You did the work. All of it. The migration that nobody wanted to own, the incident at 2am, the two years on the platform rebuild that finally shipped last quarter.
And when your director asked about it in the all hands, you heard yourself say “oh, it was no big deal, that’s just part of my job.”
You have probably searched how to be visible at work at some point, read three articles about executive presence, and closed the tab because every one of them was telling you to become a person you are not. So you went back to doing excellent work and waiting for someone to notice it. And here is the quiet fear underneath all of it: if you have to talk about your own work for it to count, maybe the work was never actually that good.
This week’s guest
This week on the From a Woman to a Leader podcast, I sat down with Susan M. Barber, a leadership visibility expert, a former Fortune 500 IT director, and the author of The Visibility Factor and the workbook Your Journey to Visibility.
Sue spent years at Kraft. She started in sales, moved through supply chain, moved through food service, and eventually landed in IT leadership, where she was named top talent and put into a leadership program reserved for the highest performers in the organization. From the outside, she was doing everything right.
Then a mentor sat her down for a one on one and told her she was not being visible, was not talking about her work, and asked why she even came to the meetings.
But that is not really what we talked about. We talked about what she actually changed afterwards, and it turns out almost none of it was about confidence. It was about language, a little bit of preparation, and a handful of small habits that had been quietly making her own work invisible for years.
Below are the insights from our conversation, with my own experience and concrete steps you can take this week.
1. Being Called Top Talent and Invisible in the Same Week
Sue was in a leadership program only open to the top people in IT. Every week the leadership team and the extended teams met together. And every week she made a decision that felt respectful and turned out to be expensive.
“I felt like I am not part of the executive team. I don’t need to sit at the table. That’s for them. I’m just going to sit over here. And if there’s a question for me, I’ll answer it. But what I didn’t realize is I was sending a subtle message that I felt like I didn’t belong at the table, that I really didn’t have anything to contribute.”
Then came the one on one.
“That’s basically what she was telling me in this one-on-one with my mentor is, hey, you’re not being visible. You’re not talking about the work you’re doing. You’re not adding any value. Why do you even come to the meeting?”
The mentor feedback, ending on “how did I miss it?”
She got defensive, said one thing back, realized it was not going to help, thanked her mentor, and got out of the room as fast as she could. Then she spent the rest of the day sitting with it. And she went to a second mentor, a business mentor, who reframed the whole thing in a way I have quoted back to clients ever since.
“You were hired for a reason. You were hired to bring a lot of information and details and share things with your leadership team. And if you’re not doing it and they make a bad decision, that’s on you. That’s not on them.”
Here is what I see again and again with the women I coach. We treat staying quiet as modesty. As not taking up more space than we have earned. But the room does not read it that way. The room reads it as “she has nothing to add,” and the longer you sit there confirming that read, the harder it gets to change it.
I did exactly the same thing for years. I worked in the shadows and told myself I did not need to speak unless someone asked me a direct question. And it cost me. Not in one dramatic moment, but slowly, in projects that went to other people and conversations I was not invited into.
How to apply this: Look at your next recurring leadership or cross-functional meeting and ask yourself one question. If someone were watching only your behavior in that room, with no knowledge of your actual output, what would they conclude about your value? Write down the honest answer. That gap is the thing you are working on.
2. The Words You Use About Your Own Work Are Erasing It
This is the part of the conversation I keep coming back to, because it is so specific and so easy to miss in yourself.
Sue talks about minimizing language, which is the habit of shrinking your own work in the very moment you describe it.
“Minimizing our work. So saying, you know, that’s no big deal. That’s just part of my job. It’s no big deal to do that, even though we spent two years on it, it’s no big deal. And that’s kind of ridiculous, right? When you think about it, if you spent two years of your life on something, it’s a big deal.”
Read that again. Two years of your life, described in four words that make it disappear.
The same reflex shows up when someone compliments you. Sue dismissed compliments for years, and one of her coaches gave her a line that landed hard.
“If you’re not valuing yourself, how can others value you? And that was hard to hear, but when I heard it, I thought, my gosh, she’s so right. I’m not talking about the things I’m doing in a valuable way, so how can other people see it that way?”
“If you’re not valuing yourself, how can others value you?”
Then she flipped my understanding of deflecting compliments completely.
“When you kind of dismiss someone’s compliment, it’s almost like you’re kind of dismissing them. And they took the time to actually share it with you.”
I had never thought about it that way. When you say “oh, it was nothing,” you are not being humble. You are telling the person who noticed your work that their judgment was wrong.
And there is a specific version of this that hits women in tech harder than anyone. The things that come easily to us are the things we discount the fastest. You debug the gnarly thing in twenty minutes because you have been doing it for twelve years, and you call it nothing. Sue named exactly this.
“When things are easy for us, we dismiss it as no big deal instead of saying, thank you, I really appreciate that you noticed that.”
Sound familiar?
How to apply this: Pull up your last three written status updates, standup notes, or one on one agendas. Count every time you used a shrinking word. “Just,” “only,” “helped with,” “pretty straightforward,” “the team did it.” Then rewrite one of them so it says what the work was and why it mattered. Not louder. Just accurate. This takes four minutes and it is the single highest-return thing in this whole post.
3. How to Be Visible at Work Without It Sounding Like Bragging
This is the objection that stops most women before they start, so it is worth answering directly. Learning how to be visible at work does not require you to become the person who talks over everyone in the meeting.
Sue’s first move was not to speak more. It was to watch what visible people actually did.
“I think the first couple of things I did was observe other people. So what were they doing that was getting them noticed, getting them visibility? And I realized that they were just offering to help. They were just sharing information about what they were doing at a project. They weren’t probably bragging like I thought that they were.”
That reframe alone is worth the episode. Most of what reads as visibility is not self-promotion at all. It is information sharing and offering help.
Her second move solves the problem I hear most often, which is freezing in the moment.
