Doing the work is not enough.
In yesterday’s post, I said that nobody cares about the effort you put in except you; other people just care about the results. But delivering the results isn’t enough either. Why not?
As children, we are taught to believe that people are paying attention to us because they are: our parents and our teachers are keeping a close eye on our development and celebrating our successes and giving us feedback. This becomes less true in college and less true in a job, and fades away completely a few years into your career.
People are not paying attention to you. They don’t know what you’re doing, and honestly, they don’t care because they are just trying to get through their own pile of responsibilities.
So if you want your VP or the promotion committee to know what you did, you need to tell them. You can’t depend on your manager to do that for you. Your manager is busy – they don’t have time to go figure out what you did, figure out why it matters and how it helps, and then also share that with critical stakeholders. If you believe that they should be doing all that work on your behalf, then your career will stall.
Do the work for them. Summarize the results you delivered and the value you provided in a few sentences. Package it all up so they don’t have to think, they can have those few points ready whenever your name comes up. Make it easy for them to talk about your value.
You can practice here in the comments by answering the following questions:
— What’s the 3-5 bullet points you’d want your manager to share in any conversation about you?
— What’s the value you provided in your job in the second half of 2023?
— What are your unique superpowers?