The quiet cost of a noisy workplace

MODERN organisations say they reward merit. In practice, many still reward visibility.

This is one of the more under-discussed inequities in working life – not all talented people are equally equipped to advertise themselves.

Some are naturally articulate in meetings, quick to frame their contributions and confident enough to claim credit.

Others are no less capable, but less inclined to self-promote. They do the work, often brilliantly, and assume the work will speak for itself.

Too often, it does not.

More than a personality issue, it is a structural one. Many of our social and corporate systems are built to favour those who can project confidence, command airtime and manage upwards.

The result is that being noticed can matter almost as much as being good.

That is a problem for fairness. But it is also a problem for performance.

The best operator in the room is not always the loudest one. The person with the most original idea may be the one who speaks last, cautiously, or not at all. The colleague who keeps the team functioning may not have the instinct to turn every contribution into a personal branding exercise.

SEE ALSO

Embracing neurodivergence: the untapped advantage in an AI-powered world

Unlocking potential: The power of emotional inclusion in business

Authentic leadership – key to thriving in uncertain times

Yet in many workplaces, progression depends not only on competence, but on one’s ability to narrate competence to those at the top.

This creates a peculiar distortion. Employees learn that doing good work is necessary but insufficient. They must also package it, market it and repeat it.

Some can do this with ease. Others find it unnatural, exhausting or even morally uncomfortable. Rather than lack ambition. they simply do not believe every achievement needs a spotlight.

The irony is that organisations often say they want authenticity, then build cultures that reward performance of a different kind.

One sees this in meetings where the fastest speaker is assumed to be the clearest thinker.

In appraisal systems “executive presence” is promoted, without defining what that means.

In leadership pipelines, those who are visible to senior management are elevated, rather than those who are quietly indispensable to the business.

A workplace that consistently overlooks quieter excellence does not merely demoralise individuals. It narrows the organisation’s field of vision. Leaders begin to hear from the same confident voices, recycle the same perspectives and mistake familiarity for capability.

This is how institutions end up with polished mediocrity at the top and unrecognised brilliance somewhere in the middle.

The answer is not to tell every introvert or understated high performer to become more performative. Some professional self-advocacy is necessary in life, and no one should be naive about that. But the burden cannot sit only with the overlooked.

Leaders must get better at recognising substance that does not announce itself. That means asking who is actually driving outcomes, not merely who is presenting them. Create room in meetings for considered voices, not just confident ones. Promotion systems should rely less on impression and more on evidence.

In the end, a healthy organisation should not operate like a stage where only the best performers get seen. It should operate like a serious institution: one capable of distinguishing between those who talk well about value and those who quietly create it.

After all, if merit only counts when it is amplified, then merit is not really what we are rewarding at all.

The writer is a lawyer and senior accredited director of the Singapore Institute of Directors. He serves on several boards including the Global Guiding Council of One Mind At Work and the SGListCos Council.