When Visibility Becomes Survival: The Shift Inside Today's Workplaces
It's in the moments after I leave the stage that I start to see the future more clearly. Not during the Q&A. Not when the session wraps. But in the quiet conversations that follow—when someone finds me backstage, in the green room, or walks with me toward the exit.
A corporate leader leans in and asks, "How do I make sure I'm the one who stays?"
A team member adds with quiet urgency, "I've done everything right. Why do I feel like I'm disappearing?"
These aren't isolated questions. They're signals of a deeper shift. I call it The Great Workplace Reshuffle: a reordering of who gets seen, heard, and retained in the age of AI.
My global research confirms what I'm hearing offstage: 80% of professionals say visibility and self-promotion aren't about ambition anymore. They're about survival.
When I shared these findings with more than 400 AI leaders at Women in AI, the reaction wasn't surprise. It was relief. Someone had finally given language to what they'd been feeling.
Before AI, people understood work's framework. Fair or unfair, there was a framework. The rules are about to be upended. We're starting to ask, "How do I evolve with what's coming?"
In the September 6 NY Times, Brené Brown called it out in her interview with Lulu Garcia-Navarro. When asked what this moment of massive disruption looks like inside workplaces, Brown said:
"It looks like a complete [expletive] show. What it looks like is scarcity. We're not doing enough, we don't know enough, we don't have enough people trained, we're not investing enough. This is what everyone's doing and we're behind. So it looks like fear and scarcity driving huge investments in A.I. that are not even aligned with business strategy."
Brown explains that when people don't have the skills to navigate workplace tensions productively, disagreements about tasks quickly become personal conflicts. She talks about how "task conflict becomes emotional conflict" when people lack skills to "straddle tension." Brown also references Amy Webb's idea of a "supercycle" of unprecedented change: simultaneous upheaval across technology, geopolitics, economics, and generational workplace dynamics.
The Shift I'm Seeing
In my work with leadership teams from 2020-2022, people were frustrated about stolen credit and workplace inequities. They operated within known systems, even when those systems were broken.
Today's workplace anxiety is different. Every task conflict feels like a bigger threat. Every AI conversation feels like a test of personal worth. Brown's skills to "straddle tension" aren't just leadership development anymore. They're adaptation skills for a changing workplace. When everyone operates from scarcity, her insight about task conflict becoming emotional conflict gets amplified.
The Real Cost
When I show leadership teams this data, the room goes quiet. They realize they're not just losing talent—they're bleeding competitive advantage.
I help executives understand: How much revenue walked out the door with your last three departures? The answer is always significant. Then I ask: How much of their expertise did anyone else even know existed? That's when it gets uncomfortable.
Organizations are spending billions on AI while their best people become invisible. They're solving the wrong problem with expensive technology while the actual problem walks out the door.
When everyone's in survival mode:
- Teams protect positions instead of solving problems
- People hoard ideas instead of collaborating
- Trust disappears
- Your best talent leaves rather than fights for visibility (70% in my work with organizations)
The Strategic Risk Nobody's Talking About
When I speak to leadership teams about this, there's a bigger business risk that most organizations aren't seeing. When your expertise stays invisible, you're not just losing talent—you're missing market opportunities.
This isn't just about employee retention. Organizations that can't identify and leverage their internal expertise face challenges that go far beyond turnover costs.
Why "Trying Harder" Won't Work
The solution isn't eliminating AI anxiety or hoping people will just adapt. Traditional leadership development assumes stable frameworks. Performance reviews assume predictable career paths. Team building assumes shared goals.
None of those assumptions hold anymore. This isn't a training problem. It's not a communication problem. It's not even an AI problem.
The Great Workplace Reshuffle isn’t coming. It’s already here.
Strategic Visibility: Frequently Asked Questions
Why is visibility now a matter of "survival" rather than just "ambition"?
In a stable environment, visibility is a choice for those who want to climb. In a "supercycle" of disruption—driven by AI and geopolitical shifts—visibility is how you signal your continued relevance to an organization operating from scarcity. If leadership doesn't know exactly what you contribute, you become a line item to be optimized rather than an asset to be retained.
How does "task conflict" turn into "emotional conflict" in the workplace?
As Brené Brown points out, when people lack the skills to "straddle tension," they default to fear. Without a culture of strategic visibility, people begin to hoard ideas and protect their territory. Disagreements about how to do a job quickly become personal attacks on who is allowed to stay, leading to a breakdown in trust and the eventual departure of top talent.
What is the true cost when expertise stays invisible during an AI transition?
Organizations are currently making massive investments in technology that often aren't aligned with their actual business strategy. When internal expertise is invisible, those investments are made in a vacuum. The real cost isn't just the turnover of the 70% of talent who choose to leave; it is the loss of the strategic "human" intelligence required to make AI investments actually pay off.
Bring Bragging Rights To Your Organization
When high performers can’t articulate their value, the organization loses its competitive edge. Based on the research in my book, Bragging Rights: How to Talk about Your Work Using Purposeful Self-Promotion, I help global teams bridge the gap between "doing the work" and "driving the opportunity."