Work
Managing Visibility
Managing Visibility means taking a stance on your values, your principles, your beliefs. Even when it is not easy... especially when it is challenging.
Determining how you see yourself and how others may see you can have a powerful impact on your opportunities, organizations, and career. As you engage in this process, it’s important to connect with the aspects of your identity that both empower you and make you feel vulnerable. To fully grasp the concept of visibility, two conversations will occur: one that’s internal and one that’s external.
How do I identify and live my values? This discussion is an opportunity for you to contemplate your self-determination and gain more insight into your strengths and possibilities for growth. Questions in this self-exploration may include:
- Who am I?
- What do I stand for and what is important to me?
- How can I leverage my strengths in a way that will help me attain my critical goals?
- How do my education, experiences, and perspective allow me to contribute to organizations in ways that are important to me?
- Where are areas in my repertoire of strengths that can be more fully developed?
Workshop exercise: The Implicit Association Test (IAT) provides an opportunity to tap into the unspoken assumptions that you make about people and that they may make about you.
How am I leveraging my relationships with colleagues, managers, coworkers, and peers? This discussion is an opportunity for you to examine how your professional relationships enhance your leadership path. Questions in this external exploration may include:
- Who is in my network of support and who can I engage with to get the support I need?
- What do I stand for in an organizational context? Who am I in this space?
- How do I avoid exploiting others when managing my visibility?
- How can I best be supported when setting my goals or determining my next steps?
Workshop exercise: The Social Identity Profile (SIP) exercise provides an opportunity for you to focus on several of your own social identities and to understand how the resulting group memberships inform your behavior, feelings, and attitudes, both generally and in specific settings.
In your Action Plan and in other interactive activities, you will be invited to engage in these internal and external conversations as they relate to your visibility. These interactive exercises will also enable a discussion about the challenges of being too visible (hyper-visible) or not visible enough (in-visible). We’ll explore the concept of “tempered visibility”—which involves aspects of both standing out and blending in—and identify actions we can take to temper it.
Through this workshop, we will learn about the 3 guiding principles for managing visibility:
- Seeing your image as a vessel for reaching a critical leadership goal, i.e., guiding interactions such that aspects of self are not exploited nor will they exploit others.
- Taking ownership of who you are, i.e., creating a more accurate and complex understanding of your identity.
- Understanding functional semi-consciousness, i.e., clarifying what level of attention will be beneficial in crafting your image.
To bring this workshop to your organization, virtually or live, contact Stacy >
Managing Visibility Video Series
These videos are the first of a six-part series. If you enjoyed watching them and are interested in getting access to the full series, or bringing Stacy to your organization to deliver this workshop, virtually or live, contact Stacy >
