Executives and senior leaders
What do senior leaders get wrong about their own visibility?
They underestimate how much it matters and overestimate how visible they actually are. Most senior leaders believe they are more present, more accessible, and more seen by their organisations than they actually are. The gap between how a leader experiences their own visibility and how the frontline experiences it is consistently larger than either party realises.
Framework: Brian Hartzer’s Leadership Star · Practices: Context, Clarity
Being in the building is not the same as being visible
Visibility is specific. It means people at multiple levels of the organisation have seen you, heard from you, or experienced something that made your presence and priorities real to them. Attending the executive floor doesn’t count. Walking through the office doesn’t count unless you stop and talk. Being visible requires effort that is direct, deliberate, and regular.
Small acts at senior levels carry disproportionate weight
A conversation in the lift. Attending a team’s morning standup without being invited. Remembering someone’s name from six months ago. These things are memorable because they’re unexpected. One of the most important things I learned as CEO of Westpac is that an offhand question to a junior team member — “what do you think?” — can be something they remember for years. The asymmetry of attention between senior and junior is enormous. Leaders underuse it.
Your absence is also noticed
When a senior leader skips a team event, misses a forum, or is visibly unengaged in a meeting, people notice and draw conclusions. Those conclusions are often more negative than the leader would expect, because in the absence of direct information, people fill the gap with whatever they’re most worried about.
Where judgment matters
Visibility has to be genuine to work. Manufactured presence — the leader who makes a brief appearance, says nothing substantive, and leaves — is often worse than absence, because it confirms that their time is too important to actually invest in the team. Show up with real attention or don’t add the visit to your calendar.
When did someone two or three levels below you in the organisation last have a genuine conversation with you — and do you know their name?
Start with the book
The Leadership Star sets out all five practices in full, with the reasoning behind each one.