Make Your Work Count: How to Close the Visibility Gap for Career Growth

Being good at your job isn’t always enough to get promoted. You might exceed expectations, meet every deadline, and consistently deliver solid work, but still get overlooked. In decades past, there was a long-standing belief that hard work naturally led to career advancement. Promotions typically followed an employee’s potential and company loyalty, with clear paths for growth, and employers invested in training, mentoring, and developing people for future roles.

That dynamic has shifted significantly with corporate priorities. Companies are leaner, hierarchies are flatter, technology changes faster, remote work adds competition, and external hires are increasingly relied on to fill specialized roles. Additionally, shareholder demands and profit-driven goals have fueled cost-cutting at the expense of long-term employee growth. Today, you can no longer assume that hard work alone will move you up. You have to own your growth, advocate for yourself, and make your impact visible to the people who influence promotions and career decisions.

Know the path to promotion

Before you can position yourself for growth, you need to know what “growth” actually looks like in your organization. Promotions often follow formal or informal criteria, so start by researching the skills, experiences, and responsibilities expected at the next level. Compare them to your current role to spot skill gaps. Next, you’ll want to understand the timing and process. Some companies have formal review cycles, while others promote more opportunistically. Knowing the rhythm can help you plan the right conversations at the right time.

Close the visibility gap

While skills gaps are about performance, the visibility gap comes down to perception. Many high performers get passed over because they struggle to communicate their impact during performance reviews or promotion discussions. They may downplay contributions (e.g., “I was just doing my job”) or emphasize team efforts without owning their impact. The visibility gap is the difference between the work you do and what decision-makers actually notice.

To close it, you need to make your impact visible and easy to understand. A practical approach is to track your achievements consistently. You’re probably accomplishing more than you realize, but if you don’t take note, you risk forgetting the details when you need them the most.

One of my favorite frameworks for documenting and organizing your achievements is CART, or Challenge, Action, Result, Tieback. The challenge gets to the heart of what was hard, messy, or at stake. Your actions describe how your skills, instincts, and thought processes came to life. The result is what changed because of your actions. The tieback is where you zoom out and connect your results back to the bigger picture to demonstrate your readiness for the next level. Both quantifiable outcomes and qualitative impact — such as improving a team workflow, supporting colleagues, or providing stability during uncertainty — count; oftentimes, these are the stories people remember the most. Framing your work this way turns your achievements into a clear, strategic story that managers and stakeholders can recognize and appreciate, while helping you build a compelling record of sustained performance, leadership, and growth potential.

Seek high-impact opportunities

Beyond tracking contributions, look for projects that tackle meaningful problems, enhance processes, or yield tangible results for leadership or cross-functional teams. Look for areas where the team, department, or organization is struggling, such as delayed processes, inefficiencies, or strategic gaps. Volunteering for these projects helps increase your visibility and demonstrates your influence beyond your immediate role.

Talk with your manager about which initiatives would benefit most from your skills. If your relationship with your manager is challenging, focus on building connections with other leaders, cross-functional teams, and stakeholders to create additional growth advocates. These connections can provide insight into what it takes to succeed and help you prioritize the right opportunities. Finally, find ways to mentor or support others and demonstrate leadership before a formal promotion. People tend to notice those who consistently act above their current title, and this visibility reinforces your readiness for greater responsibility.

Take ownership of your growth

Getting promoted isn’t just about doing great work. It’s also about making sure that work is seen, understood, and tied to organizational goals. By understanding the path to promotion, closing your visibility gaps, tracking your impact, building strategic relationships, and demonstrating leadership above your current role, you put yourself in control of your career trajectory.

Career growth no longer just happens. You have to own it. When you take these steps deliberately and consistently, you move from being a high performer noticed by chance to a known professional whose contributions and potential are impossible to overlook.

This article originally appeared in the Career Connection column in the October 2025 issue of CEP. Members have access online to complete issues, including a vast, searchable archive of back-issues found at www.aiche.org/cep.