My favorite television show of all time is Seinfeld. I’ve seen every episode more times than I can count, and there are certain episodes that still make me laugh no matter how many times I watch them.
One of those episodes is “The Pick,” where Jerry gets accused of picking his nose by his girlfriend after she catches a quick glimpse of him in the car. The problem is that Jerry wasn’t actually picking his nose. He was scratching the side of it. Unfortunately for Jerry, once she believed she saw it, the damage was done.
The entire episode revolves around Jerry trying to convince everyone that they didn’t actually see what they thought they saw. He becomes obsessed with explaining the situation, recreating the hand movements, and defending himself against a crime he never committed. Turns out, nobody cares. Everyone has already made up their mind. They saw what they thought they saw, and that became the story.
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The funny thing is that this happens in our careers all the time.
People are constantly making assumptions about what we’re doing, what we’re capable of, how hard we’re working, and where we’re headed. The challenge is that most of them only see tiny fragments of the full picture. They see the meeting you missed, but not the three hours you spent solving a problem. They see you leave the office early, but they don’t see you answering emails at ten o’clock at night. They see a promotion, a new title, a successful launch, or a new client, but they rarely see the years of work that created the outcome.
The mistake a lot of professionals make is assuming that everyone else somehow sees all the effort happening behind the scenes. We convince ourselves that our work speaks for itself. We tell ourselves that results will eventually become obvious. We assume managers, executives, colleagues, and decision makers are paying attention to all the little things we’re doing every day.
Most of the time, they’re not.
Everyone is busy living inside their own version of the story. They’re dealing with deadlines, projects, family issues, budgets, meetings, and a hundred competing priorities. They aren’t sitting around carefully documenting your contributions. They aren’t tracking your wins the way you are. They aren’t following your career as closely as you think they are.
This is why visibility matters so much. You have to tell people what you’re working on. You have to communicate your accomplishments. You have to share your goals. You have to advocate for yourself. Some people hear that and immediately think it sounds arrogant. In reality, it’s clarity. There is a massive difference between bragging and making sure people understand the value you’re creating.
I’ve coached plenty of people who felt overlooked, underappreciated, or frustrated that opportunities kept going to someone else. Then I ask a simple question: “Does your leadership team actually know what you want?” The answer is shocking more often than it should be. They want promotions but haven’t expressed interest. They want leadership opportunities but stay silent. They want larger projects but assume someone will magically notice.
It stretches long beyond your leadership team, too, and spills over into your network, your colleagues, and your business partners. If nobody knows what you want and what you’re working on, they don’t know how to help you.
The reality is that nobody can support a goal they don’t know exists. Nobody can connect dots they can’t see. Nobody can advocate for work they don’t understand. If Jerry had one challenge in that episode, it was that perception had already become reality. In your career, you have the ability to influence that perception before someone else writes the story for you.
Speak up. Share your ambitions. Communicate your value. Make your work visible. Otherwise, people may spend years believing they saw something that was never actually there.