You're Smart, So Why Aren't You Getting Recognized?

I want to tell you the single greatest skill that separates people who get noticed at work is not intelligence. It is not luck. It's crafting your personal brand. And in this video, I'm going to help you figure out exactly what your personal brand is and how you can change it. So you finally get the recognition and respect you deserve, because I'll tell you right now, despite working on TV for so many years, I used to feel utterly invisible, unappreciated and overlooked. And that's the ironic part. Visibility was literally part of my job. I was on camera every single day and I still felt invisible to my boss and my team. But now from eventually winning an Emmy award, which is one of the most prestigious awards on TV to now teaching at Columbia university to even publishing a bestselling book with Penguin random house, I realized something finally getting that recognition and visibility was not because I was harder working. It was not because I was smarter. It was just because I figured out how to build a successful personal brand. So if you want to build a reputation that really lasts one that sets you up for that promotion, that raise that opportunity, I'm going to share in this video, three life changing mindset shifts to help you break free from that hamster wheel. You might be feeling stuck on right now, because here's the thing. We are in the middle of one of the biggest transformations in how we work right now. AI is being integrated into almost everything at the fastest speed we've ever seen. And I believe it's only going to accelerate. So that fear you might have, like what's my job going to look like? Is my role even going to be relevant? Well, this video is going to help you with that because building your career brand, future proofs, how you carry yourself, including how people start to see you at work, by the way, stay until the very end of this video, because the third point is my favorite. It's something I do every single day right now. So here's some first mindset shift. Understand the kind of system you're working in, meaning work as a system that's designed around rules and perceptions. And the quicker you see that, the easier it'll be for you to do this one thing. Stop being known for everything and start being known for one amazing thing. Here's what I mean. Think about this scenario. You're in a meeting and someone says, we need someone who can handle a really great opportunity that just came up. And immediately a name pops up in the meeting, but it's not yours. It's someone else's. That's the person who everyone said that person, by the way, is not smarter than you. They're not more hardworking. They just figured out how to position themselves for the system. So the question is, how do you start to position yourself for success for being known for this one amazing thing? There's a concept in psychology called the halo effect. And it was first documented back in 1920 by a psychologist named Edward Thorn, like who was studying how military officers rated their soldiers. And what he found was crazy officers who saw one soldier as strong in a single trait, like neatness assumed that that same soldier was also smart, brave, and a good leader. One trait colored everything. One good impression created this halo that made people assume good things about everything with zero evidence. Now let's flip that into our work. If people only know you as this one person who just works hard, well, guess what? They'll assume you're responsible. You meet your deadlines, but that's it. But if people know you as the person who untangles that messy project that no one wants to touch, well, that's a totally different halo. That's the person who gets pulled into the next big thing because that confidence and that conviction lasts. So how do you actually build your own halo effect? You start by choosing what I call your anchor value. So your anchor value is one word, one quality that you decide right now that it's going to define how you show up moving forward. It's not your job title. It's not how many years of work experience you have. It's a value, something that once you choose it, it starts influencing everything. What work you say yes to, how you do that work, how you talk about the work, the projects you raise your hand for, and then every interaction, every cue starts pointing in that same direction. And over time, that is how people start to get to know you. So let me give you some examples of anchor values. The most successful people actually pick a few. Let's say collaboration is one. If you choose collaboration as your anchor value, that influences how you engage with people. For example, now you start to show up in meetings and if you're thinking collaboration, then you go, okay, how can I then connect the dots between what people are saying instead of just defending myself? Or if collaboration is my value, how can I give people credit loop people in instead of later on? Do it now because again, collaboration is your value and it's your North star. And guess what? Over time you become the person people think of, of having this aura of collaboration. It's so smart and subtle and it's so powerful because you made it so obvious with how you engage with people that they start to perceive you in this way. And that's what I call a very powerful career brand. Let me give you a second example to really hone in on this idea of having that anchor value. Let's say the second most popular anchor value I see successful people choose is around strategic execution. And this is especially the case if you are more business driven and you have that aspiration to eventually hold a leadership position in your company. So if strategic execution is your anchor value, it changes how you show up. For example, you're not just completing task. You're the person who connects the task back to the goal. You see you're thinking strategy, you're thinking execution. So in a meeting, you're not just saying, this is what I do. It's why did this matter? And what's next? Over time, you become the person leadership thinks of