Lesson 6 12 min

Career Growth and Visibility

Use AI to increase your workplace visibility, build a promotion case, develop critical skills, and position yourself for career advancement.

Career growth doesn’t happen automatically. The people who get promoted aren’t always the most skilled — they’re the ones who make their contributions visible, build strategic relationships, and position themselves as the obvious choice when opportunities arise. AI helps you do all of this deliberately rather than leaving it to luck.

🔄 Quick Recall: In the previous lesson, you learned strategies for navigating difficult bosses. This lesson flips the perspective: instead of surviving challenges, you’re proactively building toward your next career milestone.

Visibility Strategy

Building Your Visibility Plan

Create a career visibility plan for my situation:

My role: [title]
My team: [size, structure]
My manager: [relationship quality — good, neutral, challenging]
Remote/hybrid/office: [your setup]
Career goal: [what I want next — promotion, lateral move, etc.]
Timeline: [when I want to achieve this]

Build a monthly visibility plan:
1. Internal communication wins (what to share and with whom)
2. Cross-functional opportunities (projects, committees, events)
3. Relationship-building targets (who should know my work)
4. Presentation/speaking opportunities
5. Documentation habits (what to track and how)
6. One stretch project or initiative I could lead

The Visibility Matrix

Activity	Effort	Visibility Impact	How AI Helps
Weekly win summary emails	Low	Medium	Drafts the email in 2 minutes
Presenting at team meetings	Medium	High	Creates slides and talking points
Cross-functional projects	High	Very High	Identifies opportunities, drafts proposals
Internal blog/newsletter posts	Medium	Medium-High	Writes draft of your expertise
Mentoring junior team members	Medium	High	Creates mentoring plan and talking points
Skip-level 1:1 meetings	Low	High	Prepares conversation agenda and highlights

✅ Quick Check: Your company asks for volunteers to lead a new initiative. It’s outside your core role and will require extra time. Should you volunteer? (Answer: It depends. Ask AI to evaluate: “Is this initiative visible to leadership? Does it align with my career goals? Will it build a skill I need for my next role? Is the time commitment manageable?” High-visibility stretch projects are one of the fastest paths to promotion — but not every extra project is strategic. AI helps you say yes to the right opportunities and no to the wrong ones.)

Promotion Preparation

Building Your Promotion Case

Help me build a case for promotion:

Current role: [title and level]
Target role: [next level]
Time in current role: [duration]
My manager's priorities: [what they care about]

My evidence:
1. [Key accomplishment with quantified impact]
2. [Key accomplishment with quantified impact]
3. [Key accomplishment with quantified impact]
4. [Leadership/growth examples]

Company's promotion criteria (if known): [list them]

Build:
1. One-page promotion case document
2. Opening statement for the promotion conversation (60 seconds)
3. Answers to likely objections ("too soon," "budget," "need more X")
4. Timeline proposal if the answer is "not now"
5. A list of specific things to demonstrate in the next 3 months
   that would make the case undeniable

Skill Gap Analysis

Analyze the gap between my current skills and my target role:

My current role: [title]
My target role: [title]

My current skills:
- [Skill 1: proficiency level]
- [Skill 2: proficiency level]
- [Skill 3: proficiency level]

Target role requirements:
- [From job description or company framework]

Identify:
1. Skills I already have that match the target role
2. Skills I need to develop (and how to develop each)
3. Experiences I'm missing (and how to get them in my current role)
4. Quick wins I can pursue in the next 30 days
5. A 6-month development plan with monthly milestones

Strategic Relationships

Building Your Internal Network

Help me build strategic relationships at work:

My goal: [promotion / lateral move / skill development / visibility]
My current network: [who I regularly interact with]
Decision-makers for my goal: [who influences the outcome I want]

Identify:
1. 3-5 people I should build relationships with (and why)
2. Natural ways to connect with each (not forced or awkward)
3. Value I can offer them (relationships are mutual)
4. Conversation starters for initial outreach
5. A 90-day relationship-building plan

Practice Exercise

Create your visibility plan for the next month using the template above
Draft a one-page promotion case — even if you’re not ready to present it, having it on paper clarifies your goals
Identify 3 people in your organization who should know about your work and plan how to build those relationships

Key Takeaways

Good work that nobody sees doesn’t get promoted — visibility is a skill you can build deliberately
Remote workers face a 38% promotion disadvantage from proximity bias — overcome it with intentional communication
Promotion cases built with evidence and quantified impact are dramatically more effective than “I’ve been here long enough”
Strategic relationships aren’t politics — they’re how organizations work, and AI helps you build them authentically
Stretch projects that align with your career goals are the fastest path to advancement — AI helps you evaluate which ones to take
Start building your case now, not when the promotion opportunity appears — it’s easier to present evidence than to scramble for it

Up Next

In the next lesson, you’ll learn about career transitions and exits — from internal transfers to job changes to professional resignations — all with AI preparation.

Knowledge Check

1. You do excellent work, but your manager doesn't seem to notice. A less-skilled colleague who's more 'visible' just got promoted. What went wrong?

The system is unfair — skill should speak for itself Visibility is a skill, not just luck. AI can help you build a visibility strategy: present at team meetings (volunteer to share project updates), write short status emails that highlight wins (not just completion), join cross-functional projects where leadership sees your work, and build relationships with decision-makers through legitimate work interactions. Good work alone doesn't get promoted — good work that people know about gets promoted You need to play office politics to get ahead

2. You want to move from Individual Contributor to Manager. Your company doesn't have a clear path. How does AI help you create one?

Wait for a management position to open and apply Use AI to build a gap analysis and growth plan: (1) research what your company values in managers (ask AI to analyze your company's leadership competencies or job descriptions for manager roles), (2) identify the gap between your current skills and manager requirements, (3) create opportunities to demonstrate leadership without the title (mentoring, leading projects, facilitating meetings), and (4) build a portfolio of evidence that you're already operating at the next level. Then present this case to your manager Get an MBA — that's the only path to management

3. You work remotely while most of your team is in the office. Research shows remote workers are 38% less likely to receive promotions. How do you overcome this?

Move back to the office Compensate for proximity bias with intentional visibility. AI can help you: create a weekly win summary that goes to your manager and team, volunteer to present at all-hands or team meetings (camera on), schedule 1:1s with skip-level managers quarterly, lead projects that have cross-team visibility, and respond quickly to messages during core hours. Remote workers need to be deliberately more visible because they miss the hallway conversations and informal face-time that office workers get automatically It's fine — performance metrics will speak for themselves

Answer all questions to check

Complete the quiz above first