“Part of the challenge for me was in the moment of being in a meeting and trying to come up with the perfect question. I got in my head too much and I just got in panic mode and I couldn’t come up with the right question. So I started preparing in advance of what’s on the agenda, what are some things that I think I could ask about, and or even just add on to someone else’s question.”
And she gave a script for the easiest possible entry point.
“Someone brings something up and you can say, I love that you shared that. Could you add a little more detail to that because I’m curious about whatever that is. And the important thing is to just get your voice out there. And it doesn’t have to be perfect.”
She was blunt about what she had to give up to do it.
“I was the queen of perfection for such a long time that I had to let go of that crown for sure, because it just wasn’t serving me.”
This is where women get stuck. We are not afraid of speaking. We are afraid of speaking imperfectly. So we sit there composing the ideal question while the agenda moves on, and then we leave the meeting having said nothing, and we tell ourselves we did not have anything worth adding.
How to apply this: Before your next meeting, open the agenda and write down two things. One question you could ask, and one update you could offer if there is a natural opening. Two lines. Ninety seconds of prep. You do not have to use both, and neither one has to be brilliant.
4. If You Manage People, You Are Their Public Relations Department
This is the section that turns visibility from a self-promotion topic into a leadership one, and it is the reason I would send this episode to a manager who thinks she is not the target audience.
Sue had someone on her team who had come over from another group and was struggling. She mentioned it to her manager honestly, in passing.
“I made a comment to my manager at the time about, I just don’t know if she’s going to be able to turn it around. She’s kind of struggling with all of this. And three, four months later, she started to get it. She started to come around. And so I said, you know, she’s really doing well. And he’s like, she is? I mean, you basically said three months ago she wasn’t getting it, she wasn’t going to be able to turn it around. What changed?”
The team member story and “you are the public relations for your person”
That was the moment it landed.
“I realized really quickly that everything I say either creates a positive or negative impression of my team and myself.”
And then she named it in a way I have not been able to forget.
“Especially think about if you want to promote someone. You are the public relations for your person and you need to be talking about the great things that they’re doing, not making it up of course, but really being intentional about sharing the things that are going to be noticed.”
Here is what I see again and again. Women in leadership are careful, honest, and quick to flag a risk. Those are good instincts. But an offhand concern you raised in a one on one nine months ago is still sitting in your manager’s head, and the excellent quarter your team just delivered is invisible if you never said it out loud in a room where it counted.
There is a second half to this that matters just as much. Sue is not saying hide the problems. She is saying bring the problem and what you are doing about it.
“They may be struggling, and you can talk to your manager about that and say, you know, they’re struggling a lot, but here’s what I’m going to do to help them get back on track. And that helps your manager know that you’ve got it.”
How to apply this: Before your next skip-level or leadership meeting, write one sentence about each person on your team that names something specific they did and why it mattered. Not a status update. A sentence you would be comfortable having repeated in a promotion calibration, because that is exactly where it might end up.
5. The VALUE Framework: A Weekly Practice That Writes Your Performance Review for You
I asked Sue for something a listener could start using immediately, and she walked through the framework from her workbook, Your Journey to Visibility. It is an acronym, which she cheerfully admits she likes because it is easy to remember.
V is for visibility. What opportunities do I already have this week? Not new ones you have to create. The meetings you are already in, the one-on-ones already on your calendar.
A is for amplify. What do I want to amplify this week? Which messages, project updates, or things your team has done?
L is for language. What language do I need to use to be strategic, to show that I am thinking about things in a bigger way, to help people understand it?
U is for unique. What is unique about my team or me that I should be talking about instead of taking it for granted?
E is for evaluate, and this is the one people skip.
“You do those first four throughout the week. You set it up maybe on Sunday or Monday morning, work on those. And then E, you do at the end of the week, which is evaluate. And you look at all the things that you said you were gonna do. How did it go? But you also look for missed opportunities, some things that happened that you weren’t prepared for, that you didn’t say in the way that you really hoped, but you could do better next time.”
And then the part that makes this worth twenty minutes a week.
“That E category allows you to set up the week after what you’re going to do in your value plan. But it also has a list of things that you can now share with your manager, you can use in your performance reports or your status reports.”
This is where I jumped in, because it solves a problem I watch women hit every single review cycle. You get to the end of the year, you sit down to write your self-assessment, and you cannot remember what you did in March. So you write something vague, and your manager, who remembers even less than you do, writes something vaguer.
Sue’s response was one word longer than mine and funnier: “We think we’re going to, but we just don’t.”
How to apply this: Put 15 minutes on your calendar for Monday morning and 15 minutes for Friday afternoon, recurring. Monday you write the V, A, L, and U. Friday you write the E. After four weeks you will have a running document you can lift straight into your next review, and you will have said more out loud in those four weeks than in the previous four months.
6. Find a Visibility Partner, Because Doing This Alone Is Harder
If you have read this far and thought “I understand all of it and I still cannot make myself say it,” this section is for you. Sue’s answer to that is not to try harder. It is to stop doing it alone.
“Let’s just say that you and I are in a meeting and you get the opportunity to speak first. And so you might say at the end of whatever you’re sharing, Limor told me this thing the other day that I think would be really important for us to hear here. And then you pass the mic, so to speak, over to me and then I share what it is. And then I’ll do the same for you. And then outside of meetings, we’re also talking about each other’s accomplishments and results to other people.”
It works because it removes the exact friction that stops you. Most women who cannot advocate for themselves have no trouble at all advocating for someone else. So you trade.
And she has receipts.
“I have done this at one company. I had three people who did it for each other and they were in one of my first classes after the first book came out and they got promoted pretty quickly, about a year after they went through everything. And then they’ve now since been promoted again.”
She was also honest about the reflex this is fighting.
“Your biggest fear is someone’s going to ask you to speak in a meeting. And you’re like, my God, please don’t ask me. Don’t ever, you know, everybody looks down. Don’t pick on me.”
Every woman reading this just recognized herself in a meeting.