as, wow, this person is really strategic and they execute really well. By the way, this didn't just happen by chance. It happened because you were clear on your anchor value and it created this halo effect around the person you are and how you want to be perceived. So here's my story on this because I had to learn this the hard way myself before I even called it an anchor value. So in my book, smart, not loud. I talk about how there was once this amazing opportunity I had when I was a TV journalist, the U S air force Thunderbirds, they are an air demonstration squadron and they were coming into our town. And as part of their media campaign, they were going to let one reporter fly with them. I told my manager that I would love this opportunity. And I assumed that I would get this opportunity because I asked for it. But when the day of the project was supposed to happen, guess what? It was given to somebody else. I was so crushed and devastated. But what I figured out was the person who did get to do the project set themselves up as a go-getter as someone who was not afraid to communicate what they wanted. And not just that they explained why they were the best fit for it. Now, for me, I assume that just saying it once and working really, really hard would mean that I would deserve this opportunity. But what I realize is that creating a halo effect around me and how I want it to be perceived was incredibly important. And that was what mattered more because let's say if I had collaboration as my anchor value, I would have made sure during every interaction that I not only talked about what I wanted, but I could explain very clearly how what I wanted impacted what the team wanted, what the organization wanted. So you see, this is exactly what I mean. Having an anchor value changes the way you communicate and how you position yourself. And it's exactly what I want for you too. So that is a lesson. You don't get picked because you're the most qualified. You get picked because you're the person who comes to mind. And that honestly, it only happens if you've made a decision about what you want to be known for. It starts with your anchor value. So here's your next move. The next time you're in a meeting, ask yourself, if my name came up after I left the room, what would everybody say about me? What am I good at? Choose that word right now and make it your North star of everything that you do, everything that you say and how you show up. Because again, that is how you build a powerful career brand. And by the way, it's something AI can never replicate, which now brings me to my second point. Technical skills are not enough. A strong career brand has both technical and human skills. And here's something that's going to sound super counterintuitive. The smartest, most technically skilled person in the room is not always a one who gets remembered. It's true. And I see this constantly with my engineering students at Columbia, because these people are building the AI tools for the future. And they are thinking I'm smart. I'm brilliant. But here's the truth that in and of itself is not enough for that career success. Yes, they can build something incredible, but they can also lose the room too. And the reason why is because just having technical skills and smarts is not enough for a career brand. In fact, I remember after a class I taught, I had one student and I'll call him David. He could create these beautiful websites through AI prompting. And when it came time to present his final project to a panel that included non-technical reviewers, he froze not because he didn't understand his own work, because he never had to translate it because he had spent all his energy on the how, but zero energy on the so what. When I spoke with him, I told him that he needs to lead with why does it matter to the people listening before explaining how it works. So this means learning the human skills of how to read the room and adjusting your language to the person in front of you. Are they signaling that they get it or are they crossing their arms, which shows that they are skeptical. That's what I mean. Reading the room is so important and it's having that human skill. And by the way, it's part of having social intelligence. You know, I remember a few weeks later, David messaged me on LinkedIn and told me that this one tip thinking about the human skills, it let him see how let him see himself so differently. And that by the way, is a very powerful career brand. Nothing about his technical skill changed. It was his ability to double down on his human skills to learn how to connect with people. So here's the part I want you to really sit with right now. When everybody now has access to AI, the tools, well, the tools stop being the differentiator. AI can generate the report. It can write that first draft. It can produce the analysis, but what it cannot do is it cannot stand in a room and make someone else care about what you created and why it matters. It can't read the look on people's faces and adjust mid-sentence. It can't build that human to human trust that makes everyone say, yes, this is brilliant, right? Because that's your human skill. In fact, research backs us up data on hiring and performance consistently shows that the ability to demonstrate a skill, to actually show and communicate what you can do predicts job performance far better than a title or a degree. Companies are moving away from what's and what can you show me? This means the people who can translate their skills into something other people understand and value are the ones who keep rising regardless of what AI tools just got released this month. So here's your mindset shift. Stop thinking your job is only about technical skills. It's also about your human skills. It's something that you can bring into every interaction and every engagement. So this is what I want you to do before your next presentation, the next email you're going to write, or that pitch you're going to make, ask the question, how can I explain what I'm doing in a way that gets people engaged and interested? That one question can completely