Issue 006 | November 10, 2026

Your Work Doesn’t Always Speak for Itself

THE BRIEF

When I was working for Mattel in Hong Kong, I reached a point in my career when I began to understand that doing the work and communicating its value were two very different things.

I was a manager at the time, although the title carried significantly more responsibility in Asia than it typically does in the United States. I had substantial business and P&L responsibilities, worked closely with regional partners, and was involved in decisions that influenced how we developed and marketed products across the region.

The next step in my career was senior manager. But something interesting was happening. My day-to-day responsibilities weren’t changing dramatically, even as the way I contributed to the business was evolving.

I was influencing decisions across markets, working with partners to develop products specifically for the region, and helping move those products to market at a faster pace than other business units.

Yet if I described my work only through my job responsibilities, much of that contribution would have been difficult to see.

I realized I needed to change how I communicated what I was doing. Not because I needed to make my work sound more important, but because I needed senior leadership to understand the influence I was having and what that meant for the business.

That shift changed how I thought about communicating my contributions, and it’s something I continue to think about when people tell me they’re preparing for their performance reviews.

YOUR RESPONSIBILITIES ARE NOT YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS

Think about the way you describe your work.

You might say you manage a team, oversee a budget, coordinate projects, or work with different departments. All of those things may be true, and they’re important responsibilities.

But they don’t necessarily tell someone what you’ve contributed.

Managing a team describes your responsibility. Helping that team navigate a difficult transition, improve how decisions are made, or deliver something it hadn’t been able to accomplish before begins to explain your contribution.

Overseeing a project describes your responsibility. Identifying a problem, bringing the right people together, and changing how the work gets done tells someone more about the value you brought to it.

The distinction matters because people listening to you may understand your role without understanding the difference you’ve made within it.

And those are not always the same thing.

WHY YOUR WORK DOESN’T ALWAYS SPEAK FOR ITSELF

One of the assumptions we make about our work is that the people around us see what we see.

You know how much effort went into solving a problem. You remember the conversations, the decisions, the obstacles, and the adjustments that were necessary to get something done.

But the person evaluating your performance may only see the finished result.

They may know a project was delivered without knowing what you did to keep it moving. They may see that a team performed well without understanding the leadership decisions that contributed to that performance.

That doesn’t mean they’re overlooking your work intentionally. It means they don’t necessarily have the same information or perspective you do.

And this is where communication becomes important.

When you describe your contributions, your responsibility isn’t simply to provide a list of everything you’ve accomplished. It’s to help the listener understand what matters about those accomplishments.

What problem were you helping solve? What decisions did you influence? What changed because of your involvement? Why was that important to the team, the customer, or the business?

These are the details that help someone understand the significance of your work.

TRY THIS: MOVE FROM WHAT YOU DID TO WHAT CHANGED

As you prepare for your performance review, choose one accomplishment you’re particularly proud of.

It doesn’t have to be your biggest project or something that produced an impressive financial result. It could be a problem you solved, a process you improved, a decision you influenced, or a way you helped others work more effectively.

Now, instead of describing only what you did, ask yourself three questions.

1. What was I responsible for?

Start with the work itself. What were you expected to deliver, manage, improve, or accomplish?

2. What did I contribute beyond completing the work?

Consider the decisions you made, the challenges you helped overcome, the relationships you built, or the way your involvement influenced the outcome.

3. What changed because of my contribution?

Think about the difference your work made. Did something become easier, faster, clearer, more effective, or more valuable? Can you explain why that change mattered?

You don’t need to turn every accomplishment into a dramatic success story. You do need to communicate enough context for someone else to understand its significance.

And if you’re struggling to answer the third question, that may be a sign that you need to spend more time understanding the impact of your work before trying to explain it.

BEFORE YOUR NEXT PERFORMANCE REVIEW

When I think back to that period at Mattel, what stands out isn’t that I suddenly took on an entirely different job. It’s that I became more intentional about how I communicated the work I was already doing and the influence I was developing.

I learned that people could understand my responsibilities without fully understanding my contribution to the business.

That was an important communication lesson, and one I wish more professionals considered before walking into a performance conversation.

As you prepare for your next review, look at the accomplishments you’ve written down. If someone who wasn’t involved in your day-to-day work read them, would they understand why those contributions mattered?

If the answer is no, you may not need more accomplishments to share. You may need a clearer way to communicate the ones you already have.

Because doing valuable work matters. Helping others understand its value matters, too.

WANT TO PUT THIS INTO PRACTICE?

If you’re preparing for a performance review and want to become more intentional about how you communicate your contributions, I’ve created Communicate Your Value, a guided workshop to help you recognize, articulate, and communicate the value of your work.

Enrollment is now open. We begin December 1, with a live session on December 15.

​https://www.weareeclat.com/communicate-your-value-workshop​

Until next time,

Natasha Tous