I was coaching someone recently who said he wanted to be more visible in the workplace.

He was doing really well and was considered a high flyer by his managers but was not moving as fast as he would like. His consistent feedback was about being low on personal impact. Quite simply he needed to make his presence felt a lot more and he wanted to know how to go about it.

We often hear similar stories in our management skills courses and of course there are plenty of techniques we offer to help frame conversations and raise confidence levels in particular situations.

However there is some very useful thinking that can be done that can underpin these practical tools.

One of the questions it’s worth asking yourself is this:

 What am I afraid of being?

And another one is:

 Therefore what do I pretend to be?

From the moment we are born we quickly learn to adapt what we do in order to get what we want. So our patterns of behaviour start to form quite quickly.  As we grow we start to notice the wider world around us and react accordingly.

Our values and beliefs start to be formed by the people closest to us. We embrace some that we feel safe with and reject others that make us feel uncomfortable.

How does this affect our personal impact?

Say someone is brought up in a large noisy family where it is not only culturally acceptable but even a matter of emotional survival to interrupt others and speak quickly and loudly to get their voice heard before someone else starts up…

Or perhaps someone is raised with an appreciation of silence and politeness where it is important to allow others to speak and considered rude to interrupt. Well constructed opinions are highly valued – mistakes frowned upon.

Depending on the acceptance or rejection of the values at play either of these scenarios could create either of the following:

They may give up entirely and feel very uncomfortable in large groups. They may well feel intimidated in meetings particularly if they are lively personalities with the odd heated debate going on. They may disapprove of loud people who interrupt at meetings.

They may be quite comfortable interrupting others and happy to voice loud opinions on any matter apparently regardless of factual precision. They may be irritated by people who don’t speak up.

My coaching client stated that he didn’t want to be like number two. That answered the first question for him:

What am I afraid of being?

With that knowledge he could then answer the next question:

What do I pretend to be?

The answer here was that he pretended to be the sort of person who never makes mistakes, who never wants attention, who never thinks he has a strong point to put across and is always happy for other people to speak first.

This pretence wasn’t reflecting his true personality and it was seriously getting in the way of his career path.

His fear of becoming his own worst nightmare in meetings was stopping him speaking out when he needed to. He was effectively making himself invisible.

Polarised Behaviours

When we polarise behaviours in this way we can leave ourselves paralysed at one end of the spectrum. But there is a whole set of options that sit between the extremes.

Once we can let go of our fears of being perceived in the worst imaginable light we can start to choose what we do and how we respond in any given situation in a way that serves both ourselves and our colleagues.

We can behave in a way that sits somewhere between the poles and can be more truly reflect who we really are.

Being Seen

By understanding and confronting his fears my client was able to make the small changes necessary to become more visible. To be seen for the man he is.