31 Oct Visibility In A New Role
How To Raise Visibility In A New Role
So, you’ve got the job you wanted, and you’ve celebrated appropriately. Hopefully, you have allowed yourself to feel good after all your hard work. I do hope you have, as you’ll soon be onto your next step: that new role.
Many of us are quite happy to slip into a new role. We soak it up, learn everyone’s names and slowly grow our visibility. Still, there comes a point for everyone when we need to get noticed, be visible. I hate to say it, but the sooner you do so, the more impact you will have. The more seriously other people will take you.
Raise visibility in a new role sooner rather than later
The problem with slipping in quietly and planning to make your mark when you’re more settled is that you may well miss your chance to make an impression. Many leadership and management experts talk about making this impression within the first one hundred days.
Why one hundred? It’s a figure used to describe US president Franklin Roosevelt’s first 100 days in office. During this time, he made sweeping changes and implemented big projects, most notably the New Deal. Since then it has been a term, in fact a measurement, on which every President is judged. From there, it has made its way into management and leadership speak, spawned hundreds of thousands of books and articles, and become an entity in its own right.
Vulnerable in their visibility
I’m currently working with a number of clients who have one thing in common: they are in the early days of a new role and feeling the pressure. It’s vulnerable place to be, and they are feeling anxious.
Some organisations are pressuring them to prove that they are the right person for the role and that the faith put in them will not go amiss. Others are leaving my clients to sink or swim, and it’s my clients choice to be clearly seen and taken seriously at this point.
Coping with it all
You may may also be taking on a new company culture learning the ropes of a role that is beyond your comfort zone. Perhaps you have left friends behind or still feel like you are coping with the fall-out of a merger, or even something that happened to you in a previous job.
How to get through those 100 days in a new role
As with anything, you will become more competent the more you do it, and the same goes for raising your profile and being more visible in your new role. Here are some observations and pieces of advice that has worked for my own clients.
- Do remember that even though we may hate showing vulnerability it does bring people towards you. Ask someone who are the people you need to to know, what’s the best way to work with xyz etc.?
- You could look at your first few weeks as a time of grace rather than pressure: time to learn about the organisation and culture while they get to know about you
- When anxiety flares up take a break. Go for a walk on your lunch break, connect with people over a coffee, do some breathing exercises in the bathroom
- Think smalls steps rather than big sweeping moves at the beginning, and you won’t trigger people’s fear of change
- Have that discussion. What are the organisation’s expectations of your first few months? Rather than think the worst, ask and find out exactly what is expected of you
- You don’t have to do everything. Convert everyone on your team to manage the strategic goal and make it a shared mission
- Create your plan of action for those 100 days. Include clear milestones and points for recognition or celebration, including others. This isn’t all about you
- Keep tabs on your mindset. If you think it’s going to be difficult, it will be. Reframe this as a challenge. Think about when you’ve done hard things in your life and remind yourself that you can do hard things
Work with me, your career and visibility coach
Working with a careers and visibility coach like myself will help you maintain momentum and build confidence at this time, while keeping you focused and upbeat. Book a call in with me to dicuss if we would be a good fit to work together.
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