The Quiet Standout

Early in my career, I worked with an engineer we’ll call Lina, for anonymity’s sake. She never missed a deadline, quietly debugged issues that stumped others, and onboarded every new hire with patience and clarity. But when it came time for performance reviews, her name rarely came up. Not because her work wasn’t valued, but because she never spoke about it.

She was the one you called when everything broke, but never the one invited to present the solution.

Every team has someone like that. The person who quietly picks up the dropped tickets. Who rewrites the failing tests without being asked. Who mentors new hires in Slack threads, off-hours, and under the radar. They make everything run smoother, but somehow, their name rarely ends up in the spotlight.

Then there’s the other kind. Polished, visible, often no more capable, but louder. Better at framing their work. Better at ensuring their contributions are known.

This isn’t about ego. It’s about attention. And attention is a currency.

The Myth of Meritocracy

We want to believe that good work speaks for itself. That if we build the right systems, clear OKRs, transparent retros, calibrated promotion frameworks, excellence will rise on its own.

But here’s the uncomfortable truth: the world doesn’t run on fairness. It runs on visibility.

Your work is necessary. But if no one knows what you did, how you did it, or why it mattered. It may as well have not happened.

Advocacy Without Ego

So how do you speak up without stepping on others?

Start here: talk about outcomes, not just effort. If you improved system performance, explain what changed. If you led a sprint, talk about how your choices influenced the outcome. Share wins in retros, standups, or planning docs in ways that reflect collective effort, say “we” where it belongs, but don’t erase your individual role.

Think of your team like an adventuring party. Everyone deserves a moment to shine. But if one person dominates, the party fragments. And if no one claims their moments, the story stalls. The goal isn’t to steal the scene. It’s to make the story complete.

Self-advocacy isn’t spotlight stealing. It’s narrative clarity.

Speaking Up Is a Skill

I think about another teammate I worked with, let’s call him Jules. He never said much in meetings. But his pull requests were immaculate, his architecture diagrams clarified weeks of confusion, and the interns he mentored swore by his quiet steadiness. Yet when a cross-functional stakeholder asked who’d led a critical refactor, no one named him. Not out of malice, but because his work hadn’t traveled far enough. It taught me: contribution alone doesn’t guarantee recognition. Communication makes it portable.

Self-advocacy is learned. Not innate. Not ego-driven. But it’s a skill like any other, developed slowly, often under pressure, and in full view of your insecurities.

You practice it by narrating your decisions. Writing clear changelogs. Framing your impact in ways others can understand.
Not “I finished the ticket,” but “I restructured the logic to cut support tickets by 30%.”
Not “I cleaned up code,” but “I removed 400 lines of dead logic and simplified onboarding for new devs.”

But let’s name something clearly:

Some people can’t just start speaking up. Not easily. Not safely.

If you’re an introvert, start with your strengths. Written communication — clean commit messages, thoughtful retros, precise documentation. Can speak volumes without draining you. Make your impact visible in the places where you’re already confident.

If you’re underrepresented in your field or organization, the stakes can feel higher. Self-advocacy might come with risk, being seen as too bold, too confident, too much. You might need to lean on allies who will echo your contributions in rooms you’re not in, or use formal settings like sprint reviews to claim your space without being interrupted.

If you’re the type who constantly undercuts yourself with qualifiers, “I might be wrong, but…”, try catching just one each week. Practice removing a hedge here, a deflection there. Let your ideas stand without apology.

And if you’re operating inside a strongly hierarchical culture, shift the frame. Don’t talk about what you did. Talk about what it enabled. “I did X to help the team deliver Y.” Service-forward language can soften perceived self-promotion and still get your work the credit it deserves.

There’s no single script for speaking up. There are only different doors in. Find the one that opens for you.

Because silence, intentional or imposed, has a cost.

And you deserve better than invisibility.

A Leader’s Responsibility

If you lead people, listen closely:

Don’t just look for wins. Surface the quiet ones. Ask not just what was done, but who saw it. Coach people to speak clearly about their work, not to inflate, but to inform.

Every team has invisible linchpins. You don’t want to discover them only when they’re gone.

And remember this:
A good leader will advocate for you. But that advocacy is spread across everyone they support.

Even the best managers have limited airtime, performance calibrations, promotion panels, stakeholder meetings. If your story isn’t easy for them to tell, it may not get told at all.

That’s not a failure of leadership. It’s a call to partnership.

Make it easier for them. Write the narrative. Give them the “before and after.” Share your wins in ways they can pass upward. Not because you’re chasing credit, but because you’re helping your work travel.

And while your manager is often your first line of advocacy, the ecosystem of influence stretches far beyond your direct reporting line. Navigating that broader landscape requires intention, and translation.

Building Bridges Beyond Your Manager

Managers aren’t your only audience. Sometimes the people who need to understand your work aren’t in your reporting line. They’re across the aisle in product, marketing, finance, or ops. And those teams often don’t speak your technical language.

To reach them, you don’t need volume, you need translation. Telling them you “reduced load time” might register as trivia. But saying, “Users now reach the CTA 40% faster” puts it in their world. Framing a deployment as “delivered new infra” means little; saying “we unblocked a launch that had been delayed for three quarters” carries weight.

These aren’t just performance notes. They’re trust signals. They build clarity, confidence, and cohesion across silos. When you explain not just what you did but why it mattered, how it helped the team, the product, or the user, you make your work portable. Understandable. Useful.

That’s what real advocacy looks like: not a spotlight, but a bridge.

What You’re Known For Is Being Shaped Every Day

Before we talk about reputation, it’s worth recognizing where your work goes once it leaves your hands. The impressions you make, intended or not, start to accumulate long before you have a chance to define them.

You don’t need to build a personal brand. You already have one.

People are already forming an impression of you, based on how you show up, what problems you solve, how you communicate under pressure. Whether you’re intentional about that or not is the only variable.

This isn’t about “promoting yourself.” It’s about shaping trust.

Are you the person who catches a falling system without drama? The one who challenges assumptions in ways that move a room forward? The one who listens, synthesizes, and reframes?

Those are brands. Quiet ones. Durable ones.

What you’re known for isn’t built through a portfolio or a personal site. It’s built in the gaps, between standups and Slack threads, performance reviews and hallway conversations. That’s why clarity matters. That’s why advocacy matters.

Not because you’re selling something. But because people make decisions about you with or without your input.

Give them something accurate to base it on.

Final Thought

Let me end with a confession: I’ve gotten this wrong before. As a leader, I’ve overlooked quiet brilliance. I’ve been in rooms where someone’s contributions should’ve been celebrated, and I didn’t know enough to speak up. Not because I didn’t care, but because I hadn’t been shown. I hadn’t been told.

That’s why this matters so much to me now. Because the best work in the world still needs a voice. And sometimes, that voice has to be your own.

Your work matters. But it’s not a beacon. It’s a campfire.

You still have to invite others close enough to feel its warmth.

If you won’t speak for your work, someone else might.

And they may not tell the version you’d want remembered.

So speak clearly. Share generously. Advocate honestly.

Because your work doesn’t speak for itself.

You do.