The Myth That Hard Work Pays Off

For a long time I believed the best way to earn a promotion was to let my work speak for itself. I had been taught that hard work pays off. I trusted that if I took ownership, delivered consistently, and became the subject matter expert, my contributions would be obvious. I kept my door open, made myself available, listened closely to my team, and worked hard to ensure people felt heard and supported. I worked hard. I took on more than my share of responsibility. I made it my responsibility to fix everything for everyone. I took on everything, worked ridiculously long hours, and put the needs of the team and the business ahead of my own.

I thought this showed care, dedication, loyalty, and a strong work ethic. My teams knew I always had their back, and they appreciated my efforts. When promotion opportunities came up though, I was passed over for people who had less job-specific knowledge. This didn't just happen once. I didn't advocate for myself because I thought my work would do that. After all, that is what I had been taught. But I had only been taught one piece of the puzzle. What was I missing?

Leadership decisions aren't made on effort or output alone. They're influenced by something far less visible but far more powerful: the signal a person is broadcasting through their presence. And the signal I was sending didn't match the role I wanted to step into. Presence communicates before performance.

I was constantly busy. I always had many balls in the air. My attention was scattered because I was holding too much at once. My presence was reactive rather than contained. I was constantly in motion, responding, adjusting, filling gaps, and keeping things afloat. The work itself was solid, but the way I was holding it made my impact harder to see.

Without realizing it, I was broadcasting exhaustion. I was broadcasting that I needed more time in the day, that I was stretched thin, that finishing things cleanly and decisively was a struggle. To leadership, this didn't register as readiness for more responsibility. It registered as someone who needed support, better systems, or help with prioritization.

In other words, it didn't look like executive presence.

This was a difficult realization, because I had been doing everything I thought I was supposed to do. But leadership isn't just about what you produce. It's about how you show up while producing it. People respond not only to competence, but to coherence. Not only to effort, but to capacity.

When your energy is scattered, even strong work can feel weak. When your nervous system is overloaded, your leadership signal becomes unstable. When you take on too much, your authority blurs instead of strengthening. None of this is visible on a performance review, yet it heavily influences how others perceive you as a leader.

I didn't need a new time management system or more staff. I needed something I hadn't learned in any management training: I needed to understand how my energy was speaking for me. Every interaction, every decision, every moment of showing up carried an energetic signal that others were unconsciously reading. I had been giving all my energy away while carrying everyone else's emotional load. What I needed were energetic boundaries, not just calendars and delegation skills, but actual practices that would help me contain and direct my energy rather than scattering it.

Energetic boundaries meant learning to sense when I was absorbing someone else's stress or urgency, and consciously choosing to witness it without taking it into my body. It meant noticing when my nervous system was responding to problems that weren't mine to solve. It meant creating intentional pauses between meetings to reset, rather than carrying one conversation's intensity into the next. These weren't abstract concepts, they were felt shifts in how I moved through my day. These two practices (holding my own energy and releasing what wasn't mine) gave me back so much time and clarity.

As my energy became more grounded, my work became easier to see. My decisions landed with more weight. My presence felt steadier and more trustworthy. I wasn't doing more, but I was being clearer. And that clarity changed how others experienced my leadership.

This is when I began to understand that our energetic field—the patterns of activation, the quality of our presence, the coherence or fragmentation we carry is always in conversation with the people and environments around us.

Executives aren't expected to do everything themselves. They're expected to hold clarity, make clean decisions, and create conditions where work can move. What I was projecting instead was someone bracing, compensating, and managing pressure through effort.

I had been trying to be seen through output. What was required was coherence.

When I began to work with my energy, not to "fix" it, but to allow it to settle, reorganize, and move again, everything changed. My presence became quieter. My attention more contained. Decisions took less effort. The same work landed differently because it was coming from a different state.

Before asking why your value isn't being recognized, ask what you're broadcasting. Your presence communicates constantly through the quality of your attention, the steadiness of your nervous system, the way you hold (or don't hold) boundaries. Leadership isn't about proving your worth through exhaustion. It's about developing the capacity to hold greater responsibility with focus, stability, and intention.

Your energetic field is always speaking. The question is whether you're aware of what it's saying and whether it's aligned with where you want to go. This is the work I do with my clients: learning to read, hold, and direct energy so that who you are and what you're capable of finally match.