Humility Is Killing Your Career: The Senior Leader's Evidence-Based Guide to Claiming Credit Without Losing Trust

Mission to raise perspectives
34 minutes ago
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The higher you climb, the harder it becomes to explain what you actually do. Senior leadership is paradoxical: your impact is enormous but largely invisible. You set direction, clear obstacles, build culture, and hold the tension between competing priorities—but none of that fits neatly into a performance review. This article is a guide for leaders caught in the credit-claiming trap. Drawing on research from Harvard Business Review, it breaks down how to talk about your contributions without sounding like an egomaniac or a martyr. You'll learn the "we-then-I" framework, discover why "invisible work" is quietly sabotaging your career, and find practical strategies for making your impact legible without stealing the spotlight. The tone is honest. The stakes are real. And if you're a senior leader who's ever thought, "I don't know how to talk about what I do," this is for you.

The Promotion Paradox: Why Great Leaders Struggle to Talk About Themselves

Here's the uncomfortable truth. The better you are at leadership, the worse you tend to be at talking about it.

Most senior leaders got where they are by doing the work. Building things. Shipping things. Solving problems with their hands in the machine. And then something shifts. You get promoted. Your job description becomes abstract. You're no longer the person writing the code, closing the deal, or designing the product. You're the person making sure the right people are in the right rooms, asking the right questions, and removing the right obstacles.

But here's the problem: promotions, compensation decisions, and career-defining opportunities still depend on your ability to say, clearly and compellingly, what you did.

Research on leadership communication calls this the "credit-claiming tension." Leaders must demonstrate enough personal value to justify their role while avoiding the perception that they're inflating their contribution or erasing their team's. Get it wrong in one direction, and you look like a bystander. Get it wrong in the other, and you look like a narcissist.

We all struggle with this. It's not a character flaw. It's a structural problem baked into how organisations evaluate leadership.

The Cost of False Modesty: When "We" Becomes a Cage

Let's dismantle a popular delusion: that giving all credit to your team makes you a great leader.

It doesn't. It makes you invisible.

Studies on impression management show that leaders who consistently attribute success solely to their teams inadvertently diminish how others perceive their strategic contribution and decision-making authority. The intention is noble. The result is career damage.

Think of it this way. If every time someone asks what you did, you say, "Oh, it was all the team," you're not being humble. You're being inaccurate. Because someone set the direction. Someone sequenced the priorities. Someone navigated the politics to get the budget approved. If that was you, say so.

Conversely, leaders who use "I" language exclusively—"I launched this," "I built that"—trigger immediate scepticism. Observers perceive it as self-promotion at the expense of others, which erodes trust and psychological safety within the team. People stop volunteering for your projects. They stop bringing you their best ideas.

The research is clear: evaluators respond most favourably when leaders balance recognition of their team with concrete descriptions of their own distinct role.

Humility without specificity is just erasure. Specificity without humility is just ego.

The "We-Then-I" Framework: How to Claim Credit Without Losing Trust

One of the most effective, evidence-aligned approaches to this problem is the "we-then-I" pattern. It's simple, but it requires discipline.

How It Works

Start with the collective. Acknowledge the team's contribution openly. Then pivot to your specific, unique value-add.

For example: "Our team delivered a 30% reduction in customer churn over two quarters. My role was defining the retention strategy, securing executive sponsorship for the cross-functional task force, and removing the resourcing bottleneck that had stalled the initiative for six months."

Notice what happens here. The team gets credit for the result. You get credit for the leadership. No one loses. Everyone's contribution is visible.

Research shows that inclusive, collective language strengthens perceptions of fairness and shared ownership. But precise descriptions of individual actions help evaluators differentiate leadership performance from team performance. You need both. Always.

The Verbs That Signal Leadership

Language choices matter more than most leaders realise. Using verbs that reflect senior-level work—directed, sponsored, approved, secured, orchestrated—more accurately represents what you actually do than verbs suggesting hands-on execution.

When you say "I built the dashboard," you're accidentally telling evaluators you're still operating at an individual-contributor level. When you say "I directed the analytics redesign and secured stakeholder alignment across three business units," you're telling them you're operating at the level you're being paid for.

Words are not decoration. They are positioning.

Making the Invisible Visible: The Hidden Work That's Killing Your Career

A growing body of research on "invisible work" should terrify every senior leader who isn't paying attention.

Much of what makes senior leadership valuable is, by definition, hard to see. Building trust among warring stakeholders. Resolving conflicts before they become crises. Maintaining alignment in environments of extreme complexity and ambiguity. These activities are strongly correlated with team effectiveness and long-term performance.

And yet, when they're not explicitly described, they are discounted in formal assessments. Every time.

This is the invisible-work trap. You spend months navigating a complex stakeholder landscape, preventing a multi-million-pound initiative from derailing. But because no one saw you do it—because the crisis never happened—you get no credit. Your review says "meets expectations."

How to Make It Legible

The fix is not to brag. It's to connect. Link specific behind-the-scenes actions to measurable outcomes. For example: "By facilitating early alignment between the product and engineering leadership teams, we avoided the three-week delay that had impacted the previous two launches, resulting in an estimated £400K in preserved revenue."

You're not claiming heroism. You're documenting cause and effect. And you're giving evaluators the evidence they need to assess your actual contribution fairly.

