What to Do When You’re Overlooked

ALISON BEARD: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Alison Beard.

Are you the sort of person who works really hard, hits your deadlines, runs successful projects, wins over clients, but never seems to get noticed for all that diligence, much less promoted? Do you see other colleagues who put in less time getting more recognition and accolades than you?

It can be extremely frustrating to feel overlooked at work, but it’s often hard to know what to do about it, especially when you’re not naturally self-promotional; whether that’s because of your personality, upbringing, culture, or previous work experiences. In organizations that reward people who constantly speak up, stand out, take a lot of airtime, how do you make your mark while staying true to yourself?

Today’s guest has struggled with this problem herself and now advises other people on how to overcome it. Jessica Chen is a former TV news reporter, the founder of Soulcast Media, a communications consultancy, and author of Smart, Not Loud: How to Get Noticed at Work for All the Right Reasons.

She’s going to talk to us today about how people accustomed to quiet cultures can operate in loud ones and finally get noticed for their hard work and achievements.

Jessica, welcome.

JESSICA CHEN: Hi. Thank you for having me.

ALISON BEARD: Let’s start with this term: quiet culture. What defines a quiet culture, and how does it differ from a loud one?

JESSICA CHEN: We know that when folks start working, it doesn’t take long for them to realize, “Wow, it’s a lot of the more extroverted, assertive, outspoken people who get noticed for all their achievements.” Now, for me, this was something that wasn’t easy to do, and initially when I first started working, which at the time was as a broadcast journalist, I attribute it to me being more introverted.

But the more I thought about this, the more I realized a lot of this had to do with more than just personality alone, and I reflected back how the way I was raised, and I grew up in a very conservative and traditional family, I was taught to embody principles like humility, modesty, not seeking the spotlight, making sure I listen more than I speak, and overall trying to avoid conflict to maintain a harmonious environment.

So I call these quiet culture traits, and there’s so much power in quiet culture traits. It’s just that when you work and when you start working especially in a fast-paced, perhaps a corporate environment, you start to see it’s the people who know how to embody what I call loud culture traits and they can do it very well, they’re the ones that get noticed. So this really essentially started this multi-year long journey of how do I find that balance.

ALISON BEARD: So you’re Taiwanese, brought up in a Taiwanese immigrant family in the United States. Do you see lots of overlap with national or ethnic cultures in terms of the difference between quiet and loud?

JESSICA CHEN: Initially I would have these conversations with my friends, a lot of whom are Asian American as well, and they also felt very similar, like, “Yeah.” In Asian culture specifically, these are the principles that our parents raised us with, and then I started thinking about, “Well, I wonder if it really is an ethnic culture?”

And so I started talking to people beyond just those who grew up in an Asian culture, and some families just tend to be on the quieter side, but not even just from an audio perspective, right? There are some families who expect and teach their kids, “This is how we want you to be, this is how we want you to behave.” And if you think about how you were raised and how that has affected you and how you now show up in the workplace, I really think it is a part of who we are today.

ALISON BEARD: You seem to suggest that most workplaces are loud cultures where quiet culture behavior really won’t get you noticed no matter how hard you work. Why is that? And is it a Western culture phenomenon or do you think that it sort of might be more of a global one?

JESSICA CHEN: I think this is especially the case in many Western workplaces but also workplaces that are multinational. There’s such a thing called the babble hypothesis, where people who tend to speak up more are perceived as having more leadership abilities, whether or not the quality of their speaking is that good. And so when you think about things like that, where people are rewarded of being the first one to speak or saying the most, taking up the most air time, for example, in a meeting, then you start to see like, “Wow, there is a lot of emphasis on those who can communicate well.”

But I think for a large group of us, the ability to be the first one to speak, to chime in seamlessly in meetings, it’s not so easy, and it’s not that we don’t want to, and it’s not that we don’t have great ideas, it’s just that maybe we were raised to think a little bit more thoughtfully and deeply before we chime in, right?

And again, I think this does go beyond just being an introvert or extrovert. It’s things like questioning, “Should I say that?” or, “Maybe people already know this,” or, “Oh, I am doing good work, but I certainly don’t want people to feel like I’m boasting,” right? So I think sometimes it’s this narrative of these beliefs and these behaviors that are very much a part of us, but they don’t necessarily or allow us to showcase ourselves in the best way. The idea is it’s not if you’re quiet, to be loud, or if you’re loud, to be quiet, it’s really how can you find that I call it that cultural balance.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah, because you make the point that there are advantages to this quiet culture perspective. So what are some of those that we need to make sure we keep?

JESSICA CHEN:  So the attributes are things like being humble, being modest, trying to take a thoughtful approach before speaking up, considering context, for example, right? I find that people who were raised in a quiet culture, they like to observe the environment and just make sure that they have all the information before they share or contribute their thoughts, and I feel like that can also foster better workplace communications.

