Hi Reader,

We all have experience and knowledge. If you're employed, you may share your knowledge openly with work colleagues in the natural course of doing your work.

Early in your career, you may have had a boss or mentor who coached you, advocated for you, and opened doors for you.

But, when you've become more established in your career, or reach a point of leadership, or if you start your own business, you may find fewer people willing to advocate for you.

It's usually not intentional. They're just busy and you've outgrown the developmental stage where you needed someone to watch out for you.

It's up to you to share your knowledge.

It's up to you to promote yourself.

And, that doesn't come easily for many because it feels like vanity.

On episode 304, Trisha Stetzel shares key principles from her upcoming book: Visibility ≠ Equal Vanity.

Trisha shares examples of breaking your silence without feeling icky.

My favorite line from our conversation is when Trisha said that "when you don't share what you know, you've made a decision that others don't need to know it."

In other words, silence is not humility.

In this week's episode 304 the main point is this.

"Trisha Stetzel spent years believing hard work alone would earn her recognition, and for a while, it did. Then the recognition stopped. In this conversation, Trisha traces why visibility dries up the moment you move into higher leadership or start your own business, and how she rebuilt her relationship to being seen without it feeling like vanity. She shares key principles from her upcoming book, Visibility ≠ Equal Vanity."

Did you know that you can watch each week's episode on my YouTube channel? 👇🏼

Each video is produced with visual elements to help bring the story alive beyond the audio. If podcast consumption on YouTube is new to you, give it a try! 😎

The Coach's Corner

Weekly insights and actionable tips from my lens as an executive coach—helping you lead, grow, and thrive.

The Danger of Leaders Avoiding the AI Fear Conversation

There’s a common situation repeating itself in workplaces around the world at companies ranging from dozens of employees to thousands. It looks like this.

A leader who is smart, experienced, and cares about their team can feel that something's off. Their people are quieter than usual in meetings. There's a vibe in the room that nobody's talking about openly, and this leader knows, deep down, that a lot of it has to do with the AI rollout. New tools are being introduced, workflows are changing, and there’s an uncertainty about what it means for people's jobs.

So here's what this leader does. They wait. They tell themselves, we'll have that conversation once we have more clarity, once we know more, once the plan is finalized. And in the meantime, the silence grows. Trust erodes quietly, not because anything went wrong, but because nothing got said.

If that leader sounds at all familiar, what is that silence actually costing you?

In my experience, this hesitation almost always comes down to one of three patterns. I call them the Three Silence Traps.

Trap 1: "Don't validate it."

This is the belief that bringing up AI anxiety directly will make it worse, as if acknowledging a fear gives it more power. So the leader keeps things upbeat: all opportunity, all efficiency, no acknowledgment of what people are actually feeling. But avoidance doesn't eliminate fear. It amplifies it. Your team is reading between the lines of everything you're not saying.

Trap 2: "I don't have all the answers."

This one's more honest, and I understand it. Leaders often don't know exactly what AI means for specific roles or headcount, and they don't want to say something that turns out to be wrong. But your team isn't asking you for a crystal ball. They want to know you see them, that you're aware of the uncertainty they're carrying, and that you're in it with them. You don't need all the answers to have the conversation.

Trap 3: "They'll come around."

This trap assumes that, given a little time, people will adapt on their own and the anxiety will fade. Sometimes that's true. More often, the employees who are most uncertain quietly disengage, or they start looking for somewhere else to work, somewhere someone's actually talking to them about what the future looks like.

All three traps produce the same outcome: slow, invisible trust erosion.

It's not a dramatic break, just a quiet one, which makes it more dangerous. By the time you notice it, you've already lost ground.

The fix isn't complicated. Your team doesn't need you to have all the answers before you start talking. They need you to have the conversation today. That's the premise behind the Acknowledge, Anchor, Act framework: a simple structure for having the fear conversation honestly, without pretending you've got it all figured out.

If you want to see where your own team stands before you have that conversation, take the free AI People Readiness Pulse™ and find out if your people are ready for the AI investment you're about to make.

Read the full article here.

You Can Catch This Week's Episode:

Listen on Apple
Listen on Spotify
Listen on Overcast
Listen on our Website
Watch on YouTube

Nobody Is Watching You Anymore, and That's on You Now

Most of us are taught that if we work hard enough, someone will notice. Trisha Stetzel believed that too, through boot camp leading 86 women in the Navy, a decade in corporate life at IBM, and building her own business afterward. At every stage, the belief that good work speaks for itself eventually stopped holding up. This conversation on episode 304 is about why recognition dries up as you rise, and what to do once no one’s watching for you anymore.

Who This Is For

Leaders and entrepreneurs who’ve done everything right and still feel overlooked
Anyone who had mentors or sponsors early in their career and now finds themselves flying solo
People who think of self-promotion as “icky” and want a different way to frame it
Business owners and consultants who need to build visibility without feeling like they’re bragging
Anyone launching a book, program, or business who needs a simple way to talk about their own work

Five Key Takeaways

Recognition happens automatically early in a career, because mentors and sponsors are watching for you. It stops once you move into higher leadership or start your own business, because no one else has the job of noticing on your behalf anymore.
Visibility isn’t the same as self-promotion. It’s sharing the results and the impact you created, not “me, me, me.”
Trisha’s three-question framework for talking about your own work: What did I contribute? What changed because of it? Who could benefit from knowing what I learned?
Staying quiet about your work isn’t humility. It’s making the decision for someone else that they don’t need to know what you could give them.

The easiest way to start: tell someone else’s story first. Share the impact you had on a client, customer, or teammate before you ever have to talk about yourself.