I’m in the room, but I’m not really being seen. Why?
This post is part of THE DEEP STUFF — a series exploring the real questions senior creatives ask.
I write these pieces as a coach and a former creative director. I work with experienced creative leaders who are navigating confidence loss, change, and the pressure to stay relevant. No platitudes. No fridge magnet philosophy. Just saying what I hear.
This is one of the hardest experiences to describe. You’re there at the meeting, present and prepared, you speak up but your contribution seems to land…unremarkably (polite). Some bright spark at the other end of the table repeats it and ta dah it gathers weight. Decisions move on without you, even though you were central to the thinking. You leave the room wondering, ‘did that just happen?’ You didn’t.
Let’s be clear invisibility isn’t about confidence.This experience gets mislabelled far too quickly. It’s not about speaking louder. It’s not something you can fix by “leaning in” a bit more.
Invisibility is structural. It shows up most often when: you’re senior but no longer novel. You experience more in rooms that prize speed over depth (you know the type). And, I speak as a woman making her way through advertising in the 80s, it happens in spaces that unconsciously (or otherwise) reward masculine communication styles.
And because you’re capable, composed, and not causing trouble, you become… easy to overlook. Your seniority doesn’t help you out either.
Back in the early days of your career, visibility came from contribution.
At senior level, it should come from perspective BUT many workplaces, and particularly creative workplaces, don’t know how to read that kind of value - the squeaky wheel really does get the oil.
Quiet authority, characteristically female. doesn’t always register. It certainly doesn’t fit the expected narrow band you are meant to occupy. We’re talking assertive but not difficult. Experienced but not dated. Confident but not intimidating.
Step outside it and you’re noticed — for the wrong reasons. Stay inside it and you risk fading into the background.
It’s EXHAUSTING. And nothing to do with capability.
Being unseen doesn’t just affect how meetings go. It starts to erode something deeper. your relevance, your energy. More importantly, what you want to say.
Questions.
Instead of asking:
“How do I make myself more visible?”
Try asking:
“What kind of visibility actually matters to me now?”
Not all rooms deserve your full self. Not all forms of recognition are worth chasing. Start to think about how and where you want to be seen. (The Values work I do with my clients is really powerful for getting clarity around this. )
It’s also about changing how you interpret what’s happening around you. When you stop internalising invisibility as a personal failing, you regain choice.
And choice is where authority lives.
Discover more thinking from THE DEEP STUFF — the real questions senior creatives ask.