Ever feel like you're doing good work, solving tricky problems, putting in extra effort, but it doesn't quite get the recognition it deserves?
You know how hard you work, the hurdles overcome, and the positive results. But does your manager see all of that? Do the other important people involved?
Do the folks making decisions about your future see it?
If that sounds familiar, you're not alone. It often comes down to something called egocentric bias. We naturally see 100% of our own work. Every step, every challenge, every success. But others? They typically only catch a small glimpse, maybe 10% or less, based on what crosses their path and what they're focused on.
This big difference between what you know and what they see is how good work can get overlooked.
Closing this gap means making your work and its results more visible. Now, the idea of "visibility" might make you think of awkward bragging or constantly talking about yourself.
You might worry, "Isn't that annoying? Won't people just tune me out?"
Here’s a different way to think about it: good visibility is about clear communication, not just being loud.
People are busy and filter things constantly. Your aim shouldn’t be to bombard them, but to clearly and honestly share the positive results of your work when it makes sense, making it easier for others to understand your contributions. It’s a useful skill for anyone doing knowledge work who wants to move forward in their career.
This article offers 5 practical, down-to-earth ways to help you do that, to ensure your good work gets seen without feeling like you're just bragging.
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#1 Create Lasting Records of Your Work
The core challenge we face, thanks to that egocentric bias, is that our hard work can easily fade from view for others. Projects end, priorities shift, people change roles, and the details of what you accomplished and why it mattered get lost. The most fundamental way to counteract this "out of sight, out of mind" effect is to create lasting records of your significant contributions. Think of these as the tangible proof of your work. This turns your good work into evidence that exists independently of anyone's memory, including your own.
I learned this lesson the hard way. Earlier in my career, in late April, my team and I successfully launched a major overhaul of our platform’s core services. It was incredibly consequential, as it unlocked several new capabilities planned for later that year and significantly improved reliability, which was a huge pain point for our downstream consumers. It involved weeks of intense effort and complex problem-solving.
Fast forward to December when I was writing my end-of-year self-assessment. I totally forgot to include the massive delivery! It wasn't until months later, when I was pulling together examples for a promotion document, that I stumbled across the launch announcement email I'd thankfully saved. I almost failed to get credit for one of my most impactful deliveries of the year simply because I relied on my memory instead of a concrete record. That experience cemented for me the necessity of tracking accomplishments systematically.
Tip: Perhaps the simplest, most direct way to apply this principle, and something everybody should consider doing, is keeping an up-to-date "brag book" or accomplishments tracker. This doesn't need to be fancy. Just a running text file, a spreadsheet, or any simple document stored in the cloud works perfectly.
The goal is to create a personal log where you consistently jot down your achievements, big and small, as they happen. Capture the date, the situation or task, the specific actions you took, and most importantly, the outcome or impact. Was a problem solved? Was a process improved? Was a metric moved? By how much? Getting into this habit provides readily available material for performance reviews, promotion applications, resume updates, future interviews, or even just reminding yourself of the progress you've made.
While your personal brag book is invaluable for tracking your individual achievements and preparing for reviews, visibility often requires more than just private notes. The same principle of creating lasting proof applies to the records needed for team collaboration, project continuity, and broader communication, things like shared project documents, decision logs, or analysis summaries. These shared artifacts help ensure your work and their context are understood by the colleagues and stakeholders who rely on your work or need to build upon it.
Make creating all these necessary records, whether a private note in your brag book or a shared project document, part of your regular workflow. Don't wait. When you wrap up a significant task or project phase, take a few minutes to capture the essentials. Store these records logically where you and others can easily find them later, using clear names in shared drives, wikis, or project management tools. When documenting collaborative work, always make sure to acknowledge the key contributions of your colleagues. Giving credit accurately reflects how work gets done and strengthens your working relationships.
