When Humility Becomes Invisibility

Early in my career as a business controller, I thought being good at my job meant finding problems and quietly solving them. Ideally, nobody would even notice there had been a problem. I was quite proud of that.

When I was told I needed to make my work more visible, I understood the logic. But it sounded like being asked to sell myself.

I had been taught to be humble, to avoid talking too much about my achievements and to let good work speak for itself. I wanted to grow professionally, but I didn’t want to become someone constantly saying, “Look what I did.”

Those lessons shaped how I heard the request to be more visible. Someone brought up with different expectations might have seen it as a normal part of professional life. What counts as showing off depends partly on the culture around us.

There are other reasons for staying quiet too. In a workplace where drawing attention to a problem brings blame or a harsh response, keeping a low profile can feel safer.

A Reason to Share

For me, talking about my work became easier when I could see a use for the information.

If I investigated a recurring problem and found a solution, keeping that process to myself meant a colleague might encounter the same thing the following month and have to start from zero. My manager might never even know the problem existed.

Explaining what had caused it and how I had dealt with it could save someone else time. It could also help us understand what was happening across the team. I felt comfortable sharing something that could be useful beyond the work I had already done.

There was a benefit for me too. People understood my contribution better, which mattered when new responsibilities or opportunities came along.

Some teams make this easier by building visibility into their routine. Stand-up meetings, for example, create a regular moment to share progress and raise difficulties. I imagine I would have spent less energy wondering whether I was showing off if talking about my work had simply been part of the team’s routine.

The Effort People Couldn’t See

Years later, I realised I had been doing something similar in a much more personal part of my life.

I live with a visual limitation. For years, people could see me studying, working, becoming a mother and changing careers without necessarily seeing the effort involved in compensating for what I couldn’t see.

My instinct was often to just manage. I didn’t want to complain, and I didn’t want my limitation to become the first thing people saw when they looked at me. Yet I began to wonder how someone could understand my experience if I kept leaving that part of it out.

As with my work, it helped to think about what another person needed to know to understand what they couldn’t see. Explaining why something that looked straightforward could take considerable effort gave them a fuller picture.

It also helped me give proper value to the effort of compensating, something I had become used to keeping to myself. I could still choose how much I wanted to share.

I still value humility. Looking back, I think I often confused it with taking up as little space as possible.