Captain of My Own Cheer Squad

Welcome to the corporate twilight zone, where your achievements seem to disappear into a black hole of oblivion. In episode four of TED’s podcast Fixable, Frances Frei and Anne Morris dive into this exact dilemma with Nai’a, who found herself caught in the post-reorganization Bermuda Triangle of No Acknowledgment after being paired with a preoccupied boss.

What I learned from this episode

1) Turn That Frown Upside Down

Are you invisible? According to Anne, holding onto frustration isn’t helping you. After all, what’s a little emotional burnout when you can simply forgive your manager for being utterly oblivious? “But that emotion is not going to be useful to you,” she says. Sure, it might feel “useful” to scream into a pillow or make a dartboard with your boss’s face on it, but what do I know?

The real magic happens when you replace judgment with curiosity, because clearly the best way to cope with professional invisibility is by becoming the Sherlock Holmes of your boss’s personal stressors.

“Are they juggling too many meetings? Are they actually a robot?” Curiosity is, after all, a “magical elixir” for workplace woes, so grab your detective hat and start wondering why your manager is terrible at noticing your existence.

2) Ask Thoughtful Questions (Instead of Sobbing Quietly Into Your Keyboard)

The simplest solution, they say, is asking questions that guide your leadership to realize you’re actually crushing it. Start small. Maybe something like, “Hey, how would you like me to tell you about all the ways I’m saving this company?” or “What’s the best way for you to learn about all the projects I’m single-handedly keeping alive?”

You can even try the bolder approach of, “Hey, you know that thing called recognition? How do I go about earning that around here?” Or, if you want to go full transparency, you could say: “I’m kind of worried that after six months of this reorg, no one’s going to remember that I was the one doing all the heavy lifting while everyone else was staring at spreadsheets.”

3) Forgive and Forget (Because That’s What Heroes Do)

Frances and Anne’s final pearl of wisdom: “Try doing what you can and marvel at how the other person changes as a result.”

Translation: Fix yourself first, and hope that your manager eventually pulls their head out of their… calendar. It’s a bit like waiting for a miracle, but hey, miracles happen. Right?

At the end of the day...

You have to be your own cheerleader.

The thing is, even with all these tips, I think that my motto still stands.

While it’s great to recognize the “humanness” of leadership, don’t forget about yourself in the process. You deserve to be noticed. So if they won’t applaud you you should create your own spotlight and keep reminding them you exist—preferably loudly, and in all-caps emails.