How to apply this: Think of two people at your level who you genuinely respect and who are dealing with the same thing. Send one of them a message this week that says you want to try something: you will name their work in rooms they are not in, and you would like them to do the same for you. That is the whole pitch. It takes one message.
7. The Thing You Think Disqualifies You Is Usually Your Edge
I asked Sue about the U in her framework, because “unique” is where a lot of women go blank. I have done this myself for years, comparing myself to everyone else in the room and coming away feeling like the odd one out.
Sue’s own example is perfect, because for a long time she read her own background as a deficit.
“I was in IT, felt like I didn’t belong there because my degrees are marketing and management. And so I would constantly say, I didn’t belong at the table. I had imposter syndrome. I would hold myself back.”
Then she looked at it again.
“What I came to realize though, is I actually started with a company in sales. So I had sales, then I went into supply chain, then I went into food service. So I had all of this pure business experience at Kraft that allowed me to be able to have a different perspective when I sat at the table. And those people didn’t have that. So I want you to not compare and try to be like them, because the more you can stand out for what you bring, the better off you are, because they’re not going to be able to do that.”
She gave a second example, a woman she coached who came into a corporate leadership role from education and kept trying to hide it.
“She kept setting herself apart. And I said, but you have all of this leadership experience and all of the things that you did when you were in that environment that you bring to this world. But she didn’t want to talk about it. And I said, let’s talk about it. Let’s let them know that you’re not just coming here with nothing. You’re not starting from scratch.”
And she offered a reframe that I think is the most practical thing in the whole episode. We already know how to do this. We just only do it in one context.
“If you’re going in for an interview, you’re going to automatically think, okay, what can I do to set myself apart from another candidate? You’re going to try to set your best foot forward and say, here’s the things that I have to offer. We don’t do that when we’re not in an interview. So what if we did?”
There is one more piece of this I want you to sit with, because it applies to more than background. Sue talked about labels.
“So I’m going to use introvert as the word for me. I’m an introvert. I can’t go network at these places. It’s too much. I’m not good at it. And then I realized I was using that almost as a crutch to keep myself from going to things. So look and see if you’re using something as a label that keeps you out of visibility, that keeps you hidden.”
Her fix was to shrink the goal rather than change her personality.
“If I go to a networking opportunity, I don’t have to go to meet 150 people. I only have to meet three to five. And three to five people for an introvert is not as big, right? It’s not as scary.”
I told her I still force myself to speak at conferences a few times a year and it is still uncomfortable every time. Her answer was one word: “Same.” Then she told me about the conference her boss volunteered her for a full year in advance, which she was certain she was the wrong person for, and which went great.
“We need to talk about what we want to do to help people, and if we don’t talk about it, no one will know.”
How to apply this: Take ten minutes and write your own inventory. Every industry you have worked in, every function, every country, every kind of team, every thing you learned somewhere that nobody else on your current team learned. Then pick the one that feels least relevant to your current job and ask what perspective it actually gives you that the people around you do not have. That is your U.
About Susan M. Barber
Susan M. Barber is a leadership visibility expert who partners with high-performing leaders to help them communicate their value more strategically and increase their visibility and influence. She is a former Fortune 500 IT director who spent years at Kraft moving through sales, supply chain, and food service before landing in technology, and who spent a good stretch of that time convinced that her marketing and management degrees meant she did not belong at the table.
She now helps strong leaders get recognized, trusted, and positioned for greater impact. She is the author of The Visibility Factor and the workbook Your Journey to Visibility, which includes the VALUE framework and the career clarity framework as downloadable tools. She hosts The Visibility Factor podcast, where she covers leadership, visibility, confidence, influence, and career growth.
Connect with Susan: Website: susanmbarber.com LinkedIn: Susan M. Barber Podcast: The Visibility Factor Books: The Visibility Factor, and the workbook Your Journey to Visibility
What I Took From This Conversation
The thing I keep circling back to is how small the moves are.
Not one of the changes Sue made required a different personality. She did not get louder. She did not start dominating meetings. She wrote down two questions before a meeting. She stopped saying “it’s no big deal.” She started saying thank you instead of arguing when someone complimented her. She spent fifteen minutes on a Monday deciding what she was going to talk about that week.
That is it. That is the whole intervention. And it moved her from “why do you even come to the meeting” to a career built on teaching other people how to do it.
Which means the reason most of us are not visible is not that the bar is impossibly high. It is that nobody ever told us the bar was this low, so we assumed it required becoming someone else, and we opted out.
Near the end of the episode Sue said something that I think is the honest version of all of this: it does not mean it is easy for us, and that is exactly what makes us relatable. She still gets uncomfortable. I still get uncomfortable speaking at conferences. Neither of us has solved it. We have just stopped letting the discomfort make the decision.
I go deeper on my own take in this week’s solo episode, where I get into why “my work speaks for itself” is the most expensive belief in tech, and what the language audit actually looks like when you run it on your own standup notes: [SOLO EPISODE LINK]
You Don’t Have to Figure This Out Alone
If you are reading this and thinking “I know I need to be doing something different, and I have known for a while, and I still have not done it,” I want you to know that is not a discipline problem. It is very hard to see your own patterns from the inside, and it is even harder to change how you talk about yourself with nobody in the room to reflect it back.
I work with women in tech leadership on exactly this. Not on becoming someone louder, but on getting the work you are already doing to be seen by the people who make decisions about your career.
Book a promotion strategy call, and we’ll figure out your next move together.
Where to Start This Week
Run the language audit. Open your last three status updates or one on one notes, count the shrinking words, and rewrite one line to say why the work mattered. Four minutes.
Prep two lines before your next meeting. One question you could ask, one update you could offer. You do not have to use either, but having them in front of you is what stops the freeze.
Send one message to a potential visibility partner. Someone at your level who you respect. Offer to name their work in rooms they are not in, and ask them to do the same for you.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I become more visible at work without bragging? Start by sharing information and offering help rather than promoting yourself, because most of what reads as visibility in a meeting is not self-promotion at all. Susan M. Barber found this by watching the people who were getting noticed at her company and realizing they were simply talking about their projects and offering to help, not boasting. From there, the two practical moves are preparing one question before a meeting instead of hunting for the perfect one in the moment, and describing your work in terms of why it mattered rather than what tasks you completed.
