Don't Mistake Presence for Visibility

Is presence important at work? Of course.

Is visibility important at work? You bet.

Are they the same thing? Not at all.

And in today's issue, we'll talk about the dangers of conflating the two concepts, as well as the upsides to be gained from differentiating properly.

Presence vs. Visibility

While the difference between presence and visibility, I find it useful to apply the following lens:

• Presence:
  • Being physically present
  • Being seen or heard
  • Focuses on volume
• Visibility
  • Being top-of-mind for people
  • Being recognized
  • Focuses on quality/impact

Let's be clear: presence and visibility often go hand in hand. After all, you don't gain visibility without establishing some type of presence.

That being said, conflating the two is dangerous. Because if you are not intentional about which one you're optimizing for? It can lead to the wrong behaviors.

As with many things in life, a 2x2 matrix is the easiest way to illustrate this nuance:

Most of us operate on the top-right and bottom-left quadrant. We're taught that more is better (and less is worse).

But it turns out that this isn't always true. Chasing presence blindly doesn't always lead to more visibility – in fact, it can sometimes backfire.

Similarly, optimizing for visibility doesn't always require physical presence – there are ways to deliver impact without actually "showing up."

So let's start first by examining the bottom-right quadrant, i.e. where the pursuit of presence can actually lead to the wrong kind of visibility.

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🚨 More Presence, Less Visibility

In the early days of my career, I worried a lot about not "showing up."

This led me to do things like:

• Attend every meeting I was invited to
• Say yes to any request that came my way
• Assume more meetings = more productivity (related reading: the trap of "fake" busy-ness)

To this day, I still remember certain meetings I attended, where the first thing I did was to bring up my laptop and multi-task.

It was only later on that I realized why this was detrimental over the long run – for two reasons.

The first one is obvious: it came at the expense of doing value-added work.

Because all those meetings I forced myself to attend despite having more pressing priorities? The results were always the same.

I would fail to absorb much from the meeting – nor would I get anything of substance done on my laptop.

I would've been better off making a trade-off from the get-go.

The second reason why the chase for more presence actually hurt my visibility is much more subtle.

Because in those meetings where I forced myself to participate without the proper mindspace?

I did not realize that I came off as highly disengaged.

Ironically, by trying to "show up" – I was only reinforcing the perception that I didn't have much value to add.

In other words, I had accumulated copious amounts of presence – yet in the process diluted my own visibility.

And once you realize this paradox, you'll start seeing it everywhere. Quantity sometimes does really come at the expense of quality.

For instance:

• Trying to speak up at every possible moment (not realizing you may come off as unfocused and end up diluting your own impact)
• Attending meetings that you really didn't have to (and risk coming off as underprepared or disengaged)
• Being hands-on for everything and refusing to delegate (thus unable to focus your efforts on the right areas)

By comparison, a better approach instead would be to:

• Be vocal only when you have something of substance to say (related: how to achieve daily comms hygiene)
• Protect your time and get out of unnecessary meetings (related: how to hold better meetings and skip useless ones)
• Develop decision principles that allow you to delegate or deprioritize tasks

Showing up is good. But you need to make it count.

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⭐ Less Presence, More Visibility

Let's now talk about the (under-appreciated) upper-left quadrant.

It turns out that your visibility doesn't always have to come from you being in the room.

Sure, the best operators do that well. But they find ways to scale their impact – even when they're not physically present (related reading: how top performers make others better).

Here are some examples of people doing this well:

• Building scalable playbooks (so that other people can "steal" your learnings with pride and run faster in the future)
• Setting up scalable and sustainable processes (so that things don't break in the future and cause unnecessary burden for others)
• Producing highly-polished written comms (e.g. so you can empower others to faithfully represent your POV and scale your presence)

Being visible doesn't always come from being physically seen or heard. Rather, a better measure of success if whether your impact can be felt throughout your organization.

And that doesn't get built up overnight. You don't simply get there by raising a brilliant point in a meeting, or delivering a wonderful one-off presentation.

Instead, it requires things like:

• The confidence to decline low-value-add activities
• The ability to think long-term and optimitize for scale
• The willingness to empower others behind the scenes

The best operators show up when it matters. But they show up also – even when no one's looking.

Key Takeaways

• Presence and visibility usually go hand in hand – but not always.
• Trying to "show up" all the time can actually backfire, if it (a) comes at the expense of other priorities or (b) dilutes your presence.
• By the same token, visibility doesn't always require physical presence; the best operators find creative and scalable ways to extend their impact.