There’s someone in my department who doesn’t attend many meetings. She’s not on high-visibility projects. She doesn’t position herself for promotions or make sure leadership knows about her contributions. In a room full of people talking about strategy and innovation, she’s usually the quiet one taking notes.
If you looked at our org chart or read her job description, you wouldn’t think she was particularly important. Middle-level role, doesn’t manage anyone, not on the leadership track. Easy to overlook in a ministry full of ambitious people doing impressive things.
And then she took a week of vacation last month.
Within two days, everything started falling apart in small ways. People couldn’t find files. Questions that usually got answered immediately sat unanswered. Systems that normally worked smoothly started having issues. Nothing catastrophic—just a dozen small things that made everything harder.
Every workplace has that person—not the loudest, not the most impressive on paper, not climbing fastest. But they’re the one holding things together in ways nobody notices until they’re gone.
That’s when I realized: she’s the person who actually makes everything work. Not the person getting credit or recognition. Not the person everyone thinks is essential. The person who actually is essential but whose essentialness is invisible because everything just works when they’re there.
And we’d all been underestimating her for years.
The most competent person in your workplace might be the one nobody’s paying attention to. Because real competence often looks like nothing’s happening—everything just works smoothly without drama or visibility.
Order my new book: Strategic Life
The Person Nobody Notices
I started paying more attention after that week. Watching what she actually does versus what people think she does.
She doesn’t run meetings, but she’s the one who makes sure they’re productive. She sends the pre-read materials. She follows up on action items. She notices when discussions are going in circles and quietly redirects. She keeps track of what was decided so nobody wastes time relitigating settled questions.
She doesn’t lead projects, but projects run more smoothly when she’s involved. She knows where bottlenecks will be before they happen. She understands which stakeholders need to be involved at which stage. She can tell you who to talk to for any question because she’s built relationships across the entire organization.
She doesn’t make strategic decisions, but she makes sure decisions actually get implemented. She translates leadership’s vision into concrete steps. She identifies what resources are needed. She spots problems early when they’re still easy to fix. She makes sure nothing falls through the cracks.
And she does all of this without calling attention to it. No self-promotion. No positioning for credit. No making sure everyone knows about her contributions. She just quietly makes everything work better.
Which is precisely why everyone underestimates her.
What She Actually Does
The more I pay attention, the more I realize her job isn’t what her job description says. Her actual role is something like “organizational glue”—she’s what holds disparate pieces together and makes the whole thing function as a system.
She knows how things actually work, not just how they’re supposed to work. She understands the informal processes, the relationships that matter, the history of why things are the way they are. She has institutional knowledge that isn’t written down anywhere but is crucial for getting anything done.
She translates between different parts of the organization. Between leadership and staff. Between departments that don’t usually talk to each other. Between technical people and non-technical people. She speaks everyone’s language and helps them understand each other.
She anticipates problems before they become problems. Not because she’s paranoid, but because she pays attention to patterns. She notices when something feels off. She asks questions that reveal issues while they’re still small. She prevents crises that nobody else even knows could have happened.
And she makes everyone around her more effective. People come to her with questions because she’ll either know the answer or know who to ask. She helps them avoid wasting time on approaches that won’t work. She connects them with resources or people they need. She makes their work easier.
None of this shows up on performance reviews. None of it fits into neat metrics. You can’t quantify “makes everything work better” or “prevents problems that didn’t happen” or “helps everyone else be more effective.” So it goes largely unrecognized.
Why Competence Is Often Invisible
I’ve been thinking about why real competence is so often invisible. And I think it’s because competence looks like nothing’s happening.
When someone’s really good at their job, things just work. Problems get solved before they become visible. Systems function smoothly. Questions get answered. Everything flows without friction or drama.
And because it works so well, nobody notices all the work that makes it work. The competence is invisible precisely because it’s effective. It’s like good design—you only notice it when it’s absent.
Incompetence, by contrast, is very visible. When things don’t work, everyone notices. When systems break down, there’s drama and urgency and everyone’s talking about it. When problems don’t get solved, they escalate and demand attention.
So ironically, incompetent people often get more attention than competent ones. Not positive attention necessarily, but attention. Visibility. People noticing them and what they’re doing.