Why am I not getting promoted even though I work hard? Hard work alone does not get you promoted because the people making the decision only know about the work they have heard described. Susan M. Barber was named top talent and still received feedback that she was not adding value, because she sat quietly in leadership meetings and never talked about what she and her team were doing. The gap is almost never the quality of the work. It is that the work is invisible to the rooms where promotion decisions get made.
What is minimizing language at work? Minimizing language is the habit of describing your own work in words that shrink it, like “it’s no big deal,” “that’s just part of my job,” or “it was pretty straightforward.” It happens most often with work that came easily to you or that took a long time, and it teaches the people listening that your contribution was routine. The fix is not to exaggerate, it is to state accurately what the work was and why it mattered.
How should I respond when someone compliments my work? Say thank you and add one line about why it mattered, rather than deflecting. Susan M. Barber points out that when you dismiss a compliment, you are effectively dismissing the person who took the time to give it, and they may be confused enough that they do not offer one again. A simple response like “thank you, I’m glad you noticed, the team put in a huge effort to get here this quickly” accepts the compliment and reinforces the value at the same time.
What is the VALUE framework for visibility? The VALUE framework is a weekly planning practice from Susan M. Barber’s workbook Your Journey to Visibility, where V is the visibility opportunities you already have that week, A is what you want to amplify, L is the language you need to sound strategic, U is what is unique about you or your team, and E is evaluating at the end of the week. You set up the first four on Monday and do the evaluation on Friday. The evaluation step also produces a running list of accomplishments you can use in status reports and performance reviews.
How do I speak up in meetings when I freeze? Prepare in advance instead of trying to think of something in the moment, because freezing usually comes from trying to compose the perfect question live. Susan M. Barber reviews the agenda beforehand and writes down a question she could ask or a point she could add on to. The lowest-friction option is building on someone else’s contribution, which sounds like “I love that you shared that, could you add a little more detail, because I’m curious about that.”
What is a visibility partnership? A visibility partnership is an agreement between two or more colleagues to advocate for each other’s accomplishments, in meetings and outside them. In a meeting, one person finishes their update and hands the floor over by naming something the other person did, and the other returns the favor. It works because most people who struggle to promote themselves have no difficulty at all promoting someone else. Susan M. Barber taught this to three women at one company, and all three were promoted within about a year and have since been promoted again.
Who is Susan M. Barber? Susan M. Barber is a leadership visibility expert, executive coach, and former Fortune 500 IT director who helps high-performing leaders communicate their value and increase their influence. She spent years at Kraft in sales, supply chain, food service and eventually IT leadership, where a mentor’s blunt feedback about her lack of visibility became the turning point in her career. She is the author of The Visibility Factor and the workbook Your Journey to Visibility, and she hosts The Visibility Factor podcast.
🎧 Listen to my conversation with Susan M. Barber: How to Be Visible at Work Without It Feeling Like Bragging
📺 Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/d4DVnPyTgKQ
📝 Read the deeper, more personal version on Substack
Full Transcript
Full transcript of my conversation with Susan M. Barber on the From a Woman to a Leader podcast. Lightly edited for readability — filler words and false starts removed, wording otherwise unchanged.
Named top talent, and told she was not visible enough
Limor Bergman Gross (01:42): Hi Susan, how are you?
Susan M. Barber (01:44): I am great, I’m so excited to be here and talk to you today.
Limor Bergman Gross (01:50): How you went from top talent, being told you’re not visible enough. So what, can you describe kind of what happened in that moment and how did it land for you?
Susan M. Barber (02:06): It didn’t land well, I’ll tell you that to begin with.
Susan M. Barber (02:33): Yeah, so as you mentioned, I was considered a top talent. I was part of what they had as a leadership program that was only for the top people in IT at the time. And so of course, I think I’m doing all the right things. And every week at that point, we were meeting as a leadership team and in the extended teams. And I felt like I am not part of the executive team. I don’t need to sit at the table. That’s for them. I’m just going to sit over here. And if there’s a question for me, I’ll answer it. But what I didn’t realize is I was sending a subtle message that I felt like I didn’t belong at the table, that I really didn’t have anything to contribute. I had no value to add.
Susan M. Barber (02:33): And that’s basically what she was telling me in this one-on-one with my mentor is, hey, you’re not being visible. You’re not talking about the work you’re doing. You’re not adding any value. Why do you even come to the meeting? So of course, being top talent in one minute and then hearing all of that the next makes you feel like, my God, how did I miss? How did I miss it? That’s what was in my head at first, is how did I miss that I wasn’t doing the things I thought that she thought I should be doing and that I should have been doing.
Susan M. Barber (02:33): And so I got a little defensive, not going to lie. I was feeling like, what is she talking about? How is this happening? Your brain is just trying to process it all. And I said one thing to her and then I realized quickly that this is not going to help you. Sue, you should just probably thank her for the feedback and walk out the door as soon as you can get out the door. And that’s what I did. And then I spent the rest of that day really thinking about what she said. Was it really accurate in my opinion?
“You were hired for a reason”
Susan M. Barber (02:33): And then I went and met with another mentor of mine, a business mentor, and she gave me some great advice. She said, you were hired for a reason. You were hired to bring a lot of information and details and share things with your leadership team. And if you’re not doing it and they make a bad decision, that’s on you. That’s not on them. And you’re also hiding your team and yourself from letting people know what you’re doing and the value that you’re adding. So it was a big wake up call and a pivotal moment, obviously, because that set me off on this journey of how can you be visible in a way that’s authentic to you and it’s not bragging. And I think that’s the only way I had seen it before. And that was just not who I was.
