“I’ve never told anyone this, but I’m so tired of pitching myself. I just want everyone to see the value I bring to the table. I’m starting to feel burned out and angry.”
There it was. A genuine disclosure. A real break though in a feeling that had been building and thoughts that were foundational to so many of my discussions with this client.
I knew better than to respond too quickly.
It would have been easy to say, “But people do see your value,” or “You just have to keep putting yourself out there,” or one of the other well-intended phrases often shared with good intentions when we want someone to feel better.
But I knew that wasn’t the message he was relaying. He wasn’t asking me to reassure him that he had value. He already believed he did. He knew it. He’d built a well-documented history of successes.
So, silence and space were essential – not me joining his usual cheerleading entourage with impulsive niceties
What this client had expressed was something that I’ve heard so many times throughout my career. If I’d saved a dollar for each time I heard it, I could easily be picking up the bill for a party of twelve at a top steak house with change to spare.
The feeling was more common than this particular client realized. And I knew, that what was making him angry was not that other people didn’t seem to recognize his talents, value and contributions. The frustration and anger were rising because he felt people weren’t recognizing all that and more quickly enough.
This is a distinction that matters.
It matters because there is a subtle kind of resentment that builds slowly when someone has spent years becoming good at what they do: Accumulating experience; solving problems; showing up; and, delivering results. Still, here they are, yet again, having to explain why any of it should matter.
The issue arrives because at some point in many careers, self-promotion begins to feel strangely incompatible with experience. You think: “I’ve done the work. I’ve earned the credibility. I’ve been doing this for twenty or thirty years. Why the heck am I still having to explain myself?”
Sometimes the feeling is even more visceral. We feel it via a tightening in our chest or our throats. It feels as if we’re trying to manage and control a volcanic like scream that spews: “Why do I have to keep proving something that should already be obvious to you?”
And bubbling up underneath that question is usually a more unconscious one: “Why don’t they see me the way I see myself?”
As these realizations transform into words spoken aloud, the conversations I have start to get very interesting.
One of the Harder Perception Truths to Grasp
One of the harder truths about perception is that value is not self-announcing. Experience does not automatically communicate authority. And, our competence does not automatically create visibility.
Much to collective dismay is the hard core fact that being excellent at what you do does not guarantee that other people will understand — or even notice — what makes you different.
We tend to assume that the value we know ourselves to possess should somehow radiate outward.
It’s quite common to believe that if we have enough experience, people should recognize it. Likewise, if our work is good enough, people should talk about it. And, if we’ve earned a seat at the table, someone should eventually pull out the chair.
But perception doesn’t work that way.
Other people cannot see the thirty years behind the sentence you just spoke. Nor can they see all the judgment calls you made correctly; the crises you prevented; the relationships you protected; the mistakes you learned from; or, the thousands of small decisions that created the expertise you now carry almost instinctively.
They see what is in front of them. And, it looks like a conversation, a bio, a website, or a meeting. Maybe they see a recommendation from someone they trust which results in a phone call or a few minutes across a conference table.
It is from those fragments, they form a perception. Their perception about you and your capabilities.
And this? This is where accomplished people can become particularly frustrated because the better you become at something, the more invisible much of your expertise becomes to you.
What once required enormous thought now feels obvious.
You walk into a situation and immediately recognize what is wrong. You know which question to ask. You sense the tension everyone else is dancing around. You know which part of a proposal won’t work before anyone has finished presenting it.
To you, this feels almost ordinary. To someone else, it may be extraordinary.
But if you don’t know how to make that value legible, those others who need you, and would value you all you can bring to the relationship, may never understand what they are looking at.
As his professional confidant, this was the part I wanted him to see.
The problem wasn’t necessarily that he needed to “sell himself harder.” In fact, more pitching might have made the problem worse. And, there’s a reason why.
There is a difference between constantly promoting yourself and helping people accurately perceive the value you bring.
One is exhausting. The other is communication. The best positioning rarely sounds like, “Look how impressive I am.” It sounds more like, “Here is what I see that may be useful to you.”
That shift can change everything.
Instead of asking, “How do I convince them I’m valuable?” — the better questions may be:
- How do I make my value easier to understand?
- What problems do I solve that others struggle to solve?
- What do I notice that other people tend to miss?
- What becomes easier, safer, faster, clearer, or more successful when I am involved?
Those are very different questions from, “How do I pitch myself?”
Why? Because each of these questions moves the focus away from self-promotion and toward usefulness. And, be assured that usefulness is much easier for other people to perceive – whether it comes from a person, tool, service or any other kind of offer.
Yet still, I need to point out that there was another issue underneath my client’s anger, too.
A sense that recognition should eventually become automatic.
That after enough years, introductions should no longer be necessary. Doors should open on reputation alone. Opportunities should somehow find their way to the person who has earned them.
Here’s the thing: Sometimes they do. But, usually, someone, somewhere, is still helping shape the perception.
This happens when a colleague mentions your name. A client tells a story about what you did. An article demonstrates how you think. A podcast lets someone hear your judgment. A speech gives people language for a problem they have felt but never articulated. A website makes clear, within seconds, why someone should call you rather than someone else.
None of this is vanity. It is translation.
Start shifting your thinking to this: You are translating decades of accumulated experience into something another human being can understand quickly enough to act on.
When I explained this to my client in that way, some of the anger began to soften. Not disappear. There was still fatigue there, and understandably so.
But frustration? When we identify what we are actually fighting, accesses a relief valve.
For quite a while, my client had begun to fester in the fighting feeling that he needed to sell himself.
What he was really fighting was the gap between value and perceived value.
And those are not the same thing.
This too is a gap I see all the time.
Brilliant, value-full people who are barely known. Experienced executives whose bios sound exactly like everyone else’s. Entrepreneurs who can transform a business but cannot explain what they do without giving a ten-minute history lesson. Professionals whose greatest strengths have become so natural to them that they fail to mention them at all.
Each is stuck in assumption: Assuming that people will connect the dots. But, people usually don’t. This is because part of becoming known for what you do is accepting that the world does not experience you from the inside and they likely haven’t been by your side for your entire career witnessing your brilliance.
More complicating is that all those you encounter experience you through signals that they are interpreting through their highly unique filtration systems: Through language; through stories; through repetition; through other people; and, through what you choose to make visible.
None of this means that you have to turn yourself into a walking advertisement.
It does, however, mean taking responsibility for making your value easier to perceive.
There is a strange freedom in doing this because once you stop thinking of it as “pitching yourself,” you can begin thinking of it as helping someone understand where you might be useful.
You no longer have to prove that you are important. You simply have to make clear what changes when you are in the room.
Sometimes that is the real breakthrough. Not finally getting everyone to see your value. But realizing that being valuable and being understood are two different jobs and deciding that you are willing to do both.
For “The Perception Brief,” I share articles drawn from themes that have emerged through countless private conversations with clients over the years.
There will never be names, identifying details, or clues as to the people involved. In fact, the names would be irrelevant. So many of the situations we wrestle with — personally and professionally –are far more universal than we realize.
What connects this series is something I’ve heard more times than I could ever count. A conversation begins, there’s usually a pause, and then come the words:
“I haven’t told anyone this, but…”
What follows is often the part of the story that matters most.
If you think you might benefit from having a conversation with a professional confidant, I offer complimentary consultations to see if we’re a fit.
212.825.3210
Email: Dian@DianGriesel.com
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Confidentiality is fundamental to this work. Private advisory relationships are covered by written confidentiality agreements (NDA).
