Invisibility at work. It’s an odd one.

[ThewrathofBethDutton]

If you are a manager or in a leadership position do you recognise high achieving employees and if you do, how do you acknowledge them?

Im not at all in a leadership position but I am a high achiever bringing innovation and new dimension to the business. My direct line manager is lovely and does bang the drum somewhat on my behalf.

The higher management however is seemingly untouchable, out of reach, silent, uninterested.

Im so anxious all the time about getting into trouble, saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, being pulled up and even sacked. There is a fairly high turnover of staff in the industry.

I think it’s poor people management but I am unfortunately stuck with no chance of getting another job.

Can you advise about how to navigate this if you have experience please?

Can you give an example? Say a strategy you devised by yourself and how this followed through to becoming a project that you're now leading, but you're not getting the recognition for?

I'm struggling to see what's wrong, but I've only ever worked for big corporations where what you've described would be seen as a huge personal success. Especially if you have multiple examples of this doing this.

Yes- which is it? If you give a concrete example we can perhaps help unpick how you could retain benefit in future.

There is ALWAYS something that kicks the legs from under me, guaranteed.

This attitude would cause you problems, IMO. Life, and work, has ups and downs. Seeing the downs as 'kicking the legs from under me' is vastly over emphasizing them and putting an undue amount of pressure on yourself. If you are contributing, it will be noticed - just keep doing what you are doing and take each day as it comes. Otherwise, you will drain yourself.

I think it’s helpful if you understand the org chart a bit more. The manager is there to manage you (staff), the senior managers are there to manage the managers. And so on. The managers are responsible for your performance and will discuss this with the seniors when recommending for things like bonuses or promotions, and it seems that your line manager speaks highly of you so you don’t need to worry about them not advocating for you.

The issue of high turnover may or may not be due to performance but other things like budget cuts, types of employees they hire (uni students for example come and go) and as long as you have a good track record of performance, you couldn’t just “get sacked” unless you breach business conduct or your performance reviews are not satisfactory or there are redundancies. Assuming you’ve worked there more than 2 years.

In my experience, some organisations are very hierarchical. People only engaging with direct reports up and down.

It is quite an old fashioned approach. Fine if you just want to get your head down and get on with your work. Less fine if you are wanting to move up.

I'd be wary of doing the function of jobs above you without the job title OP. Focus on what you need now to progress, and have an explicit conversation with your manager about that.

Don't be the glue, it can hold you back! www.noidea.dog/glue