Limor Bergman Gross (04:35): Yeah. And I relate to that so deeply because I’m exactly like you. I used to kind of work in the shadows and thinking, yeah, I don’t need to speak. I don’t need to say things unless I’m being asked. And it also hurt me in my career as well. And that’s why I think it’s so important for women to realize that we have to speak up. So what would you say to someone listening to us and saying, okay, I feel very uncomfortable with visibility? I want to be authentic as you said, I don’t want to brag.
How do you get visible without it feeling like bragging?
Limor Bergman Gross (05:16): How do you do that? What worked for you? What worked for you that was still authentic to you, wasn’t bragging, but helped you be visible?
Susan M. Barber (05:24): I think the first couple of things I did was observe other people. So what were they doing that was getting them noticed, getting them visibility? And I realized that they were just offering to help. They were just sharing information about what they were doing at a project. They weren’t probably bragging like I thought that they were, although there were some that were definitely doing that.
Susan M. Barber (05:54): And then I realized that part of the challenge for me was in the moment of being in a meeting and trying to come up with the perfect question. I got in my head too much and I just got in panic mode and I couldn’t come up with the right question. So I started preparing in advance of what’s on the agenda, what are some things that I think I could ask about, and or even just add on to someone else’s question. I think that’s really an easy way to do it. Someone brings something up and you can say, I love that you shared that. Could you add a little more detail to that because I’m curious about whatever that is. And the important thing is to just get your voice out there.
Susan M. Barber (05:54): And it doesn’t have to be perfect. And I was the queen of perfection for such a long time that I had to let go of that crown for sure, because it just wasn’t serving me. It wasn’t helping me. And it’s putting so much pressure, especially on women who are already navigating so much at work and at home and kids and everything else, to try to be perfect. It’s just not possible. It’s an illusion, right? It’s not even possible to be perfect.
Limor Bergman Gross (06:46): Yeah, no one is perfect. We know that but still it’s hard, right? Because we tend to, at least I fear that, I will say something stupid. People will think I’m stupid. You talk about kind of blockers that women have about visibility and limiting beliefs. So other than perfectionism, what else, from your experience or from people you work with, are mainly limiting us?
Minimizing language: why “it’s no big deal” costs you
Susan M. Barber (07:23): I think it’s we’re avoiding the spotlight a lot of times. We feel like that’s maybe seen as bragging, right? If we try to talk about something we’re doing. And so what I found that I was doing, which I just wrote a post about this, which seemed to really strike a lot of people as something that they were doing as well, which is minimizing our work. So saying, that’s no big deal. That’s just part of my job. It’s no big deal to do that, even though we spent two years on it, it’s no big deal.
Susan M. Barber (07:23): And that’s kind of ridiculous, right? When you think about it, if you spent two years of your life on something, it’s a big deal. And so I realized that I was using minimizing language when I talked about what I was doing or my team was doing, which isn’t serving them or me. And I realized that I was dismissing compliments and saying, oh, don’t say that to me. No, it’s no big deal for me to do that. It comes really easy for me.
Susan M. Barber (08:23): Well, that’s where all of this stuff kind of stems from. When things are easy for us, we dismiss it as no big deal instead of saying, thank you, I really appreciate that you noticed that. Or when we’re doing great work, say, I’m so glad you noticed because the team has really put in such a big effort and I’m so excited that we’ve gotten to this point so quickly. That’s all you’re doing. You’re just flipping it around a little bit to really demonstrate that it is valuable.
Susan M. Barber (08:23): Because what I learned from one of my coaches early on, which was really hard to hear, but very necessary, which is if you’re not valuing yourself, how can others value you? And that was hard to hear, but when I heard it, I thought, my gosh, she’s so right. I’m not talking about the things I’m doing in a valuable way, so how can other people see it that way?
Limor Bergman Gross (09:07): Yeah, we tend to think that what comes naturally to us is not a big deal. It’s obvious, but it’s not.
Why deflecting a compliment dismisses the person giving it
Susan M. Barber (09:18): And other people aren’t always good at these things. And that’s why they’re telling you that they’re admiring you for something that you do. And I think the other thing that helped me, and I hope it helps people in the audience, is when you kind of dismiss someone’s compliment, it’s almost like you’re kind of dismissing them. And they took the time to actually share it with you. So just say thank you, because they might be confused and frustrated and like, what happened? I tried to give her a compliment. She just basically didn’t even want it. So they’re confused by that, and so you have to accept it and recognize that you’re making it about you and it’s really just something nice that they said to you.
Limor Bergman Gross (09:57): Yeah, why do you think it’s so hard for us to get compliments?
Where the conditioning to stay quiet comes from
Susan M. Barber (10:01): I feel like it’s conditioning that we’ve had for years and years and years, right? Especially women, like, don’t speak up, sit in the back of the room, be quiet. And I just think it feels like we’re standing out in some way that we’re not supposed to because we’ve been told not to. And I think it’s recognizing the fact that we have a lot to offer. But when you’re told not to speak up and keep quiet and stay in the back of the room, well, then it’s hard for you to do that, right?
Susan M. Barber (10:31): It’s completely normal that people are struggling with this. And once I figured out that you can do this in a way that feels authentic, I thought, how many people do I need to tell, because I want everybody to be able to do this. I don’t want anyone to get that kind of feedback that I got and then feel like, wow, do I even have a career anymore? Should I leave? Should I stay? It was a really hard thing to hear, but I’m so grateful that she told me.
Limor Bergman Gross (10:55): For sure. I would say, if you really tend to minimize yourself, so I’m saying that to our listeners, ask other people for feedback about you. Sometimes it helps hearing that from someone else, and things that you think are obvious, people can highlight about you and you say, huh, someone else thinks it’s actually a strength.
Listen to how you actually talk about your own work
Susan M. Barber (11:23): Yes, because we just don’t see it that way. One of the things I do with people, I hope this helps people listening, but I’ll have them take their phones or record meetings that they’re in and listen to the words that they use when they talk about themselves, their team or their work. Because sometimes without thinking about it, when you’re not really minding what you’re saying and you’re just saying things from autopilot, you probably are not saying things in the best way to show your value and to talk about the impact that you’re making. You are more or less giving just a list of things that you’ve done.
