Why Your Reputation For Being 'Reliable' Is Working Against You

Being called reliable, dependable, or a safe pair of hands sounds like a compliment. At senior level, it often isn't.

In this episode, executive coach Kris Verlé explains why the reliable label creates a self-imposed glass ceiling, why so many senior managers are making it worse without realising it, and what you need to start doing differently to change how you're seen.

It comes down to three things: visibility, conflict, and point of view. Each one is a gap in your record that decision-makers notice, even when they don't say so out loud.

If you're a senior manager who works hard, delivers consistently, and still feels overlooked, this episode is for you.

Office Politics, Unpacked covers the unwritten rules of organisational life that you won't find in a leadership manual. Hosted by Kris Verlé, executive coach and former political advisor and lobbyist.

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If you're a senior manager or you're trying to become one, there's one label I want you to shed or avoid altogether. And that's being called reliable or a safe pair of hands or the one person we can always count on. It sounds flattering and often it's deserved because it usually means you're the most competent person in the room, but it doesn't make you look like someone who's ready for the next level of seniority. Welcome to Office Politics Unpacked. I'm your host Chris Fillet, and in this episode, I want to explain why that label of being reliable often becomes a self-imposed glass ceiling and what you need to start doing differently to change it. Indeed, when someone more senior than you describes you as a safe pair of hands, they almost always mean it positively. It means you're reliable, you don't create problems, and you can be trusted to move things forward without too much oversight. That's all genuinely good stuff. But there is an underlying message that's far less positive. Because what they're communicating is that they see you as someone who fixes things, but they don't necessarily as somebody who changes things or someone who can set the direction of where things should go. And before I get into why that matters, let's maybe check whether this episode is actually about you. Because there are usually four signs that tell you whether you've been labeled reliable, either to your face or behind your back. And the first telltale sign is when you're always the person called in to fix things that have gone wrong, but rarely the person they ask to start something new. In other words, you're doing a lot of recovery work, troubleshooting, and picking up someone else's mess. The second sign is the language they use about you, which in fairness you might not necessarily find out because it usually happens behind closed doors. But when your bosses describe you to their peers and they use words like dependable or solid or delivers, that usually means you've got the reliable epitome. You probably won't hear them use words like strategic or drives change or challenges thinking when they talk about you. The third telltale sign is the questions you get asked in meetings. And this can be very subtle, but you know, when you're being seen as reliable, you'll get questions like, Hey, can you make this work? as opposed to what do you think we should do? So you're being asked about feasibility, but the direction is usually decided by someone else. And then the fourth sign is a line that often comes up around promotion time, which is the line that's hey, no, we can't afford to lose you from where you are. Which sounds like a compliment, but it actually means that someone's decided you're more valuable in your current role than in a next one. And if two of those sound familiar to you, then this episode is definitely for you. Because there are three ways in which this label of being reliable is holding you back. The first is about visibility, the second is about conflict, and the third is about having a point of view. And I'll take each in turn and I'll tell you what to do about them. The first way in which being reliable holds you back is that once that label sticks to you, you'll start to attract even more assignments that'll confirm that status instead of some of the higher visibility work where someone needs to set the direction. And as I said earlier, those will go to somebody else. And a lot of people in this position they actively make it worse for themselves because that instinct of getting things done without making a fuss, without drawing attention to yourself, without claiming credit, is exactly what's keeping you stuck. And I spoke about this in the previous episode, in episode number 13, which is specifically about making your contributions more visible to senior managers. It's worth a listen to alongside this one because the problems are very much interconnected. See, a lot of work at senior level is genuinely hard to see from the outside, precisely because it happens in all these one-on-one conversations and corridor exchanges and in the kind of judgment calls that just never quite make it onto the written record. But the people deciding who moves up aren't always in the room when that happens. They're forming impressions based on what they can see, and often it's reputation, not your track record, that will move you up. So you need to find natural moments to make your work visible. And that might be a brief mention in your next one-to-one with your manager, you know, saying, Hey, we had a situation with X last week. Here's how we handled it, and this is what we learned. Or it could be a concise update in a team meeting with the right people in the room. See, the goal here isn't to make some big announcement about yourself, you're just making sure that your hard work doesn't disappear in the background noise of a busy organization, which it inevitably would if you're not careful. Also, when your team does something significant, do the same. Call it out, attribute it clearly and be the person bringing it to senior attention. You can give your team all the credit it deserves without leaving yourself out of the picture. You can say my team to look at X, and here's how we approached it. That keeps you in the frame without taking anything away from them. But this is only the first part of the problem, because even if people can see what you're doing, there's a second question senior leaders are asking that most reliable people are not very good at answering. And that question is: can you handle being disliked? Indeed, when senior