And also, at the end of the day, if you think about it, the person who is obnoxiously, “Oh, look at me, look at how amazing I am,” nobody really likes that, right? So for my quiet culture folks, of course it’s not about not talking and not sharing your thoughts, but it’s like how can you do it, still embody these traits, but still be able to showcase how amazing you are and the impact you can make?

ALISON BEARD: Okay, so what are some of the key behaviors that quiet culture people need to focus on and get better at or shift in some way?

JESSICA CHEN: So there’s four reframes in the book. The first reframe is what I call the category of how you engage with other people, and this is essentially your communication skills. And so for my quiet culture people, you tend to want to default to listening more than speaking. But it’s not about speaking or listening.

Then this is what I would encourage everybody, is thinking about this: When you do speak, who are you speaking with and what do they care about? So it’s less about, “Should I speak or should I not speak?” It’s more about, “When I speak, this is who I’m talking to, and this is how I would want to formulate my communication so it resonates.” Because sometimes that narrative of, “Should I or shouldn’t I?” can stop us.

I remember I had a client once, and she was working in the finance industry, in private equity specifically, and I remember when she came to me, she was feeling extremely frustrated. She was saying how she was surrounded by a lot of what she called very type-A, assertive, aggressive people on her team, and she really struggled with communicating.

And so she was telling me how in her mind she was like, “Well, even though I grew up in a quiet culture, maybe I just need to be louder, maybe I just need to be the first one to speak up, be the loudest one in the room,” but she says she felt so uncomfortable doing that, and she felt like when she did speak, the reaction was always like, “Oh, wow.” People were surprised by the way she spoke. It didn’t seem very natural for her either. By the time she came to me, she felt she was just like, “Oh my gosh, I don’t know what to do. I feel like I’m doing everything. Quiet isn’t working, being louder isn’t working. So what do I do?”

One of the techniques we worked on is what I call the 4A Sequence. The first thing you want to think about is acknowledging: acknowledging the person who just spoke before you, and acknowledging can be something as simple as, “That’s a really interesting point,” right? Saying something like that. Or, “I hear what you’re saying.” The next thing that you have to think about, and this is a word that I use, is you want to now anchor.

So anchoring is where you repeat one or two words that person just said as a way to connect your thoughts to their thoughts. So it could sound like, “That’s a really interesting point, and you mentioned the market South Asia,” so they know what you have to say next, how that connects. And then that goes into the final one, which is now you give your answer, like what is it that you want to say.

This strategy of acknowledging, anchoring, and then answering, it really kind of changed her perspective of it’s not about being quiet or loud, it’s about knowing when to chime in, but not only that, how to do it in a way that reduces that communications friction.

ALISON BEARD: So let’s walk through the second reframe work style, right? How do you shift that?

JESSICA CHEN: Yes. So the second reframe is what I call spending time at work, because for many people who grew up in a quiet culture, and this is including myself, we think, “Okay, we’re assigned to do this project. Let me do it, let me do it well, let me hit the deadline,” and that’s it. But what I find to be very strategic is how can you take the work that you have to do and leverage the projects you have to do for more opportunities? It’s thinking about, “Okay, I’m doing the work, I’m doing it well, and now that I’m done with doing the work, how can I take this and maybe engage with other people and talk about it?”

I interviewed somebody for my book, and he shared an example that perfectly exemplifies this. So at the time, he was sitting in the risk department of his company, but he always had this itch to learn a little bit more about the business side of the organization. And so he was telling me that at the time, he was working on this project for the risk department that he was in, and once he was done, he took that completed project and then started engaging with folks on the sales team and said, “Hey, would you and the sales team be interested in using this as well? We can run the numbers for you, we can analyze things,” and it was a way to start opening conversations and eventually building relationships with those in a different department that he wanted to learn more about.

ALISON BEARD: So it’s about sort of communicating the work that you’ve done to others in a way that will seem compelling to them?

JESSICA CHEN: Exactly. It’s not just doing the work to do the work, it’s thinking about the work that you have to do and how can you maximize the opportunity.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah. Okay, third reframe?

JESSICA CHEN: The third reframe is all about how do you handle wins. Essentially this means how do you celebrate the amazing work that you’re doing, because for many of us who grew up in a quiet culture, the idea of seeking the spotlight is so unnatural. We tend to say, “Well, if I’m doing good work, that should be enough, right? People will notice this. I mean, my manager knows I’m doing good work. That’s enough, right?” But the truth is, people are busy; our team’s busy, our manager’s busy. They might recognize it, but I think it’s really important for us to also make sure other people keep it top of mind.