Susan M. Barber (11:23): So think of a one-on-one with a manager. A lot of people just go in and say, we did this, we did this, we did this, we did this, but don’t really talk about why it matters. And that’s just a little bit extra that you need to add, but you’re trying to set a good impression with your manager or other people. And so it doesn’t take that much to do it. It’s just being intentional and maybe thinking about what you could do to add value and talk about it a little bit more.
If you manage people, you are their public relations
Limor Bergman Gross (12:22): Yeah, and I think also what you mentioned about it’s not just about you, it’s about your teams. And if you don’t present your teams in the best way, it hurts them as well.
Susan M. Barber (12:34): Yeah, I learned that lesson the hard way too. So I had a person that was on my team who had come from another group and was struggling a bit. And so I made a comment to my manager at the time about, I just don’t know if she’s going to be able to turn it around. She’s kind of struggling with all of this. And three, four months later, she started to get it. She started to come around, right? And so I said, she’s really doing well. And he’s like, she is? I mean, you basically said three months ago she wasn’t getting it. She wasn’t going to be able to turn it around. What changed?
Susan M. Barber (12:34): So I realized really quickly that everything I say either creates a positive or negative impression of my team and myself. And so I had to step back and be very mindful of that. Because especially think about if you want to promote someone, you are the public relations for your person and you need to be talking about the great things that they’re doing, not making it up of course, but really being intentional about sharing the things that are going to be noticed, that could be noticed by other people, that really help kind of make the case for why you want to promote someone. So that was a valuable lesson for me to learn the hard way, that what I say has either good credibility for someone else or not. And I have to be intentional and really pay attention to what I say about people.
Limor Bergman Gross (13:49): Yeah, that’s true. And sometimes we tend to be very criticizing, right? We hold high bars on ourselves and then we hold very high bars on others, and then that can impact them and their growth as well. So we have to try to be fair and say, okay, how do I measure compared to other people and how they measure?
Susan M. Barber (14:13): And they may be struggling, and you can talk to your manager about that and say, they’re struggling a lot, but here’s what I’m going to do to help them get back on track. And that helps your manager know that you’ve got it, right? That you’re taking care of it, that you’re going to figure out what the challenge is and turn them around if you can. And maybe you can at some point, and you have to have a difficult conversation. But I think it’s important to demonstrate that you’re not just kind of dropping the ball in your manager’s lap and saying, here, I’ve got all these complaints for you. That just doesn’t really set a good impression of you.
Limor Bergman Gross (14:45): For sure. Usually I would recommend coming with problems and solutions together, right?
Susan M. Barber (14:50): 100 percent, yes, exactly.
The VALUE framework for weekly visibility planning
Limor Bergman Gross (14:56): So how do you make yourself visible? Can you give us a framework or something our listeners can take and start implementing today?
Susan M. Barber (15:10): Yeah. So in the new workbook, it’s called Your Journey to Visibility, that came out last October. And there’s a framework in there that I call VALUE, which is an acronym. Love a good acronym. It’s easy to remember. And so that framework allows you to really be intentional with your time. So the V stands for visibility, which is what kind of opportunities do I have for visibility this week? I don’t want you to create new ones necessarily unless you have the opportunity to, but it’s what meetings am I in that I could speak up, what one-on-ones do I have? What other opportunities could I create if I have the time and I can make that happen?
Susan M. Barber (15:40): A is what do I want to amplify? So what messages, what information, what project updates, some things about you or your team? L is what language do I need to use to be strategic, to show that I’m thinking about things in a bigger way, to help people understand it? U is what is unique? So I want people to celebrate what’s unique about them. And I think sometimes we also minimize those things. And so really talking about maybe some of your strengths that you have or that your team has or some of the things that you’re doing to drive agreement or negotiations, whatever that might be.
Susan M. Barber (15:40): And then you do those first four throughout the week. You set it up maybe on Sunday or Monday morning, work on those. And then E, you do at the end of the week, which is evaluate. And you look at all the things that you said you were gonna do. How did it go? How did you do? And maybe there’s some other things that happened that were great too. But you also look for missed opportunities, some things that happened that you weren’t prepared for, that you didn’t think about in advance, that you didn’t say in the way that you really hoped, but you could do better next time.
Susan M. Barber (15:40): And so that E category allows you to set up the week after what you’re going to do in your value plan. But it also has a list of things that you can now share with your manager, you can use in your performance reports or your status reports. And it’s just a great way to start to be intentional behind what you’re doing every week. It just automatically increases your visibility because of that.
Keep a log, because you will not remember at review time
Limor Bergman Gross (17:14): Definitely. What you mentioned here, it’s very important to write yourself down, right? The things that you’re doing. Because what happens a lot of times, we get to the evaluation period and then we don’t remember all the things we’ve done. And we think, but we cannot remember everything, right? And we expect our manager to remember and they even know less than we do about everything that we’re doing.
Susan M. Barber (17:28): No. We think we’re going to, but we just don’t.
Limor Bergman Gross (17:43): So it helps us keeping some kind of log of everything we’re doing so we can use that later on.
Susan M. Barber (17:48): Yeah, I think the great thing about the workbook for me was that it allowed me to take all of these things that I’ve been working with clients on and turn them into frameworks that people can use. And the original book, The Visibility Factor, has hundreds and hundreds of ideas based on your strengths, based on what you’re good at, that you really want to dive into deeper and try. But these are all little experiments. I don’t want them to feel like a really big thing that you’re trying to change about yourself. It’s, I’m going to put together a list of questions before a meeting. I’m going to make sure that when someone else talks, I’m going to add on a question.
The visibility partnership
Susan M. Barber (18:23): Another thing that I think might help people, especially if they’re more shy or introverted, is the visibility partnership. Which is, let’s just say that you and I are in a meeting and you get the opportunity to speak first. And so you might say at the end of whatever you’re sharing, Limor told me this thing the other day that I think would be really important for us to hear here. And then you pass the mic, so to speak, over to me and then I share what it is. And then I’ll do the same for you. And then outside of meetings, we’re also talking about each other’s accomplishments and results to other people.
