An Executive? Or Just a Photograph?
I have an endless curiosity and interest in gaining knowledge, so I have spoken with many working people about leadership over the years, and in many different industries. A quote from one of those employee conversations still sticks with me.
“We had a photo wall showing all of our leaders, right up to the executive level. We used to joke about one of the executives on the wall. ‘Does he still work here?’ We went for two years without seeing him in person.”
At first, I thought this employee was exaggerating, but they were quite serious. And it wasn’t as if they were criticizing the executive’s decisions or questioning the leader’s competence. In fact, they couldn’t. They had no idea what the executive was doing because they were not experiencing the leader’s presence. The executive had become invisible. In that employee’s mind, that executive existed as a photograph rather than as a leader.
Executive Visibility Has a “Sweet Spot”
There is a common misconception among executive leaders that frontline employees don’t really need to interact with them. Leadership presence, they reason, can be delegated to managers. After all, executives have strategy to develop, important people to meet, partnerships to build, and decisions that only they can make.
I understand where that thinking comes from. Executive leadership can be demanding. But leadership visibility isn’t about constant interaction. Rather, it is about providing enough meaningful interaction that people have confidence that leadership is present, paying attention, and engaged.
My own thinking about executive visibility has changed over time. Years ago, I worked in an organization that was performing at an exceptionally high level. The culture was healthy and morale was strong. People understood their responsibilities and consistently delivered results.
During this time, I saw our top executive only a handful of times each year. And it didn’t bother me. Why? Because everything was working. I assumed he was somewhere doing work that only he could do. He trusted his leaders to lead, and we trusted him to steer the organization. His appearances were infrequent, but when they happened, they were intentional. When he showed up, it mattered.
That experience taught me an important lesson:
The visibility people need from their leaders is inversely proportional to the level of certainty they are feeling.
What this means is that when everyone in the organization is confident things are working, leaders can step back. When employees are uncertain, leaders need to step forward.
It’s the adversity that determines what level of visibility is needed. When the organization faces rapid change, declining morale, difficult decisions, or prolonged uncertainty, employees naturally begin asking questions.
- Does leadership know what’s happening?
- Are they paying attention?
- Does anyone have a plan?
- Who is really in charge?
At that point, executive visibility becomes something more than communication; it becomes reassurance.
When the Leader is Absent, People Fill in the Blanks
Here is another example that illustrates this. One employee described an executive this way:
“Sometimes she was out of the office, and none of us knew where she was. Even her assistant didn’t know where she was. She would just go missing for periods of time.”
The problem wasn’t that the executive was out of the office. Everyone knows that executives are busy making decisions with stakeholders. That is part of their job.
The problem was the mystery, the “not knowing” about the leader’s whereabouts. Employees couldn’t tell whether the executive was leading strategically or simply absent. And that uncertainty turned into speculation. Speculation became stories … and those stories contributed to a sense of distrust.
Human beings naturally fill in the blanks when information is missing. If we don’t know what’s happening, we create explanations that make sense to us. Unfortunately, those explanations are rarely generous.
There is an old adage in leadership development: We judge ourselves by our intentions, but others judge us through our behaviors.
As an executive, you may intend to be transparent. You may intend to be supportive, and engaged in your employees’ work. But people can only interpret what they observe.
Since people cannot observe your intentions, they infer them from your behavior. And when there is little or no behavior to observe, they begin telling a story about what your absence means. If people see nothing, they don’t conclude that nothing is happening. They conclude that something is being hidden.
Presence Is Evidence
That’s why executive visibility isn’t about walking the halls every hour, attending every meeting, or making your presence known for its own sake. Visibility is not performative, it is evidence of leadership.
Your presence tells people that you are paying attention, that you are listening, and that someone is steering the organization through uncertainty instead of leaving events to chance.
Trusted executives know when they can step back. They also know when they need to step forward.
Because leadership isn’t measured by how often people see you. It’s measured by whether people see enough of you to know they are being led.