And so the reframe is thinking about, “Okay, how can you talk about the benefit and the impact of your work so others can see the value of it?” And you can even use language like, “This project that we just finished or that I worked on on this part of it, it helped streamlined A, B, and C, or it helped improve the process of X, Y, and Z.” Sometimes doing something as simple as that is all you need to do.

Another thing that I say when it comes to handling wins and celebrating the amazing work that you’re doing is if a client emails you and just says, “Hey, we really enjoyed working with you on this,” or somebody says, “Awesome job,” if your manager, for example, is not on that email, simply forwarding it to them and just adding your thoughts of, “Really excited about this.”

ALISON BEARD: One of the tips I love from the book, which I practice myself, is a yay folder in your email inbox, which helps you remember the things that you’ve done so you’re ready to talk about them.

JESSICA CHEN: The yay folder is one of my favorite ones because it’s such a simple thing to do with anybody. Any of us can do it. You take a folder, you name it a yay folder. I mean, of course you can name it like a happy folder, whatever you want. I call mine the yay folder. But essentially it’s anytime somebody praises you, or congratulates you, or says, “Awesome job,” any of those great positive words, you take that email and you drag it into your yay folder, and your yay folder effectively becomes the one centralized place if you ever need evidence to show that you are doing good work.

ALISON BEARD: So finally, the last reframe which is around conflict.

JESSICA CHEN: Yes. It is how do you handle conflict. Now, for many of us, conflict is something that, generally speaking, we want to avoid because it’s uncomfortable. And conflict can mean things like giving somebody feedback, or tricky conversations can be even asking to pitch a project. For many of us, what we first experience is that kind of fight or flight, right? It’s like, “Oh my gosh, what do I actually do?”

Now for many of us in a quiet culture, I find because there’s such an emphasis on maintaining a harmonious environment, we just default to solving the problem ourselves, like we don’t want to bother people, we want to just figure things out, but what I have found is, and this definitely leverages my background as a journalist, people appreciate when you are proactive about communicating what is going on as it’s happening.

If you ever get the sense like, “Okay, something’s not going right, or we’re experiencing a problem, a client isn’t happy,” it’s thinking, “Okay, wait a second. Let me reframe this. What happened here? When did things go wrong? Who do I need to communicate to?” And it’s not just who do I need to communicate to, it’s how can I talk to them about what’s going on.

And oftentimes when we are, for example, let’s say, talking to our manager about this tricky situation, it’s not about just brain dumping like, “Oh my gosh, this is the problem. They’re so unhappy. This is what went wrong,” it’s offering some solutions as well. and your solutions can be you even thinking in real time, being like, “So as I’m thinking about this, I’m thinking maybe we can consider this avenue or we can try to consider solving the problem like this.”

And it’s not that you’re saying that this is the solution, but at least you’re giving the perception and the impression that you’re thinking and you’re problem solving, and I have found that when we can approach conflict like this, it can make and also help bolster our credibility because we’re not showing people we’re shy or hiding in times of conflict.

ALISON BEARD: So you talk a lot about bias and how it can backfire when you start acting counter to people’s expectations, whether that’s because you’ve always behaved a certain way or because of your race or your gender, and then you talk about the internal bias or discomfort with change, when you’ve been brought up to always act a certain way and now you’re trying to push yourself to act a little differently. So how do you get over that?

JESSICA CHEN: I have this story in the book, and it’s actually a story of my mom. So she was a homemaker for about 25 years, and she was at home, stay-at-home mom, just taking care of my brother and I, but later on, around in college, I remember my parents, they got divorced and suddenly my mom had to go back to work. And if you can imagine, my mom, she’s an immigrant, didn’t really have much work experience.

She eventually found a job as a sales associate for a cosmetic brand, and she was telling me how difficult it was for her to work in that environment because she didn’t understand the workplace and cultural norms, and she felt overshadowed a lot. She also felt like people took advantage of her as well. And after a while, she actually seemed to enjoy the work.

And I remember asking her like, “Is work still difficult for you? What changed? How are you doing?” And I remember she had this mentality, and it really just stuck with me, that in good times and in bad times, you have to be your own best cheerleader. That’s probably what helped build her resilience through those tough times of being a quiet culture person working in a loud culture, competing with people to sell as many products as they could, and eventually, and this is the best part of the story, she became one of the highest grossing sales associates at the department store.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah. I love the celery mushroom story about changing your self-talk.

JESSICA CHEN: Yes, the self-talk is certainly one of those things where we form this narrative in our head or we start kind of going and spiraling into this negative mode of thinking, and one of the strategies that I have to help us get out of it is it’s about labeling, and labeling is how you can essentially acknowledge the thoughts that are happening and evaluating whether they are helpful or unhelpful.