Susan M. Barber (18:53): So I want us to be able to advocate for ourselves, but when it’s a struggle and it’s not as easy, it’s not easy for everybody in the beginning, then I want you to have a way to have somebody who can help you, and you help each other, and you have this kind of agreement between each other that you’re going to find ways to get each other’s accomplishments in front of other people. And I have done this at one company. I had three people who did it for each other and they were in one of my first classes after the first book came out and they got promoted pretty quickly, about a year after they went through everything. And then they’ve now since been promoted again. So I know that it works really well. You just have to be intentional. So using the VALUE framework, building something like this visibility partnership can just help you start to do that more quickly and accelerate the visibility that you really want to get.
Limor Bergman Gross (19:47): I love that partnership, that’s a great idea. Because a lot of times it’s hard, right? Doing it only by yourself.
Susan M. Barber (19:57): Yes. And your biggest fear is someone’s going to ask you to speak in a meeting. And you’re like, my God, please don’t ask me. Don’t ever, everybody looks down. Don’t pick on me, right? But when you start to get more comfortable with this and really recognize the value that you bring, and I know people struggle with that in the beginning because they can’t see it for themselves, but when you just even write out a list of accomplishments you’ve had over the last month, you’ll probably surprise yourself. We just take them for granted too much.
Susan M. Barber (20:28): And I want people to really slow down and reflect on where they’re spending their time, because you’re already doing a lot of work. Let’s take advantage of that and get some credit for what you’re doing instead of just kind of brushing it under the carpet, so to speak, and no one knows. Managers are busy. Leaders are busy right now. You have to find ways to get it in front of them.
What makes you unique when you feel like you do not belong
Limor Bergman Gross (20:48): Yeah. You mentioned in your framework unique, and this is something interesting to me because each one of us is unique, and one of the challenges I faced is that I try to compare myself to others and I felt different and I felt maybe I’m not as good. Can you think of some examples of what could be unique with you, especially as a woman, someone that is relatively quiet, that people may not think of as something big or worth mentioning?
Susan M. Barber (21:21): There’s so many. I love that you brought this up because I feel like it’s really a great area to dive deep into for yourself. I have a whole section on this in the workbook too. But one of the things that I think is important is just taking a little bit of an inventory of what have you done in your life, right? Where have you lived? Because if you’ve lived in different places, you have different perspectives. If you have been at other companies, you’ve gotten different perspectives. Maybe the industries are different. The work that you were doing is different.
Susan M. Barber (21:21): For me, I’ll just use my own example. So I was in IT, felt like I didn’t belong there because my degrees are marketing and management. And so I would constantly say, I didn’t belong at the table. I had imposter syndrome. I would hold myself back. What I came to realize though, is I actually started with a company in sales. So I had sales, then I went into supply chain, then I went into food service. So I had all of this pure business experience at Kraft that allowed me to be able to have a different perspective when I sat at the table. And those people didn’t have that. So I want you to not compare and try to be like them, because the more you can stand out for what you bring, the better off you are, because they’re not going to be able to do that.
Susan M. Barber (22:41): Another way that I like people to think about this is if you’re going in for an interview, you’re going to automatically think, okay, what can I do to set myself apart from another candidate, even though you don’t know who those people are? You’re going to try to set your best foot forward and say, here’s the things that I have to offer that I think are going to be immediately beneficial to this company. We don’t do that when we’re not in an interview. So what if we did? What if we started to think about what is it that I have to offer?
Susan M. Barber (22:41): Another example I have is one of the people that I was coaching. She’s now a VP of leadership development and culture and engagement, but she came into that company from an educational background. And so she struggled because she didn’t grow up in corporate. And so she kept setting herself apart. And I said, but you have all of this leadership experience and all of the things that you did when you were in that environment that you bring to this world. But she didn’t want to talk about it. And I said, let’s talk about it. Let’s let them know that you’re not just coming here with nothing. You’re not starting from scratch. You’ve got all of this experience.
“I belonged at that table”
Susan M. Barber (24:00): And I think that’s what happens. If we start something new, we almost feel like we have to hide or keep in the background the other things that we’ve done that are great, that actually could help it be seen in a better way. Because I had been in this educational background, for her example, I learned the importance of collaboration. I learned the importance of engagement with all levels of the organization. So I think there’s so many things that we can talk about in a positive way and how it helps us.
Susan M. Barber (24:30): And so that really helped me when I learned how to do that for myself and see that I had a lot more to offer than I was giving myself credit for. And I belonged at that table and I belonged in the conversations. And it really changed everything because I just saw myself then as an equal, not as somebody who didn’t belong. And that’s one of the concepts I teach too, because it doesn’t matter where people are in the org chart. I really don’t think that that has to be something that you constantly think about. It’s more like, how can I be an equal in this conversation? Because your confidence will be so much bigger, you will say things in a whole different way than you would if you felt like they were too high up on the ladder, so to speak, and that you didn’t have enough experience to contribute to this conversation. Everybody does. You just have to believe in yourself and recognize that you do.
Hierarchy, and the gift of a fresh perspective
Limor Bergman Gross (25:04): Definitely. This is a problem that a lot of people have, with hierarchy, right? I think actually, Sue, that the younger generation may be less so than us. And now I think it’s becoming less of a factor. And I worked at a company where you could talk to the CEO like you could talk to anyone. And yes, I really want to emphasize that every person has something to add and a unique perspective. No matter if you just graduated and that’s your first job, you have something unique. You bring a fresh perspective, maybe because of your young age and lack of experience, and actually bring something that someone who has been there, done that for many years, doesn’t see anymore.
