A client told me recently that she wants more visibility at work. She said it the way I used to say it. Set jaw. Begrudgingly. Already steeling herself for the discomfort, like she was about to take a punch she’d agreed to in advance.
I stopped her.
The goal was right, but the way she was bracing for it was the problem. I’d been in her place for the better part of a decade, and it cost me something I didn’t have language for at the time.
The white-knuckle years
For most of my 20s and into my 30s, I sweated through presentations. Heart palpitations, racing pulse, the kind of full-body adrenaline response that’s supposed to be reserved for physical danger. My nervous system was in survival mode while I tried to sound like a person who belonged in the room.
One prep session has stayed with me. My boss drilled me before a client presentation, picking apart my framing, my pacing, and the order of my slides. It helped, technically. I went into the meeting better prepared than I would have been. It also confirmed every suspicion I had about whether I was the right person to be standing up there in the first place.
That’s not how confidence gets built.
White-knuckling your way to visibility doesn’t fail in obvious ways. I didn’t get fired for being uncomfortable or demoted. From the outside, my career looked great. I was doing solid work and receiving positive reviews.
The cost added up over time
I watched peers get pulled into conversations that I wasn’t invited to. I watched people with less depth on a topic become the named voice on it because they were willing to be the one in front of the room. I watched advancement go to colleagues who had figured out how to be visible in ways that read as confident, while I was in the back row, sweating through my blouse.
When my discomfort showed (and it did, even when I thought I was hiding it), it read as uncertainty about my own ideas. That meant the ideas got discounted regardless of their validity.
I noticed how doing the work well wasn’t enough. Sometimes we understand the problem, and it still feels too difficult to fix it.
That prep session with my boss was a wake-up call because the experience clarified for me that visibility was now a permanent feature of the work I wanted to do. I realized that I was going to have to find my own path that wasn’t grounded in dread.
How I shifted
Three things changed for me. None of them happened overnight or eliminated the fear, but they reframed what to do with it.
Visibility doesn’t have to mean the biggest stage. I had been operating like the only visibility that counted was the high-stakes presentation in front of leadership. That framing kept me stuck, because that version is terrifying. Visibility has a range. Examples: speaking on a panel at a non-profit where you volunteer, an internal lunch-and-learn, or joining a board of directors.
These are opportunities already in your line of sight, where the audience is primed for what you have to say, and you’ve already established credibility. They’re reps to build the muscle that leads up to you walking into the high-stakes room without feeling like you’re going to throw up.The cost of staying in the background is real, even when it’s invisible. This was a harder shift because it required me to stop telling myself a comforting story. The story went something like this: I’m doing great work, the work will speak for itself, and I don’t need to be the loudest person in the room.
The work speaks for itself sometimes; other times, it only gets you so far. Mostly, the work needs you to speak for it. And if you’re not, someone else is, and that someone else is getting credit. Once I let myself look at the cost honestly, the calculus changed. Staying in the background wasn’t safe. It was just a different kind of risk, the kind that doesn’t show up on a performance review but compounds over the years.Doing it on my terms. The fear subsided when I felt I had something of value to offer the audience, a resource they could use or a new way of approaching something.
I started building from there. Before any speaking opportunity, I’d design the shape of the story I wanted to tell, considering the audience’s needs and interests and how I could offer something new or different. The fear is still there, but it has become less prominent than what I was trying to deliver.
The reps that built the muscle
I don’t have a simple “first small rep” story because I’ve been working on this for years.
At Peloton, I was in the project management office, which meant I worked regularly with VPs, SVPs, and the C-Suite. I was relied on to communicate with hundreds of staff. I also stepped into a co-lead role for a 400-person employee resource group, which meant running meetings, building programming with an executive sponsor, and being publicly the face of the work. Over time, the exposure broke down my dread.
Recently, I felt myself lapsing back into my old pattern of hesitating to put myself out there. “Who am I to do this?” type thinking. I caught myself with a prompt: Why did I step up before, and what did I learn from it? It worked.
Recently, I’ve pitched two story ideas to online publications. I also secured presentations with the ICF South Florida Chapter Coaching Week 2026 (The Power Position: A Framework for Mapping What Comes Next) and Boston University. I’ve built enough evidence at this point that the discomfort is manageable and the cost of missing out on opportunities is too high.
Back to my client
When she said she’d force herself to gain visibility, I heard the version of me from a decade ago, treating this goal like a tax to be paid instead of a skill to be built.
Force isn’t a strategy; it’s fear with a deadline. It might get you through one presentation, but it won’t build the career muscle you want. The career you want requires you to be visible enough times that visibility stops being a special occasion and starts being how you work.
Coaching this client, and anyone in this position, requires figuring out the why behind what she’s trying to achieve and helping her build reps in environments where her nervous system has a chance to settle. Smaller stages with friendlier audiences and on topics that reflect her interests and expertise. Over time, the size of the stage won’t matter.
What’s one small rep (that isn’t forced) that you can take this month to increase your visibility?
P.S. If you’re in the spot where you can feel the cost of staying in the background, but you don’t know what your version of the right reps looks like, schedule a free 30-minute discovery call.