#2 Focus on Outcomes, Not Just Activities
How we talk about our work greatly affects whether its value gets recognized. We often describe work by listing activities like meetings attended, documents written, or hours spent. It’s easy to describe our busyness, but we should never mistake motion for progress. Focusing only on effort usually falls short. To make your contributions visible, shift your focus from activities to the outcomes or results those activities achieved.
Consider the perspective of a busy manager or collaborator. They want to understand what changed because of your work. Did you solve a problem, improve a process, identify a risk, or help the team reach a goal? Focusing on outcomes answers the crucial "So what?" question and translates your effort into clear value. Communicating the result, like "I streamlined reporting, cutting generation time by 50%," is stronger than just listing tasks.
Early in my career, I focused solely on numbers: the number of interviews I did, the number of code check-ins, the number of tickets closed. It felt like a lot of good work, but it took me a long time to realize nobody cared about the raw numbers themselves, only what they represented. They didn't care about the quantity of interviews I conducted. They cared about how many great people I helped hire to build strong teams. They cared about the features and capabilities I shipped, not the number of lines of code written. They cared about the customer problems I was fixing, especially addressing root causes, not just the count of closed tickets.
This connects directly to our first strategy. Those lasting records you create, especially your brag book entries, become much stronger when they highlight outcomes. Instead of just logging "Completed analysis," write "Analyzed Q3 user data, identified feature X adoption dropped 15%, leading to forming a task force." The second shows a meaningful result.
Tip: How do you find the outcome? Always ask yourself "So what?" after describing an activity. Keep asking it until you arrive at the meaningful result or impact. The answer usually points to what your audience truly cares about. Here are some examples:
Instead of: "I wrote a detailed market research report." Try: "My market research report identified a new potential customer segment estimated at $X million. The strategy team is now exploring this."
Instead of: "I attended several planning meetings for Project Zeta." Try: "During Project Zeta planning meetings, I successfully argued for including Feature Y. User feedback showed this was a critical need."
Instead of: "I spent two days troubleshooting the integration issue." Try: "I resolved the integration issue that was blocking deployments. This allowed the team to ship the update on schedule."
Instead of: "Organized the cross-functional sync meeting." Try: "Organized the cross-functional sync, resulting in a clear decision on X and alignment between teams Y and Z."
Instead of: "Researched new cloud monitoring tools." Try: "Researched new cloud monitoring tools and presented findings, leading to the team adopting Tool A which reduced alert noise by 30%."
Making this shift requires building a conscious habit. Before describing work, pause. Ask: "What was the result?" Apply the "So What?" test thoroughly. Practice leading with the outcome (BLUF) in written communication like emails or status updates. This respects people's time and ensures the key information lands first.
#3 Quantify Your Impact Whenever Possible
You've started creating records and focusing on outcomes. Now, let's talk about adding real power to those descriptions: using numbers whenever possible. We often run out of ways to say our work made things "better," "faster," or "bigger." Those words start to lose their meaning without specifics. Truly impressive achievements stand out precisely because their impact is quantified, giving a clear sense of scale and significance. Adding numbers provides concrete proof, cuts through vague language, and demonstrates the value delivered in a way everyone can understand.
Think about the difference. "I improved the onboarding process" is okay. But "I improved the onboarding process, reducing the time for new users to activate by 25%" is specific and much more compelling. Numbers grab attention and offer evidence. They speak a common language, especially when communicating across teams or upwards, where results often need to be shown numerically.
This directly enhances the first two strategies. Adding metrics to the outcomes (Strategy #2) you capture in your lasting records and brag book (Strategy #1) makes them significantly more persuasive. Documenting "Reduced server costs by 15% ($XX,XXX annually)" is powerful evidence for reviews or promotions.
I remember a time I solved a really tricky root cause for a system instability issue. In my updates and even in my own head, I described the work simply as "fixing a bug." Which was technically true. But framing it that way completely missed the real impact. Digging deeper later, I realized that fixing that one root cause completely eliminated the dozens of high-severity manual tickets previously cut against our team each month. This meant potentially thousands of customers had a much smoother experience, and the engineers on call weren't being woken up nearly as often in the middle of the night. Same work, but by not quantifying the impact, namely, the reduction in tickets, the estimated improvement in customer satisfaction, the decrease in operational load, I failed to communicate the true value of fixing that "bug."