Susan M. Barber (25:54): Well, it’s good, because when you’re in a company for a really long time, it’s how we’ve always done it. So whenever people come into a company, I’ll say, you have a gift now. You have the gift of fresh perspective. You’re seeing things that they’ve been doing for years and years and years, and you may have a new way to offer to do it. You may see something that isn’t working right that you could help. It’s just really coming in, knowing that you have something to offer and being willing to speak up and add it. And if they choose not to do it, that’s fine. It may not be something they do until five years from now, but at least you are using your voice and speaking up, and that’s important.
Labels, introversion and networking with three to five people
Limor Bergman Gross (26:34): Definitely. And I would also say ask yourself what kind of uniqueness I bring and look at it as an advantage rather than a disadvantage. Because I used to think, because I’m quiet and different and a woman, that it’s a disadvantage, but actually I found to appreciate the qualities that I have. So try to ask yourself, how is it a good thing that I’m different?
Susan M. Barber (26:59): Yeah. And try not to use it as a label. So I’m going to use introvert as the word for me. I’m an introvert. I can’t go network at these places. It’s too much. I’m not good at it. Whatever little story I told myself. And then I realized I was using that almost as a crutch to keep myself from going to things. So look and see if you’re using something as a label that keeps you out of visibility, that keeps you hidden, and really explore if you could just reframe that in another way.
Susan M. Barber (27:30): So if I go to a networking opportunity, I don’t have to go to meet 150 people. I only have to meet three to five. And three to five people for an introvert is not as big, right? It’s not as scary. So I realized after I would leave these networking events, that wasn’t that bad. What was I freaking out about at the beginning? And I didn’t need to do that anymore. So just check in and see if you may be holding onto a label because it helps you stay safe.
Speaking at conferences when it is still uncomfortable
Limor Bergman Gross (27:58): That’s very important. Thank you for saying that. I force myself to speak at conferences and go to conferences several times a year. And that’s always very uncomfortable to me.
Susan M. Barber (28:14): Same. Yeah, I remember my very first conference while I was still at Kraft and my boss said, so next year you’re going to speak at this conference about what we’re doing with, we were doing a master data program. And I said, I, what? I just remember holding myself like, what? I said, I don’t think I’m the right person. You should probably do this. She’s like, no, you’re doing it. And I said, oh my God. So I had a whole year to think about it, right? But it actually went really great. And a lot of people were glad that we did it.
Susan M. Barber (28:48): So I think it’s just getting to the fact that I couldn’t do what I’m doing now and I know you couldn’t either. We need to talk about what we want to do to help people, and if we don’t talk about it, no one will know. So it’s important that we do it. It doesn’t mean that it’s easy for us, and I think that’s what actually makes us very relatable, because we have vulnerability to share with people, that this isn’t easy for everyone and it doesn’t come naturally for everyone. But you do get more used to it, and you get to a place where, you know what, I have something important to say and I have to share it.
Limor Bergman Gross (29:19): Yeah, I think it’s like training a muscle in the gym, right? The more you do it, it becomes easier. It doesn’t mean it’s easy, but it becomes easier. Anything else that you want to share?
The career clarity framework: needs, nice to have, deal breakers
Susan M. Barber (29:32): Oh wow, there’s so many things. I think one other thing I’ll share is there’s another framework in the workbook called the career clarity framework. And what I’m finding is that a lot of people struggle with enough clarity about what they want to do next. And that was something, I just assumed people I knew would know what I want to do next. And of course they’re not mind readers. So if you are struggling with having a career conversation about what you might want to do next for your next role, your future roles, wherever you want to go in the future, do this framework and it’s really simple.
Susan M. Barber (29:32): I’ll just tell you the highlights. There’s three columns. The first column is needs. The next column is nice to have. And the third column is deal breakers. And what I want you to do is think about what is it that I really love to do? What do I need this role to have? I want to have people management. I want to have influencing opportunities. I want to be able to sit at the table. I want a role that’s going to stretch me in a bigger way or develop me. And nice to have might be some things like, I want to make sure that I’m in front of the customers on a regular basis, or I want to make sure that I’m working with other functional groups in the organization.
Susan M. Barber (29:32): But the deal breaker column is important. I want to make sure that I’m not traveling more than 25 percent. I want to make sure my compensation is this. I want to make sure that it has an opportunity for advancement beyond this role. So whatever your deal breaker column has, it’s really kind of a defining moment there to help you make a decision. And you can change this at any time. It’s very iterative. You just keep adding to it or taking things off of it depending on where you are. But the goal of it is to let you make a decision about what you want to do next.
Susan M. Barber (31:14): So you might put something in that deal breaker column and then they offer you this role and it’s got everything but it does have 50 percent travel. Okay, I said I didn’t want to travel more than 25 percent but it offers so many things that I’m willing to do it. That’s a conscious decision, versus in the moment it might just be that you make a decision that is not good for you because you’re emotionally excited about it and you’re so thrilled and you get a little bit impetuous and you’re like, my gosh, I just want to go do it. I just want to make it happen.
Susan M. Barber (31:14): At least you’re slowing down to ask yourself, is it the right decision? Because we’re all at different stages of our lives at different times. And so you have to look at your priorities, your values. What is it going to bring to you? And depending on where you are, family wise, if you have little kids, that also adds to it, right? How much am I going to be away from home? How am I going to make sure that I do all the things that I want to do in my life personally and professionally? So it just allows you a way to slow down and reflect. So it’s a really easy framework to use.
Where to find Susan M. Barber
Limor Bergman Gross (32:18): Wonderful. And before we end today, how can our listeners find you?
Susan M. Barber (32:25): I am on LinkedIn, so you can absolutely find me there, Susan Barber. I think my handle might be Susan Barber Coaching, but you can absolutely find me out there. And then my website is SusanMBarber.com. So I’d love to connect with anyone. You can check out the books. They’re anywhere online. Then the podcast is called The Visibility Factor Podcast. So I would love to hear from any of your listeners.
Limor Bergman Gross (32:50): Fantastic. Thank you so much, Sue, for being here today. It was a pleasure.
Susan M. Barber (32:53): Thank you. Thanks for having me.