leaders decide who's ready to move up, your track record is not the only thing that matters. They'll want to be certain that you can handle being disliked. Not disliked in a general sense, of course, because nobody wants to work with a bully, but disliked by someone specific and for something specific. For example, it could be a position you took that was well considered, but nevertheless against the advice of everyone else. Or it could be disliked because of a recommendation you made because you believed it was the right thing to do. Those instances often matter disproportionately because they're evidence that you can function effectively even when not everyone is on your side. And at the senior levels that I'm talking about here, that's a very regular requirement of the job. The problem for reliable people is that they often don't have enough of those instances on their record, and that's because they've tended to either avoid those hard conversations or because they got used to editing what they really think. And again, that may have been exactly what was necessary to do a good job a lot of the time, but at this level it starts to work against you. So, what do you do about this? Well, I'm certainly not advising you to start manufacturing conflict, but you do need to stop being so eager to please and turning every difficult decision into a consensus. I'd say at least once every quarter, take a public position that has a visible cost, or make a recommendation that goes against majority opinion, or make a call that creates some short-term friction if you believe it's the right thing to do, at least, and do that in a way that is visible to those more senior than you. Now that can feel like a really courageous thing to do for many middle managers, but that ability to hold a position even when it's uncomfortable, that needs to develop, and that's only going to develop through practice. Now, as I said earlier, there is a third reason so-called reliable people struggle to reach higher levels of seniority, and this one might be the most important one. This one is about what you think and whether you have a clear point of view on the direction of the business. At the level you're trying to reach, leadership wants to know whether you have a view on what the organization should be doing and whether that view is worth listening to. Reliable people often don't have a clear answer to that. They just haven't had the time to do that kind of thinking. They've been too focused on delivering, always thinking about the next deadline, the next problem, the next thing that needs fixing. There's always something more urgent than taking the bird's eye view on where things should go. Too busy with delivery to be strategic. Over time, that pattern means they develop a great reputation for how well they do their work, which of course is extremely important. But what is also increasingly important is having a reputation for what you believe in. Those are two very different reputations. So, what do you do about this one? Well, start developing the habit of thinking beyond your current remit and then find a way to communicate that thinking. If you're working on a project, ask yourself, what's the broader problem this project is seeking to resolve? Or what do I think the organization should be doing differently in 6 or 18 months' time? Really get into the habit of forming an opinion about topics that affect the organization, even when they don't directly affect your team or your business unit. And it's also important that you're seen to be asking those questions and having these opinions and points of views, to have these out loud in meetings, in writing, and in conversations with senior stakeholders so that you can build that reputation as a strategic thinker. So these are the three areas you need to develop to enter the most senior levels of leadership: visibility, the courage to disagree, and having foresight. Now, before I wrap up, one warning. Plenty of people try to escape this reliability label by over-correcting, and doing that in ways that damage their reputation more than the reliable label ever did. And the first way in which they overcorrect, I already hinted at, which is performative conflict. So taking contrarian positions just for the sake of being visibly contrarian, not because you've actually thought through those positions. And you can usually spot this quite easily because a person can't defend the position when challenged or they have the disagreement without much substance behind it. The second way people overcorrect is what I call strategic posturing, which is simply parroting back certain language that you've heard your CEO utter and then doing that without real conviction or thinking behind it. For example, you know, talking about industry shifts and market dynamics in a way that sounds very clever and impressive, but it doesn't really connect to anything that you've actually decided to do differently. The third is overclaiming, which is taking too much credit too publicly too soon. So when that instinct to become visible just becomes a little bit too aggressive, uh, when it can really work against you. So shifting your reputation from being reliable to being strategic, it has to be backed by real thinking, real conviction, and a record of actually doing the work. Otherwise, you become the person senior leaders distrust, which is worse than being a person they overlook. So, yes, in conclusion, the instinct most people have, especially middle management, is to work harder, to take on more, and then just hope that volume and complexity eventually will get in the recognition that they're looking for. But at some point, that becomes a self-imposed glass ceiling, and doing more of the same just reinforces that ceiling. Three habits I explained here that will change that. One is to make your work more visible in the moment, two is to get comfortable holding a position that might cost you something, and three is to develop a point of view on where things should go, and also saying that out loud. None of this requires a dramatic change in how you operate, but it does require doing it before you feel ready, before anyone has asked for it, and before the opportunity you want is in front of you. Good luck, guys. Hey, it's Chris here. If this resonated with you, don't keep it to yourself. Share it with someone else who needs to hear it. And if you want more insights on leadership, confidence, and growth, you can hit like, subscribe, and turn on notifications so you don't miss the next one. I'll see you soon.