Rafael Valbon Leadership Solutions

I’m excited to join my colleague France Hultermans-Ghijsen (PCC), during the International Coaching Week, for an interactive session on:

Coaching in Organizations: From Individual Skill to Strategic Capability

Coaching is becoming increasingly present inside organizations. But building real coaching capability is much more than simply having coaching conversations.

In this session, we will explore:
- What “good coaching” looks like, using standards from the International Coaching Federation
- How organizations can build and support internal coaching capability
- How leaders can apply coaching skills effectively in everyday work, without needing to become full-time coaches
- What the research says about what works, what fails, and where organizations typically struggle

Looking forward to exchanging experiences and perspectives with HR professionals, leaders, coaches, and anyone interested in the future of coaching in organizations.

If this is a topic you care about, we would love to have you join us.

📅 13/05/2026
🕙 10:00 to 11:00 (Amsterdam/Europe)

Your company says it promotes on merit.

Most leaders believe that, too.

Here’s what they don’t tell you:

In high-performing teams, performance is assumed.

Everyone delivers. Everyone meets expectations. Everyone works hard.

At that level, performance stops being the differentiator.

Harvey Coleman spent decades studying this. He called it PIE: Performance, Image, Exposure.

His finding: performance accounts for roughly 10% of career advancement.

Image and exposure account for the rest.

Image is what people say about you when you’re not in the room.

Exposure is whether the decision-makers in your organization even know your name.

Most technical professionals put everything into performance.

They solve the hard problems. They deliver under pressure. They hold systems together.

Then they watch someone with half their depth get promoted.

And they call it politics.

It’s not politics.

It’s a visibility gap.

Your manager can only advocate for you using what they can articulate.

If your work hasn’t been made legible to the people in that room, it doesn’t exist for them.

Meritocracy isn’t a lie.

But in a room full of high performers, it runs on who is known, not just on who is good.

If this feels familiar, send me a message and let’s talk.

The engineers getting promoted aren’t always the best engineers.

That’s not unfair. That’s just how organizations work.

I’ve watched technically brilliant people stagnate for years.

They solved the hard problems quietly.

Held systems together that would’ve broken without them.

Delivered without missing a beat.

And nobody in the room where decisions were made knew their name.

Here’s what most technical professionals misunderstand:

Your manager can only fight for you with what they can articulate.

They can only articulate what they’ve seen, heard, or been told.

If you’re not creating signal, you’re creating a gap.

Between your actual value and what the organization believes you’re worth.

That gap compounds.

Visibility isn’t self-promotion.

It’s compression. Taking the work you’ve already done and making it legible to people who can’t read the code.

The engineers who figured this out didn’t become political.

They became engineers who communicate.

There’s a difference.

And it’s worth understanding before you spend another year waiting to be noticed.

If this feels familiar, send me a message and let’s talk.

Two people.
Same level of expertise.
Same track record.
Very different outcomes.
One keeps doing great work.
Delivers. Solves. Supports.
And assumes it will be noticed.
The other is brought into bigger conversations.
Trusted earlier.
Considered when decisions are still forming.
The difference is not effort.
It is proximity.
Who is close to the conversations that matter.
Who is visible to the people shaping decisions.
Who is part of the context before anything is formal.
Most get this wrong.
You think the answer is to “be more visible.”
So you share more.
Explain more.
Push your thinking out.
But that does not change where you sit.
And that is the real issue.
Opportunities do not come from being seen by more people.
They come from being known by the right ones.
The shift is not activity.
It is access.
Which conversations you are part of.
Which relationships you build.
Which rooms you are in, consistently.
Because influence is not built by broadcasting.
It is built by being present where decisions happen.
If this feels familiar, send me a message.

From May 11 to May 17, the International Coaching Week takes place.

During this week, I am offering a limited number of free 1-on-1 coaching sessions.

This is for you if you are in a technical leadership role and want discuss a specific challenge you are currently experiencing.

If you are curious to see how this could support you, you can find more details and register here:

https://www.icf-events.org/icw/1-on-1-coaching-for-technical-leaders/

You think you need to push your ideas harder.
Be more persuasive.
More convincing.
More vocal.
Because if people are not acting,
you assume you are not selling it well enough.
But that is not what is happening.
Most decisions are not made in the moment.
They are formed earlier.
Quietly.
Over time.
Long before you are in the room.
By the time you are explaining your thinking,
people have already decided who they trust.
Who they listen to.
Who they bring into bigger conversations.
This is why pushing rarely works.
It comes too late.
The shift is simple.
Stop trying to convince.
Start showing up earlier.
Make your thinking visible.
Attach it to real problems.
Let people see how you approach decisions.
So when the moment comes,
they are not evaluating you.
They are choosing you.
If this feels familiar, send me a message and let’s talk.

You’re doing good work.
People know it.
They even say it.
And for a while, that feels like progress.
Until you look closer.
The conversations are inconsistent.
Opportunities come in waves.
Nothing you can actually rely on.
So you keep delivering.
You keep hoping the next introduction comes through.
But your visibility is being outsourced.
And that’s the problem.
Referrals feel like recognition.
But they are not a strategy.
They depend on timing.
On other people’s priorities.
On conversations you are not in.
Meanwhile, decisions are being made every day.
Rooms you could be in.
Discussions where your name never comes up.
The people who move forward do not wait to be mentioned.
They make their thinking visible.
They shape how others see their value.
They stay present in the conversations that matter.
Not once.
Consistently.
Referrals should confirm your reputation.
Not carry it.
If this resonates, send me a message and let’s talk.

You explain your work clearly.
At least, that’s what you think.
Then you notice it.
The slight nods.
The polite “makes sense.”
The conversation moves on.
And somehow, your input carries no weight.
You know your subject inside out.
You see the patterns others miss.
You’ve done the work.
But when it’s time to speak, you default to your world.
Frameworks. Detail. Precision.
They are listening from a different one.
Priorities. Risk. Outcomes.
So the message doesn’t land.
It’s not a competence problem.
It’s a translation problem.
You are speaking in expert language.
They are listening for business impact.
The people who move forward are the ones who can switch language.
They can go from depth to clarity.
From detail to decision.
Same thinking.
Different delivery.
If you recognize this, you don’t need to change what you know.
You need to change how it sounds to the people who decide.
If this feels familiar, send me a message and let’s talk.

You were told that if your work is good enough, it will speak for itself.

It sounds fair.

It is also not how things actually work inside an organisation.

Because the system you operate in is not designed to automatically reward quiet competence.

It is designed around visibility, perception, and decision making.

And the people who shaped your early career were not responsible for teaching you that.

Managers focus on delivery.

Organisations focus on outcomes.

Neither are measured on whether you become visible enough to progress.

So you did what made sense.

You focused on doing great work.

You built expertise.

You became reliable.

And yet, when it comes to recognition, influence, or progression, something feels off.

Not because you are lacking capability.

Because you were only taught half of what actually matters.

Ex*****on is one half.

The other half is making your work seen, understood, and valued by the right people.

Without that, strong performance stays contained.

With it, the same performance starts to carry weight.

If you feel like you are doing everything right but still being overlooked, you are not missing ability.

You are missing the part no one explicitly taught you.

If this feels familiar, send me a message and let’s talk.