I was working with a client, and she was the kind of person who would dwell. And so this is when I said, “Okay, when you notice that negative mental voice in your head and that mental voice is telling you things like, ‘Oh my gosh, you’re not good enough. Oh my gosh, your manager’s so mad at you,’ it’s labeling that mental talk a word.”

And for her, I asked her this question, “What’s your least favorite vegetable?” And she was like, “I don’t know, celery? I’m not a huge fan of celery.” And I was like, “Perfect. That is going to be what you’re going to label the negative self-talk. So when you see yourself going down the spiral of, ‘Oh my gosh, this person doesn’t like me, or I’m doing a terrible job,’ you got to be able to catch yourself sometimes and say, ‘Okay, this is the celery talking. I acknowledge that, but let me pause and let me try to pivot.’” So then I asked her, “What’s your favorite vegetable?”

And she was like, “Mushrooms,” and I was like, “Perfect. We will label your positive self-talk mushrooms, so that once you acknowledge the negative self-talk, the celery talking, then you go, ‘Okay, wait, I’m going to put the celery aside and I’m going to bring up the mushroom.’”

ALISON BEARD: After reframing, you recommend being really proactive in a couple areas of work. You talk about shaping your career brand around something that you’re good at and you really love doing, you talk about building credibility, but I want to drill down on this idea of actually asking for and getting the assignments, the projects, the roles that you want. How do you make sure that that happens?

JESSICA CHEN: I think advocating for ourselves is one of the most important skills we need to learn. So I like to think about it in this four-part framework which I call ACCT, A-C-C-T. So the first is the first A, and that is Ask. In order to advocate for yourself, you got to ask for what you want, because you can’t assume other people are going to know what you want. You eventually have to put yourself out there and ask. So that’s the first A.

The second one is the C, and that is Circling Back, because oftentimes I have found we actually get what we want, we can close that deal when we circle back and follow up. But it’s not just about saying, “Hey, following up here,” or, “Hey, circling back. Just want to get your thoughts,” it’s thinking about when you do circle back, how can you be intentional. And what I mean by this is, can you offer a new piece of information when you circle back? Can you say, “Since our last conversation, I’ve done a little bit more research, and this is why I really think this is what we have to do”?

ALISON BEARD: So that you’re not nagging or being seen as a pest, you’re actually adding to the conversation.

JESSICA CHEN: Exactly, and I think that’s kind of like the missing link for a lot of people. It’s like how can you make the information feel fresh, make it feel new.

The third one is the C as well, and this one is Celebrate, and this is celebrate your wins, and it’s similar and very familiar to one of the reframes, and it goes back to not just doing the work to do the work, but it’s taking the work that you’re doing and ensuring other people know about it.

And then finally, the T is Turn Down Requests, because at the end of the day, advocating for ourselves is also being able to say no, say no to certain things because the time that we have at work is limited. If we say yes to too many things, ultimately we’re taking time away from things that we actually want to do or things that can really accelerate our career.

ALISON BEARD: And what would you want managers to better understand about employees who are quiet culture people and how to better engage them?

JESSICA CHEN: I think it’s going back to that quiet culture bias of not jumping to those conclusions of just because somebody is quiet on your team, it doesn’t mean they don’t care, or thinking that because this person hasn’t said anything, that they don’t have their own ideas or their own contributions.

Sometimes as a good manager, it’s creating that runway, for example, for them, and when I say runway, I mean things like when you’re in a team meeting, you can say, “Oh, hey, Jessica, I know you had mentioned to me about this idea you had last week. Would you want to share it with the team?” And sometimes just creating that runway can start to get them comfortable in utilizing and using their voice, right?

But it’s also thinking about the multiple ways in how people communicate. We know communications is not just all verbal, which is kind of what we always default to. So just also making sure we are, as a manager, giving shout-outs. So I think when we think about acknowledging folks on our team, it’s not putting our attention to those who are always louder, it’s making sure that we are giving equal coverage to everybody on the team.

ALISON BEARD: Great. Well, thank you, Jessica. I learned a lot from your book, and I think the advice is really good as someone who sort of alternates between being a quiet and loud person.

JESSICA CHEN: Exactly.

ALISON BEARD: Thanks so much for talking with me today.

JESSICA CHEN: Thank you.

ALISON BEARD: That’s Jessica Chen, author of the book Smart, Not Loud: How to Get Noticed at Work for All the Right Reasons.

And we have more episodes and more podcasts to help you manage your team, your organization, and your career. Find them at hbr.org/podcasts or search HBR in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen. Thanks to our team, senior producer, Mary Dooe, associate producer Hannah Bates, audio product manager Ian Fox, and senior production specialist Rob Eckhardt. And thanks to you for listening to the HBR IdeaCast. We’ll be back with a new episode on Tuesday. I’m Alison Beard.