THE INVISIBLE EMPLOYEES

Bob Goldman


Do you ever feel people at your job don't know
you exist?
Do you sit through long meetings where no
one asks your opinion? Do you walk through
the halls and no one asks, "How you doing?"
Does workplace life swirl all around you,
leaving you in a vacuum of silence and
isolation?
If you answer, "yes, indeed" to these
questions, I have news for you -- you're not
being ignored or insulted. You, my friend, are
an Invisible.
Invisible, as it turns out, is not a terrible thing
to be. As Richard Eisenberg writes in a recent
article in Forbes, "Invisibles at Work, Take a
Bow," Invisibles may be unseen and
unheralded, but they are important. So
important, in fact, that author David Zweig, a
somewhat shadowy figure himself, has written
an entire book about the subject, "Invisibles:
The Power of Anonymous Work in an Age of
Relentless Self-Promotion."
According to Zweig, Invisibles are "highly
regarded people whose work is really critical
to their endeavor." In other words, they're
skilled professionals who are vital to the
successful operation of their companies, yet no
one knows they exist. Nor is anyone likely to
ever know they exist. That's because, for most
Invisibles, "the better they do their job, the
more they disappear. It's only if something
goes wrong that they're ever thought of. If
they do their job perfectly, they are
unnoticed."
Since doing your job perfectly is something
that is never going to happen, it is unlikely you
will always wear that comfy cloak of
invisibility. But should you make total
invisibility a goal? That's an interesting
question. The answer seems to depend on
certain personal beliefs you may or may not
bring to the workplace.
For example, are you one of those weirdoes
who like to get credit for your work? If so, you
are unlikely to enjoy being an Invisible. But
maybe you are wrong about the benefits of
being noticed. As author Zweig writes in
"Invisibles," "receiving outward credit for your
work is overrated." (You wouldn't know
whether this were true or not, since you so
rarely receive credit, outward or inward or
sideways. This is partially because you do so
little work, of course. It is also because your
managers are narcissistic jerks.)
Another important aspect of becoming an
Invisible is a willingness to hop off the self-
promotion bandwagon. Invisibles don't have a
"personal brand." They are not Tiffany & Co.,
and they are not Kmart. They are not tweeting
their brand personality on Twitter. and they
have a negative number of friends on
Facebook. Even people who don't know them
unfriend them!
This makes Invisibles unusual. "We live in a
culture where attention seems to be valued
above everything else," explains Zweig,
"where people are willing to humiliate
themselves to get on a reality TV show."
This is a wonderful insight. Your co-workers
have always wondered why you act so
strangely, and now we know. You're not a
freak; you're auditioning for a spot on "Duck
Dynasty."
Finally, to be an Invisible, you have to be the
kind of person who is satisfied by "intrinsic
rewards." That means you don't care about
getting recognition from your peers, attaboys
from your boss or even receiving big fat raises,
bonuses and over-the-top perks like free, all-
expense weekends living in luxury in the back
seat of your boss's Jaguar.
If you're an Invisible, what gets your juices
flowing is "the value of your work, not the
volume of your praise."
This is a lovely thought, but I think you will
agree that to be an Invisible, you also need an
active fantasy life; the chief fantasy being that,
sooner or later, all the good work you do will
suddenly become recognized, and your
admirable, selfless, invisible self will become
visible.
The authors insist that "the research seems to
show that good work does get recognized," but
in my experience, all those years of Invisibility
can end up in only one way -- with a highly
visible pink slip. Doing all that wonderful
work that nobody notices may be highly
honorable and inwardly rewarding but will
definitely put you in the line of firing the next
time a reduction in staff is contemplated.
Can't you just hear your boss now?
"I have no idea who that person is or what he
does," she is saying as your cloak of invisibility
comes off and you can be seen in all your
selfless wonderfulness. "Let's fire him first."