Meanwhile, the competent person is preventing problems nobody sees, making systems work that nobody questions, handling complexity that nobody else realizes exists. And because it all works smoothly, nobody recognizes how much work it is or how essential they are.
The competence is invisible until it’s absent. Which is why that week of vacation was so revealing. Suddenly the absence of her competence became visible through all the small things that stopped working smoothly.
The Chaos When They Leave
When she was on vacation, the chaos wasn’t dramatic. Nothing completely fell apart. The ministry didn’t stop functioning. But everything got harder in small, accumulating ways.
People spent time searching for information she could have provided in thirty seconds. Meetings ran longer because nobody was quietly keeping them on track. Decisions got delayed because people didn’t know who to ask or what information they needed. Small issues that she would have caught early grew into larger problems that required more effort to fix.
And everyone started asking: where’s the file for this? Who knows about that? How do we usually handle this situation? Questions that revealed how much they relied on her without realizing it.
The interesting thing was that nobody panicked. Because nothing was obviously broken. It’s just that everything took more effort. Everything had more friction. Everything was slightly harder than it should have been.
That’s what the absence of quiet competence looks like. Not catastrophe. Just elevated difficulty. More wasted motion. More time spent figuring out things that someone else just knows. More small problems that could have been prevented.
When she came back, everything returned to normal so smoothly that most people probably didn’t even notice. The systems started working properly again. Questions got answered quickly again. Problems got caught early again. Everything just… worked.
Which reinforced the invisibility. Because her return didn’t feel dramatic. It just felt like things were working correctly again, which is how they always felt when she was there. So her essentialness remained invisible even in her return.
What It Reveals About What We Value
This pattern reveals something about what we actually value versus what we say we value.
We say we value competence, reliability, effectiveness. We say we want people who make things work, who solve problems, who make everyone around them better. We say we recognize and reward essential contributions.
But what we actually reward is visibility. Loudness. Self-promotion. Being impressive in meetings. Taking credit. Positioning yourself strategically. Making sure leadership knows what you’re doing.
The quiet competent person who makes everything work? They’re easy to take for granted. Easy to overlook when promotions come around. Easy to forget when distributing recognition. Because their work is invisible and they’re not making noise about it.
Meanwhile, the person who’s good at talking about their work—whether or not that work is actually essential—gets noticed. Gets recognized. Gets promoted. Because visibility gets rewarded more than actual competence.
I’m not saying self-promotion is bad or that people shouldn’t advocate for themselves. But I am saying we’re systematically undervaluing quiet essential work while overvaluing visible work that might not actually be as important as it appears.
And the result is that the people holding everything together often don’t get the recognition, advancement, or compensation they deserve. While people who are good at looking important get rewarded even when they’re not actually essential.
The People Who Make Things Work vs. People Who Take Credit
In every organization, there’s a gap between people who make things work and people who take credit for things working.
Some people overlap both categories—they do essential work and also make sure people know about it. That’s fine. Good for them. They’ve figured out how to be both competent and visible.
But many organizations have people who are amazing at taking credit for things they barely contributed to. They position themselves as essential to projects they were barely involved in. They make sure leadership knows about successes they had marginal roles in. They’re experts at visibility without necessarily being experts at actual work.
And they have people who do essential work without anyone noticing. Who make critical contributions without positioning for credit. Who solve important problems without announcing they’ve solved them. Who make everyone around them more effective without making sure leadership knows.
The gap between these groups reveals something about organizational health. In healthy organizations, the overlap is high—people who do essential work also get recognized for it. In less healthy organizations, the gap is wide—the people getting recognized aren’t necessarily the people doing the most important work.
My department has that gap. And my colleague—the one everyone underestimates—she’s firmly in the “makes things work” category without being in the “takes credit” category. Which means she’s essential but undervalued. Crucial but overlooked. The person holding everything together while others get promotions.
And that’s not because she’s bad at self-promotion. It’s because the work she does—the organizational glue, the problem prevention, the making everyone else more effective—that work is inherently hard to promote. It doesn’t fit into neat accomplishments you can list. It doesn’t create visible wins you can claim. It’s just making everything work better in ways that are invisible until they’re absent.
Recognizing Quiet Essential Work
Since noticing this pattern, I’ve been trying to pay more attention to quiet essential work. To recognize competence even when it’s invisible. To value the people who make things work even when they’re not making noise about it.