transform the way you are perceived because it's how people come to know you as brilliant, but also someone relatable, which brings me to my third point. It's also my favorite one and it's the one I told you to stick around for. It's this one. Building a powerful brand for yourself means associating yourself with the right people. I'm not talking about going out there and aggressively networking. I'm talking about finding people you like and you admire and connecting with them. There's a concept in psychology called the exposure effect, and a researcher named Robert Zajonc studied this back in 1960s and what he found was the more someone sees you, interacts with you, hears your voice, reads your work, talks to you, the more they actually like you. Not because the quality of your work got better, it's just become familiar. So for us, when our brain reads familiar as safe and safe turns into I like you, that's what it means. So what does this mean in a work situation? You keep showing up, you keep connecting, you keep turning your cameras on in a meeting because yes, it's truly as tactical as that. People start to become more connected to you and that is part of your career brand because think about it this way. Let's say there's someone who is doing exactly that. They're speaking up, they're coming into work meetings, they're turning their cameras on, and now let's say your camera is off and you're just hiding behind your screen. Which one is going to get noticed? Let me say right now, I want it to be you. I want it to be you and not them. Not because I feel like you're smarter, it's just these skills can make a huge difference. Let me share a story. So back when I was a journalist, I used to come into my team meetings, which happened every day, and I would sit in the back of the room. Yes, the back of the room where no one saw me. Part of it was because it's my own personality. I tend to be more on the introverted side and the quieter side, and I certainly didn't feel like I could sit in the front and I just didn't really want to draw attention to myself. But one day I had a mentor and they came up to me and said, Jessica, did you know where you sit in the room dictates how you expect to be treated? Well, that was a huge shock to me because I had never thought something as simple as where I sat in a meeting could alter how people perceived me. Because the impression that I was giving was that I didn't really want to be there. I didn't really care and I certainly didn't want to participate. So immediately I took this feedback and the next day when we had our meeting, I deliberately sat closer to the front and by front, I mean closer to where my manager was sitting. And I did this intentionally to showcase that I was there, I was engaged and I wanted to participate. I can't even tell you how this started to change the way I carried myself and also the way people start to see me. So going back, building a really powerful career brand for yourself starts with getting closer to the people you actually want to know and you want them to know you because the mere exposure effect being in close proximity with people you like is how you can start to associate yourself with people who actually have the power and influence. And by the way, that is probably the quickest way to build a career brand that people admire. And as I like to say, it's not about who you know, it's about who knows you. It's who knows you and what they think of when your name comes to mind, which loops right back to the mindset shift, which was number one. You've got to get clear on what you want to be known for. Every single one of these small touch points becomes a chance to reinforce that because you're not just staying visible, you're staying visible as the right thing, the way you want to be perceived. So here's something you can do right now. After this video, send one message to someone you haven't talked to in a while with zero ask attached just because and do it consistently and watch how different your circle of connections starts to feel in six months. Let's bring this all together. Mindset shift number one, stop trying to be known for everything. Choose one anchor value that people can rally behind like collaboration or strategic execution and let it shape what you say and yes, how you work and how people come to know you. Mindset shift number two, stop thinking technical skills are enough. Double down on your human skills and when you do that, people start to see, wow, what you're doing is so impactful. Mindset shift three, stop waiting until you need someone. Just connect with people, start to associate yourself, people who you admire, show up with them and ask them with nothing to gain and let that familiarity and trust do the rest. You know, I spent years thinking visibility was something that just happened to certain people that some people were just simply seen and some weren't, but that's not true. I was on television for years and I still felt invisible and what changed wasn't my circumstances or that I worked harder. It was my mindset and the deliberate choices I started making about my own career brand because AI can replace a lot of the tasks, but it can never replace the answer to who you are and what you're known for and who trusts you and that's the part of your career that's actually going to build and accelerate your growth. If this video resonated with you, comment the word smart and I'll send you my free confident communication mindset workbook where it'll walk you through exactly how I figured out how to build my career brand with some communication tips and if you want to go even deeper with more frameworks, more research, more of the stories that shaped how I think about this, it's all in my book, smart, not loud, how to get noticed at work for all the right reasons. The link to the book is in the description and of course if this video was helpful, it was inspiring. Hit the subscribe button. I put out a new video every week to help you level up your communication skills and of course I would love to have you back here. So with that, I'll see you in my next video.