Congratulations on Completing the Visible Leadership Course!

Hello and congratulations. You've now completed the Visible Leadership course, and you're ready to cement your knowledge through practice. You can learn to be more visible; like acquiring any new skill, you need to practice.

I'm going to share three ways to help you build your foundations of becoming a visible leader.

1. Be Your Own Advocate

Each day, take a few minutes at the end of the day—or whatever time works best for you—to reflect:

• What worked well today?
• How did you add value?
• How have you contributed?
• How have you helped somebody else or the organisation get closer to delivering objectives?

Answering these questions each day goes into your achievements file.

What's an Achievements File?

You may ask, what is an achievements file? It's a notebook, a digital document, or a physical file where you can collate anything that showcases and supports your achievements. The key here is consistency.

When you're a knowledge worker and working on projects or ongoing initiatives, time can pass quickly, and it's easy to forget what happened each day and where you added value. By maintaining an achievements file, you're collecting those moments—we live life in our moments. Collating these moments allows you to:

• Draw insights into trends
• Identify things you do exceptionally well
• Recognize areas you need to work on

This is where an achievements file comes in, and we'll use it in our next tip, turning it into a weekly analysis.

2. Conduct Weekly Analysis

The weekly analysis takes two forms:

Personal Reflection

First, look back at what's happened over the past week. Use your daily achievements file to help you here. Identify:

• Your key achievements
• Trends in your work and behavior
• Insights into what's happened

Consider:

• Are these insights helping or hindering your future?
• Do you need to course-correct anything?
• Are there things you want to keep doing or be known for?

Sharing Your Insights

Second, decide what to do with this knowledge. You've learned about the Friday Flashpoints Report, where these insights are shared. Here, you're trying to package how you added value, what you've learned, and how you've contributed to your own learning and that of your team, colleagues, stakeholders, and the organisation at large.

These insights are worthy of sharing. You can do this through:

• A report
• A verbal update
• A showcase
• Having notes ready to share when opportunities arise

Ideally, you're creating consistency in reporting so that people come to see you as an ongoing contributor. You can title this update anything that reflects the value you're providing and the learning journey you're on.

3. Increase Your Organisational Awareness

Understanding your organisation's strategy, values, vision, and objectives is key. It's a good idea to make sure you're familiar with these so that your work is in alignment with them. Having a core attribute with which you can align every day makes sense. It makes it easier for you to see that you're on track with what you're doing and that you're contributing.

The following questions are a thought starter for assessing your organisational awareness. Take the time to consider them:

• What is your organisation's strategy? You can usually find this in the public domain, on your website, intranet, or by asking your leaders.
• What is your company vision? What is your company really trying to achieve?
• What are the organisational values? How do you need to align in terms of your way of thinking and behaving?
• What are the organisation's objectives? These are important for understanding how your work cascades down from the highest levels.
• How does your group, team, or department align with these objectives?
• How is success measured? Understand what the organisation values and how you can include those measures in what you do.
• How can you personally contribute to delivering on the organisation's strategy?

Knowing the answers to these questions will give you a good understanding of how much you understand about your organisation. It also prompts you to review the work you're doing, check alignment, and make changes if required.

Conclusion

This brings us to the end of the Visible Leadership course. Thank you for participating. I encourage you to practice these activities to build your visible leadership and to take every opportunity to grow yourself as a visible leader.

Good luck, and I look forward to seeing more from you!