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It’s the end of the year – a period of performance appraisals, calibration meetings, and clear (sometimes hard) realizations about who actually gets seen.

Here is the pattern I’ve often observed working in a matrix organization:
You are nailing it. Stakeholders love your work. Projects are landing. Impact is real. But your functional manager – the person whose evaluation shapes your career progression – doesn’t have full visibility into what you actually do.

Why?
• They’re not in the rooms where you deliver
• They don’t see the stakeholder emails
• Your wins happen in other people’s reporting lines
• By the time results roll up, your name isn’t attached anymore

So the performance review comes… And you get “meets expectations” while someone with half your impact – but more visibility to the manager – gets promoted.

Here is how I see it:
In matrix organizations, you can have impact AND/OR you can have visibility. Having both requires deliberate effort from you – and from the manager, too.

I’ve worked with great leaders who broke this pattern. They:
– Regularly check in with stakeholders their people work with
– Ask to be looped into wins, not just escalations
– Make time to understand projects outside their direct line of sight
– Create forums where people can share what they’re working on
– Advocate based on impact, not just what they personally witnessed

And for the people stuck in this?
– Document everything.
– Share updates even when not asked.
– Make your manager’s job easier by connecting the dots for them.
It’s exhausting. It shouldn’t be necessary. But until visibility becomes part of how we lead in a matrix, some employees are left to navigate this gap on their own.

What best practices do you have for closing the visibility gap in a matrix?