Here’s the deal. The very idea of being visible makes people feel uncomfortable. Especially if you’ve grown up identifying as a woman. I get it. I talk to women most days who have made up their mind on this. This is what you to say to me;

“I believe great work speaks for itself. If I do an outstanding job, people will notice”
“If I have to act like a showoff to get noticed around here, I’d prefer to be ignored”
“I’m too busy doing the real work to talk about the work I’m doing”
“It’s just not me”
“It all feels inauthentic and I just want to be me”
“Being visible will make me look like I’m bragging or self-serving!”

No. You’ve been conditioned to believe these things and they simply aren’t true. Absolutely, hard work is the foundation of success—but it’s not enough. If you’re going to get the opportunities you want, you need to make your work visible to others. Keeping your head down isn’t an option. Too many women are waiting for someone else to publicise their stories and accomplishments.

Unlearning these ideas and beliefs takes a long time (I’ve been working on it for 10 years and still not there yet) but it can be done. It *must* be done if we want more women to lead, take action and make a change. Talking about yourself, your work and your accomplishments is a skill. It is a muscle that needs flexing. It’s totally fine to play around with this skill, you won’t always get it right and it might feel icky. I really believe that everyone can find their own natural voice and get more comfortable being visible in a way that feels true to them.

This is what we’re going to dig into next Sunday during my Instagram Live. I want to help women be visible in the workplace and beyond, so we can start to break modesty norms and glass ceilings. Join me at 8 pm (GMT time) and we’ll talk about all of this as well as dig into practical tools, advice and habits.

Please tag a friend that might benefit because we’re all in this together! Till then, a quote from Kathy Burke

“Fuck modesty! ”

Professional visibility