How to be consistently visible when you’re an overloaded leader

Many leaders I speak to at the moment are overloaded. The reasons are myriad and if you’re reading this there’s a good chance you can relate. But despite your load, you may have been given a KPI to be more visible or you’ve let your visibility slip while you lead through this time.

Most of the clients I work with want to be thought leaders and a goal like this can become a barrier to building your reputation when you’re overloaded – no time to write or think of articles or speak at conferences, so you delay it. Building a reputation is multilayered, so it’s fine to make your visibility simpler when you have other priorities and build it out to thought leader level when it works for you.

Here are some tips on how to maintain your visibility while you’re overloaded, whether you need simple actions you can take now to be visible that don’t feel like they’re adding to your load. Or, you want to do the basics plus some thought leadership work, but the thought leader work is feeling like a burden because of your load.

1. Go back to basics

Building your reputation isn’t all or nothing. You’re allowed to give it more time and attention when you have capacity and dial it back when your business or people need extra attention. You can still strategically build your reputation and show how you lead during this time. 

Here’s how:

1. Strategic content sharing: Share industry news and company updates to keep stakeholders informed. LinkedIn is ideal for this
2. Behind-the-curtain content: Share behind-the-scenes insights into your leadership and company culture through photos and quick updates. This humanises you as a leader and gives you an easy opportunity to be visible 
3. Support other people’s visibility by commenting and liking, especially your team’s work on LinkedIn and in the media

CEOs who are active on social media are perceived as more innovative and approachable by employees and investors, so prioritising this work but making it simple is good leadership during divergent times for many businesses.

2. Thought leadership

Thought leadership content is a powerful way for leaders to build the visibility of your business and your influence as an industry leader. But if you want to do it yourself or you don’t have a team who can support you, you can keep putting it off and remain unknown or you can outsource it. 

Some leaders question whether this is the right thing to do, but outsourcing your thought leadership has these benefits:

• A trusted thought leadership advisor will be able to recommend the topics you can build your visibility on that will resonate with your audience and position you as an expert than you can decide yourself due to your own time pressures and competing priorities
• The thought leadership content they recommend and create for you will be well-researched and written by someone who can write like a journalist
• They will know the topics and content that will be of interest to conference organisers, the media, and your industry, so your thought leadership is published
• They can optimise your content for you, so one great article or piece of content will work hard for you and ensure you’re being visible across multiple platforms

The benefits of prioritising your thought leadership work when you’re overloaded (or even when you’re not) is that you will:

• Build a profile in the media faster than if you don’t do this work at all or if you do it yourself (and there’s no time for that, you’re reading this because you’re overloaded) Your advisor will create op eds for you that can be published in the media, leading to interviews on your thought leadership topics 
• Your advisor can media train and prepare you for interviews so you say the right thing and you know what to do if you’re asked a hard question
• Find media opportunities for you that you won’t be offered if you’re doing this work yourself. We are working with the media and event organisers every day, so we have built strong relationships and they will approach us about opportunities that are right for our clients
• Build media relationships on your behalf with journalists who wouldn’t know who you are or what your expertise is if you weren’t working with them
• Give you constructive feedback so you keep building your profile with authority
• Plan strategically so you can optimise future opportunities, measure success, and create thought leadership work that gets you to your visibility end goal

According to Forbes, CEOs who actively engage with the media are perceived as more competent and influential by external stakeholders, so outsourcing this work to build your profile when you’re stretched can be worth it. You just need to prioritise the work you do in this space because no matter how much support you bring in, you won’t have the capacity to be everywhere and take every thought leadership opportunity.

Maintaining visibility as a CEO who is overloaded requires a strategy and discipline. By getting your basics right and outsourcing expert support you can build your profile with ease and authority while you prioritise leading your business and your people well. 

Advanced access to my new guide, ‘Unknown to the AFR’ + 1-hour get started now session with a 90-day plan –  two discounted sessions left

Most of my clients have the ultimate goal of being featured in the AFR, so I’ve written a guide called ‘Unknown to the AFR’ which shows you step-by-step how to build visibility that positions you as a thought leader and gets you into the AFR.

This guide will show you how to elevate your reputation with ease and authority, how to be visible on the platforms that feel right for you and how to do it so it feels aligned to who you are as a human and a leader while you get the right results for you.

I know many of you are overloaded right now, so I’m offering access to this guide together with a 1-hour strategy session that will overcome your barriers and give you a 90-day plan that will make you visible without adding to your overload.

Fee: Discounted rate of $300+gst, including your advanced copy of ‘Unknown to the AFR’, our recorded 1-hour session and my follow up 90-day plan to get you started now

These sessions are now limited to two only. Email me and I’ll reply with the link. 

Angela Cross is a reputation strategist who works with leaders and brands to elevate their reputations through PR, corporate social media, industry communication, speaking opportunities and stakeholder engagement. If you would like to build your reputation with ease and authority, email her here.

You can also download her guide to overcoming the most common barriers to building your reputation here.