This is harder than it sounds. Because the work is invisible by nature. You have to actively look for it. You have to notice what’s working smoothly and ask why. You have to pay attention to who people go to with questions, who prevents problems, who makes everyone else more effective.
I’ve started doing this consciously. When a project goes smoothly, I ask: who made this work? Not just who led it, but who actually made it function? When a problem gets solved, I ask: who caught this early? Who prevented this from becoming bigger?
And often, the answer is someone like my colleague. Someone not on the surface. Someone doing essential work that nobody’s noticing because it’s working so well that it’s invisible.
I’ve also started trying to make this work more visible to leadership. When I see someone doing essential but invisible work, I mention it. “This went smoothly because [name] handled X.” “We avoided a problem because [name] caught Y early.” “This person is the reason Z works as well as it does.”
Not making a big deal about it. Just making sure the work gets recognized instead of remaining invisible. Making sure competence gets noticed even when it’s quiet.
Link to My Book: New Day, My Way, Your Life
The Underestimated People
My colleague isn’t unique. Every workplace has versions of her. The person who isn’t loud or impressive or climbing fast but who actually makes everything work. The person everyone takes for granted until they’re gone. The person whose competence is invisible because it’s so effective.
And we systematically underestimate these people. Not maliciously—just through inattention. Because we’re drawn to visibility, to loudness, to people who position themselves well. And we miss the quiet essential work happening around us because it’s not calling attention to itself.
This matters beyond individual recognition. It matters for organizational effectiveness. When you undervalue the people who actually make things work, you risk losing them. And when they leave, you discover too late how essential they were.
It also matters for justice. The people doing essential but invisible work deserve recognition and advancement as much as people doing visible but potentially less essential work. But they often don’t get it because we reward visibility over actual competence.
And it matters for culture. When organizations reward loud self-promotion over quiet competence, they send a message about what actually matters. And that message shapes behavior—people learn to focus on looking important rather than being important. On positioning for credit rather than doing essential work.
Permission to Notice Quiet Competence
Here’s what I want you to know: The most essential person in your workplace might be the one you’re not paying attention to. The quiet competent person making everything work while others take credit. Pay attention to them.
Pay attention to who people go to with questions. Who prevents problems. Who makes everyone else more effective. Who knows how things actually work. Who holds things together in ways that are invisible until they’re absent.
These people deserve recognition. They deserve advancement. They deserve to be valued as much as—maybe more than—people who are good at visibility but less good at actual essential work.
And if you’re one of these people—if you’re the one doing essential but invisible work while others get credit—know that your work matters even if nobody’s noticing. You’re not less valuable because you’re quiet. You’re not less competent because you’re not loud. You’re essential even if that essentialness is invisible.
The people who make things work are just as important—often more important—than the people who talk about making things work. Quiet competence is still competence. Invisible essential work is still essential.
So notice it. Value it. Recognize it. Make sure the people holding everything together get the acknowledgment and advancement they deserve. Make sure competence gets rewarded even when it’s not calling attention to itself.
The Colleague I’ve Been Underestimating
My colleague came back from vacation and everything returned to normal. Systems worked. Questions got answered. Problems got prevented. Everything just functioned the way it should.
And I realized: I’d been underestimating her for years. Taking her competence for granted. Not recognizing how essential she is because everything works so smoothly when she’s there that I never had to think about it.
I’m trying to do better now. To notice her contributions even when they’re invisible. To recognize the work she does that makes everything else possible. To value her competence even though it doesn’t call attention to itself.
And I’m trying to make sure leadership notices too. Because she deserves recognition and advancement as much as anyone. Maybe more, since she’s actually essential rather than just visible.
She probably doesn’t know I’m thinking about this. She’s just continuing to do her work quietly, making everything function better, helping everyone around her be more effective. Not seeking credit. Not positioning for promotion. Just being excellent at her job in ways that remain largely invisible.
But I see it now. And I’m going to make sure it doesn’t stay invisible forever.
Because the colleague everyone underestimates might be the one who’s actually holding everything together. And they deserve to be recognized for that, even if—especially if—their competence is so effective that it’s invisible.
Pay attention to the quiet ones. They might be the most essential people in your workplace.
Subscribe to my newsletter:
Join 600,000+ readers who get wisdom from ordinary experiences delivered twice a week.
Leave a Reply