When you do quantify, aim for clarity. Be mindful of relative versus absolute numbers. While percentages can be useful, prefer absolute numbers when the starting point is small. Saying you "increased signups by 10,000%" might sound impressive, but it can raise suspicion if the baseline was just two signups. In such cases, stating the absolute increase ("increased signups from 2 to 200") or providing clear context is often more credible.
Here are some examples showing quantification:
Instead of: "Helped increase user engagement." Try: "My contributions to Project Alpha helped increase daily active users by 10% (from 50k to 55k) in Q3."
Instead of: "Made the weekly reporting faster." Try: "Automated data collection for the weekly report, saving the team approximately 4 hours per week of manual effort."
Instead of: "Improved system reliability." Try: "Reduced critical system errors from ~10/day to <1/day after implementing new monitoring checks."
Instead of: "Got positive feedback on the presentation." Try: "Received an average feedback score of 4.8/5 (from 25 respondents) on the presentation to the leadership team."
Now, finding the right numbers isn't always easy. Sometimes measuring the impact takes real work, but rolling up your sleeves here is usually worth the effort. Not everything is perfectly measurable, of course. In those cases, consider reasonable estimates or proxies, being transparent about your method. A well-reasoned estimate is often better than none.
Try to think about measurement early. When starting work, ask: "How can we measure success?" Look for baseline data to show the "before and after." Get creative about finding data sources. Even simple counts, percentages, or time saved can significantly strengthen how your impact is perceived. Adding numbers makes your results less subjective and much harder to ignore.
#4 Prefer 'Over-Sharing' Your Impact
You've done the hard work: created lasting records (Strategy #1), focused on clear outcomes (Strategy #2), and backed them up with numbers (Strategy #3). You have tangible proof of your valuable contributions. But here’s the crucial next step, where the rubber meets the road: you have to actually share it.
If you keep all that evidence hidden, waiting for someone to ask or magically notice, you're leaving your visibility entirely to chance. Silence allows your impact to remain unseen. And remember the promise of this article, sharing evidence of your quantified results isn't bragging. It's communicating factual value in a way others can understand.
Now, especially if you're not used to talking about your work, proactively sharing might feel like "over-sharing." But consider: workplaces are noisy. People are bombarded with information and have already built strong filters just to cope. What feels like "over-sharing" to you might barely register above the noise for others. If you rarely share, proactively putting your results out there might simply be what's necessary for the information to land at all. You have credible proof of valuable work. Don't let the fear of slightly over-communicating keep it invisible.
If sharing your own accomplishments feels particularly uncomfortable at first, try starting by amplifying the good work of others. Did a colleague solve a tough problem? Did another team ship something great? Share their successes in team channels or updates (giving them full credit, of course). This builds goodwill, fosters a positive team environment, and can make it feel more natural when you later share your own impactful results.
Here's a practical mindset shift or game to play: Never make your manager ask for your status. If they have to ask, you lose. This simple rule encourages you to proactively communicate important updates, progress, and results before you're prompted. Think about all the channels available to you. Use team chat like Slack or Teams for quick updates or wins. Send concise email summaries to relevant distribution lists or stakeholders for broader awareness. Mention key outcomes in team meetings or 1-on-1s. Leverage whatever internal communication tools your organization uses. The goal is to ensure the information is out there and accessible through multiple avenues.
