at a table or had a mentor or a sponsor or a teacher or a partner

or a friend who has said, hey, you know, you should really be thinking about this, then it feels like a mystery or a secret until you realize, oh, that's what they're doing. Now I know. And this is the thing. It actually becomes harder once you know. Because then you're like, shoot, do I do something about it or not? Right? And it becomes a choice. But there's much more power in having a choice than in operating in not knowing. What does the future hold for business? Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle,

the number one cloud ERP, bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, and HR into one platform. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're able to peer into the future and seize new opportunities. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning for free at netsuite.com slash women at work. That's netsuite.com slash women at work. Okay, we've been talking for quite a while and we want to hear from you. We have two microphones right here and anybody who's sitting upstairs, we want to hear from you, too, if you'd like to come down and line up. Oh, there's so many of you. I'm glad. Why don't we start here?

Hi. I'm Randy Braun. I work in business development by day. By night, I coach women, and in between, I am an avid listener of your podcast. So thank you so much for coming to Washington. One of the things that struck me in your conversation when we talked about the cookies was the conversation presupposes a manager who is doling out those cookies fairly. And one of the things that I've personally experienced that so many of the women that I work with have experienced as well is that sometimes female managers are actually the biggest obstacle for other female managers and I wonder I think it's this fear right of the spotlight being finite and I wonder if there's any places that you would

perhaps nuance some of the feedback and tips that you shared today for when you're working in one of those challenging environments where women unfortunately are not uplifting and empowering other women. Sure. I'm all about empowering other women. But, you know, I think that you have to, again, go back to start with what's within your control. And if it's a pattern that you're seeing, because the way you shared it is kind of a pattern that you see, right? There's a theme that's happening. And it's very hard to try to battle the whole theme and to work against that theme. But if you can have a constructive conversation

with the individual who has that impact on you, presumably your manager, and not position it as a, hey, this is what you are doing, but rather, here's what I would like for my career, and here's how you can help. Would you be willing to do that? So, and I think this last piece is where we miss a lot, where we don't make the ask. We just put it out there and say, here's what I want.

And then that's it. And expect people to say, oh, okay, here. And so this manager may not even be aware. I'll give benefit of the doubt. But if you can be very concrete around how she can help you, you can then start looking at, you know, is it truly a function of she's out to get me or feel threatened by me or whatever those other things are, or is it a function of, oh, she didn't even know I wanted it or that she didn't know what to do to help me. And if that person's not working out, this is why it's really important with visibility that a big

part of it is being able to broaden your support system. Don't only rely on your manager to lift you up. You should be looking to have a team behind you. And so if that person's not working out, we've all had that bad manager, which by the way will be the person you most learn from in your career. You know, don't rely, don't feel like you should be held hostage by that one person and expect the ideal that may not happen. Make sure you have a whole team as your support system. Go and seek out other people to sponsor you and mentor you along the way. That's not going to be the manager for the rest of your life. The other thing, anytime people ask for managing up advice,

I always say figure out what your manager wants to achieve and see how you can align yourself to help them achieve that. And so there are ways to be visible while helping them achieve their goals. You're talking about a manager who thinks you're on the opposite side of the table, and you need to put yourselves on the same side of the table so you're facing the same goals together. Thank you for your question. Yes.

My name is Allison Shapira. I run a training firm teaching public speaking and executive presence with a focus on women in leadership. And my question is around sponsorship. As you mentioned earlier, there's fascinating research showing that women are over-mentored and under-sponsored. And my question is, do you think it's the responsibility of the individual or her manager in order to seek out sponsors? And how do you coach people to do that? So, and many people may not like what I have to say about this. So my mantra and my clients here over and over and over, mentorship is equal opportunity. Everyone is deserving of a mentor.

If you don't have one, you deserve one. Go get one tonight. Sponsorship is earned. And the reason why is because a sponsor is very different than a mentor. A sponsor has to do specific things for you. They are providing you with backing to help you for advancement, and they're also sharing their social capital with you. And so it's a much more vested relationship. And're getting something in return by the way it's it's it's quite transactional so I do think that from a sponsorship standpoint the onus is on the individual to seek out sponsorship however a manager should try not to stand in the way of that sponsorship I think that's the managers's responsibility, right? Because oftentimes, your best sponsors are not necessarily your managers. And your best sponsors are not necessarily the individuals who look like you, who you like to talk to at lunch, and who remind

you of your best friend. They tend to be the person with the most weight in the organization, who oftentimes may not be us. Yes. Hi, my name is Rebecca Perry. I'm a health services researcher, and I also lead a women's group at my organization. And one of the things that we kind of have touched on a little bit, but one of the things that comes to mind often in our leadership group is this idea that for men it seems a lot easier to gain visibility, to know when you are being visible to the point where it's a little bit obscene and when it's not. Why is there this difference? Do you guys have any insight? And in particular, when you think about sponsorship, I also think about some of my male colleagues

who find it easier sometimes to get sponsorship. And so I wonder what is generating that and is there something that we as women can do to help kind of reshuffle that deck or retilt that ship? One thing I would note is that a lot of it has to do with representation. It's easy to know you're supposed

to be visible if people who look and sound and act like you are already visible because you're just following in their footsteps. One thing we can all do is hire and promote more women so that we have role models. I think all of us have admitted we did not know this was part of our job when we started and probably because

