If you can’t recognise your leader in the lift, are they really leading?
That seems to be the modern test. Not strategy. Not delivery. Not whether services improve. Just: would you know them if they stood next to you waiting for the doors to open?
Communication teams certainly think it matters. Leaders should be visible. Approachable. Human. A face to the name. Less distant. Less “out of touch”.
And yet…
In one organisation I worked with, the Director had one of those names. Could be male. Could be female. Most frontline staff assumed it was a man. It wasn’t.
Nothing collapsed when they found out. Services continued. Outcomes didn’t wobble. The bins were still collected.
Which raises an awkward question. How much does it really matter?
We live in the age of the high-profile leader. Constant updates. Videos. Blogs. LinkedIn posts about “walking the floor” while clearly not making eye contact with anyone on it.
Somewhere between Donald Trump’s volume and Richard Branson’s balloon is your organisation’s comms strategy. Maximum visibility. Mixed results.
The evidence is not especially reassuring. Levels of trust in leadership remain stubbornly low. In the UK, only a minority of employees say they fully trust senior leaders. At the same time, leaders are more visible than ever.
Which suggests visibility is not the same as credibility. Or leadership.
Because visibility is about being seen. Leadership is about being followed. And those are not the same thing.
There is also a difference between being visible and being accessible. Leaders can appear everywhere and still feel distant. Plenty of messages. Very little listening. Employees notice.
They also notice when visibility starts to look like performance. The carefully staged visit. The scripted conversation. The photo opportunity with a hard hat that has never seen actual work.
It’s not that visibility is wrong. It’s just overrated.
Poor management remains the biggest barrier to organisational performance. Not lack of visibility. Not lack of videos. Just poor management.
Clarity matters more. Only around half of employees say they are clear about what is expected of them. That’s not a visibility problem. That’s a management problem.
Consistency matters more. Doing what you said you would do. Following through. Making decisions. Backing your staff. Trust is built like this. Quietly. Repeatedly. Not through another all-staff broadcast.
There is also something else going on. Visibility isn’t neutral.
If people assume your Director is male because they’ve never seen them, that’s not just a communications issue. It’s an EDI issue. Who gets seen, who gets heard, who gets recognised—it all matters.
But again, the answer isn’t just “more visibility”. It’s better leadership.
Let’s be honest. Ego plays a part. Most leaders like being recognised. The nod in the corridor. The “I saw your update”. It reassures. It signals importance. Nothing wrong with that. Up to a point.
But visibility can be leadership. It can also be ego with a comms team.
The best leaders I’ve worked with were not invisible. But they were not performing either. Their teams knew them. Their organisations felt them. Things worked.
No drama. No grandstanding. No personal brand strategy. Just results.
So yes, leaders probably do need to be visible. But not louder. Not shinier. Not constantly on display. More present. More honest. More consistent.
Because if people trust you, they don’t need to recognise you in the lift. They’ll recognise your decisions.