I learned the power of this on the project that eventually contributed to my promotion to Principal Engineer. It was a gigantic project with an immovable deadline involving nearly 100 engineering teams, and although a TPM sent out regular formal status reports, I decided to send out my own daily email status update to the core team and key stakeholders. It definitely felt like over-sharing at first. My report surfaced blockers quickly and helped keep the project moving, but critically, it also became a place to celebrate wins, big and small. Because I was initially reluctant to highlight my own contributions directly, I made sure to always elevate the contributions of others first, calling out specific people and their great work. People told me later that seeing this daily email blast for three months gave them enormous confidence that we were actually going to hit the deadline. When we did launch successfully, on time, people were already well aware of the progress and my role in driving it, thanks to that consistent communication.
Don't let politeness or misplaced humility prevent your work from being seen. You followed the previous steps: you created proof, focused on results, and quantified the impact. You're not sharing baseless claims. You're sharing evidence of value created. When you have clear evidence of good, impactful work, you have a responsibility, to yourself, to put it out there and make sure it gets seen.
#5 Connect Your Work to Larger Goals
You're now creating records, focusing on outcomes, quantifying them, and sharing proactively. There's one final layer to add that truly elevates the perceived importance of your work: explicitly connecting your contributions to the larger goals of your team, your department, or the entire organization. Showing how your specific accomplishments fit into the bigger picture demonstrates awareness and highlights the broader relevance of your efforts.
Why does this matter so much? Because leaders and decision-makers are constantly thinking about those overarching objectives, the company mission, yearly organizational goals, key strategic priorities. When you can clearly articulate how your project's outcome (Strategy #2) or quantified impact (Strategy #3) directly supports one of those important goals, you're speaking their language. It frames your work not just as a completed task, but as a meaningful contribution to the things the organization values most. This significantly boosts the visibility and perceived importance of what you achieved.
Think of this as adding the "why it matters to the business" context to the information you're documenting (Strategy #1) and sharing (Strategy #4). Instead of just stating the result, frame it:
Instead of: "Reduced API latency by 150ms." Try: "Reduced API latency by 150ms, directly supporting our team's objective to improve system performance this quarter."
Instead of: "Launched the new user profile page." Try: "Launched the new user profile page, which contributes to the company-wide priority of enhancing customer engagement."
Instead of: "Completed the competitive analysis report." Try: "Completed the competitive analysis report, providing key insights for the leadership discussion on market positioning."
I saw this firsthand when I was working for Amazon Tickets. We sold seated tickets to concerts and shows, and we had a persistent issue where our system would "strand" single seats in otherwise full rows, making them very hard to sell. Fixing the underlying logic took a significant amount of complex work, but when I described it to business stakeholders as just 'fixing the stranded seat issue,' it seemed like nobody really grasped the importance. It wasn't until I reframed the work by quantifying the impact in terms they understood, focusing on "breakage," which represented the value of unsold tickets during a high-demand onsale event, that they truly understood the magnitude of the fix. Connecting that reduction in breakage directly to the broader business goals of maximizing revenue and keeping artists happier by selling more of their tickets made the value of my technical work crystal clear.
Making this connection requires you to understand what those larger goals actually are. Take the time to read the company's strategic priorities or your team's main objectives for the year. If they aren't clear, ask your manager. Then, make it a habit to consciously frame your significant updates and accomplishments in that context. Add a sentence to your brag book entries or your status updates explaining the alignment. When discussing potential new projects or tasks, ask clarifying questions like, "How does this initiative support our team's main objectives?" This proactive thinking not only helps you communicate more effectively but also ensures you're focusing your efforts on work that truly matters to the organization.
Connecting your work to larger goals is the final step in ensuring your impact is fully recognized. It shows you understand the context of your work and confirms that your valuable contributions are helping to move the needle on shared objectives.
Making your impact visible doesn't have to feel like bragging or require a personality transplant. By focusing on creating lasting records, communicating outcomes instead of just activity, quantifying your results whenever possible, sharing that information proactively, and connecting your work to larger goals, you can ensure your contributions are seen and valued.
If you’ve done all five steps in this email I bet you’re a very high-performing and high-level individual. For you, let me know if I’ve missed something or glossed over crucial details.
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