we didn't see a lot of women doing it. So getting women in positions, representation, so we know that this is something that's not just okay to do rather but desired is really important. I also think it's important to target those individuals who you see that are doing what you would like to do and ask them, learn from them, right? Even if they are completely different, like analyze what they do. I had a client once, and he was actually a male who came from very, just didn't have much growing up, didn't have the best schooling, et cetera, yet he had his eye, like very early on in his career, he wanted to be a CEO. That's all. He didn't even know what a CEO

was, but that's what he wanted to do. And he told me this story. And he said, I studied. I like studied 10 CEOs, and I looked at their biographies, and I looked at what they did, and I looked at what schools they went to, and I looked at who they hung and I looked at what schools they went to and I looked at who they hung around with and then I met some and I asked him, what did you do? Tell me the 10 things you did. And then I did that. And he was a CEO by the time he was 32. And he meticulously worked a plan. Now that's a little obsessive, but he learned if you see somebody getting that visibility rather than at times, I'll speak for myself, judging, right? Seek out, if that's what I want, let me ask them, well, what is it that you do? Like, what do you do? How do you get about it? What do you think? Who do you talk to? What do

you do? And that will help as well. But I also think that you said you run the women's group at your office. Yeah. I mean, that is a great way to kind of rewire that dynamic. I mean, if you and your fellow women's group members are talking about this and talking about how you can achieve the visibility that you're looking for together, you can help each other. And sometimes having had that conversation, if one of your colleagues from the group is sitting across the table from you in the meeting, that's kind of the spur to you to speak

up. You've said you wanted to do this together. Now you know it's your job to do it, right? Thank you. Yes. Good evening. My name's Nicole. I'm an IT manager, and I'm also the mother of young children. So my question about visibility has to do more in the context of family obligations. In the audio, we heard that one of the reasons maybe women aren't as visible or don't aggressively go out and get visibility is because of their other commitments. So I'm interested in your perspectives on if there's a way to be visible, if there's a season to keep your head down, if you're not willing to accept additional responsibility yet, so that you're still in a position maybe in 10 years, in 5 years, to then accept it versus creating a stigma now that says, well, she's visible, but she'll never say yes.

Thank you. I know for me personally, I have a 12-year-old daughter, and for a long time, there were these pulls on my time that felt, you know, that it was pulling against my time with her. And one of the real changes of frame of mind that I've had to shift to is that being visible is for her, right? Not just because I'm able to, you know, get promoted and have a livelihood, but because I grew up, I had a single mom as a mother who was very visible. She had a job that she was publicly recognized for. And it was a huge part of what shaped me and shaped my desire to be a working mother and I want that for my daughter too so the visibility to Muriel's point about purpose part of my reason for being visible is so that my daughter knows that I am respected

and that I that work is important to me and that she can do the same when she goes out well the other thing I want to point out is that visibility isn't only about public speaking and going on tour or whatever. I mean, for me, the much harder nut to crack was speaking up in meetings. I mean, I had ideas, I had thoughts, but I just couldn't bring myself to blurt them out at the table. That wasn't taking on extra work.

I mean, it was psychic work, that's for sure, but it wasn't committing to do more stuff at work. And once I sort of made that breakthrough, just because I kept challenging myself, that was a far more important step than making the first speech, let's say. I think that's a really important point because I think some people see it as black and white. Either I'm all in or I'm not. And I go back to this question of, all right, and I have kids too.

I have 12-year-old twins. And so the question becomes, I have my kids. I have kids too. I have 12-year-old twins. And so the question becomes, I have my kids. I have my work. I want to be visible, want underlined and bolded. Under what conditions can I be visible? So it may not be the event, but then maybe it's speaking with a meeting. So let me focus on that. Because it is about making tradeoff.

As long as you're making a choice. Once you're on autopilot and you're not making a choice, nobody wins, right? So it's about what trade-off am I willing to live with? And if the trade-off is my visibility is going to be focused on from 9 to 5 when I'm here, all right, then work the heck out of that 9 to 5. But at least you have a strategy that's going to work for you with where you are in your life right now. Thank you. Yes. Hi, my name is Julia and my beloved manager just recently announced that she was leaving our firm. And as we're navigating this transition, it has become increasingly clear to me that she may not have been getting the visibility for our team that I see as beneficial.

And I'm somebody who has historically really tried hard to put the wheeze in there instead of the eyes. So I have spent a lot of time sort of reining myself back. And now I'm going to be co-leading a team that I think isn't getting the credit it's deserving. And so I wanted to see if you had any advice for me as I try to step up on behalf of my team without going back into some old habits that didn't play well before. So I think in terms of getting visibility for your team, one of the biggest things you can do is get some quick wins.

Figure out things that are going to have, that you can be successful as a team. Don't just celebrate it privately, but celebrate it publicly, meaning to the rest of the organization. Keep those folks who you want them to know about your team. Let them know what milestones you're hitting. Don't wait until the end of the project, which is what a lot of people do. It's like six months later, oh, we're done, and it was great. No, let them know what the plan is, and then keep them up to date. That way they're seeing movement, right?

And that's usually what gets credit, is there's movement on a particular thing towards a particular goal. Sharing what it is that your team is doing. But be very, again, focused on who is that your team is doing, but be very again focused on who is it that you're trying to target. Who is it that you want to have some knowledge around what your team is doing? Thank you. Thank you everybody for coming out tonight. It was such a pleasure to be here with you. Erica Truxler makes our discussion guides. J.M. Olajars is our copy editor.

Special thanks to Amy Poftak for coordinating this live event.