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Are_You_Invisible
| Are You Invisible?
Are You Invisible? by Arthur Cooper (c) Copyright 2004 http://www.arthurcooper.com
In today’s competitive workplace it is not enough just to be
good – you have to be seen to be good. It is not an environment
in which to indulge in false modesty. If you allow your talents
to be taken for granted they will be. There is always someone
else ready to take any credit that would otherwise come your way.
If you don’t want others to take the credit due to you then you
had better watch out. It’s a jungle out there. If you don’t want
to be left behind in the promotion stakes then you must learn to
blow your own trumpet.
Perhaps you are not personally burning with ambition and you may
not be personally seeking advancement or glory. Well that’s your
decision. But if you are in charge of a team or of a department
you owe it to your staff to take the credit for their efforts
and for yours too. You cannot in all conscience say that it
doesn’t matter. It may matter a lot to them.
It is part of your job as manager to look after, encourage, and
advance the careers of your staff. If you want them to work well
for you, you must do something for them – reward them with
praise (where due), with financial recompense (when earned), but
above all with the chance to use their talents to the full and
to progress in their careers. You have a duty as a manager to
help.
So if one of your team does something good it is up to you to
make sure that this is known. If the team as a whole achieves
something noteworthy you must publicise it. And if you
personally have done something exceptional that will light up
your team in your reflected glory then you should take the
credit, for their sake if not for yours. Do it within the bounds
of decent modesty of course, but do it. It cannot do them any
harm to be associated with a leader who is going places, and it
may do them a power of good.
If you and your team have delivered some important project ahead
of schedule, make sure this is known by those that matter (your
boss, his boss, heads of other departments, etc.).
If you have successfully concluded a tricky negotiation with an
important customer, thus saving their custom for your company,
be sure to tell people. If you have clinched a valuable deal to
obtain goods or services at much reduced cost, then do the same.
Don’t go around boasting of your achievements of course. That is
sure to make you unpopular. But you can be more subtle. Does
your company have an in-house magazine, for example? The editors
are bound to be looking for success stories that show the
company in a good light. So write them an article.
Is there an opportunity to give a presentation about your
department’s work at a managers meeting or at a seminar? Take up
the opportunity.
If you are in a operational or maintenance type of environment
you have a more difficult task than most. It is not in the
nature of your job to be high visibility. It is usually only at
times of crisis that others notice you are there. The more
smoothly your department runs – the fewer the waves you are
routinely making – the greater the danger of being forgotten and
the more important it is to do something about it.
So don’t be taken for granted. Don’t let your department be
forgotten. Don’t become an unknown head of a department of which
nobody knows what it does. If you do allow that to happen then
you will be the last to be remembered when new and interesting
projects come up, but the first for the chop when cutbacks take
place.
About the author:
Arthur Cooper is a business consultant, writer and publisher.
For his mini-course ‘Better Management’ go to:
http://www.barrel-publishing.com/better_management.shtml
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