Courage starts with showing up. In this case, showing up means naming the work no one else will name.

The Power of Scale and Context: Why Numbers Make Leaders Credible

Vague claims are the enemy of credibility. Research from performance-evaluation studies shows that concrete descriptors dramatically increase the perceived significance of an initiative.

Budget size. Number of people managed. Customers affected. Regulatory constraints navigated. Time pressures overcome. These aren't just details. They're the difference between "I led a project" and "I directed a £12M cross-border integration spanning four regulatory jurisdictions, 200 team members, and a board-mandated 90-day deadline."

The first statement tells evaluators nothing. The second tells them everything. Scale is not vanity. Scale is context. And context is what allows people to compare contributions across roles, functions, and levels.

If you're not quantifying, you're leaving your reputation to someone else's imagination. That's not modesty. That's negligence.

Beyond Metrics: Stewardship, Culture, and the Long Game

Here is where most guides stop. They give you the framework for claiming credit on deliverables and metrics, and then they walk away.

But the research says something deeper. Senior leaders are evaluated not only on short-term results but on their stewardship of people, culture, and organisational capacity over time. This includes developing talent, reinforcing values, and translating strategy into daily decision-making and behaviour.

These are the contributions that compound. They don't show up in a quarterly review. They show up in the retention rate of your top performers. In the speed at which new hires reach competence. In the number of escalations that never reach the C-suite because your team handled them.

How to Describe Stewardship Impact

When articulating these contributions, tie them to long-term strategic outcomes. For example: "The leadership development programme I sponsored has produced three internal promotions to director level over 18 months, reducing our external hiring costs by 40% and strengthening our succession pipeline for mission-critical roles."

Or: "By embedding a values-aligned decision-making framework into our quarterly planning process, we reduced escalations to the executive team by 60%, freeing approximately 15 hours per month of senior leadership capacity."

These statements do not sound like bragging. They sound like evidence. And evidence is what distinguishes a leader who is perceived as indispensable from one who is perceived as replaceable.

The Bottom Line: Your Impact Deserves Words

Talent is overrated. Grit wins. But grit without articulation is invisible grit. And invisible grit doesn't get funded, promoted, or given the next opportunity.

If you are a senior leader doing real, meaningful, complex work—and you are not describing it with precision, context, and confidence—you are actively undermining your own career. Not because you're not good enough. Because you're not visible enough.

The world does not reward quiet excellence at the leadership level. It rewards legible excellence. Your job is to make your impact legible—to your board, your peers, your team, and yourself.

Start with "we." Then say "I." Then back it up with numbers. Then connect it to the long game. That's not self-promotion. That's leadership communication. And it's a skill worth mastering.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Why is it so hard for senior leaders to articulate their contributions?

Because the nature of senior work is indirect. You're orchestrating, aligning, and enabling—not building, shipping, or executing. Our language and evaluation systems are still wired for individual output. Describing collaborative, strategic, behind-the-scenes work requires a vocabulary most leaders were never taught.

2. What is the "we-then-I" framework?

It's a communication pattern in which you first acknowledge the team's collective contribution, then specify your unique role—such as setting direction, securing resources, or removing obstacles. Research shows this combination maximises perceived fairness and leadership credibility.

3. Isn't claiming credit for team achievements self-serving?

Only if you're claiming credit that isn't yours. Describing how you directed, sponsored, or enabled an outcome is not theft—it's accuracy. The goal is not to take from the team but to make your distinct contribution visible alongside theirs.

4. What is "invisible work" and why does it matter?

Invisible work refers to high-value leadership activities that are difficult to observe: building stakeholder trust, resolving conflicts proactively, maintaining alignment in complex environments. These activities are strongly linked to team effectiveness but are routinely overlooked in formal evaluations unless leaders explicitly name them.

5. How can I make my invisible work count in a performance review?

Link behind-the-scenes actions to measurable outcomes. Instead of saying "I managed stakeholder relationships," say "By facilitating early alignment between two competing business units, we avoided a projected four-week delay and preserved an estimated £250K in revenue." Cause and effect is the key.

6. What verbs should senior leaders use to describe their work?

Use verbs that reflect strategic, senior-level activity: directed, sponsored, secured, orchestrated, approved, enabled, championed. Avoid hands-on execution verbs like "built" or "created" unless you genuinely did the hands-on work, as these can mislead evaluators about your level of contribution.

7. How do I add scale and context without sounding like I'm inflating my role?

Be factual and precise. Include budget size, team headcount, number of stakeholders, regulatory constraints, and timeline pressures. These details are not exaggeration—they're calibration. They allow evaluators to understand the complexity of your operating environment.

8. Should I include long-term cultural contributions in my impact statements?

Absolutely. Research shows senior leaders are evaluated on stewardship—talent development, values reinforcement, and organisational capacity building. Tie these contributions to strategic outcomes: internal promotion rates, succession pipeline strength, reduced escalations, or improved retention of top performers.

9. How do I avoid sounding arrogant when talking about my achievements?

Start with "we." Be specific about your role rather than claiming blanket ownership. Use evidence—numbers, timelines, outcomes—instead of adjectives. Arrogance comes from vagueness and exaggeration. Credibility comes from precision and generosity toward others.

10. Can this approach work in organisations that don't value self-advocacy?

Yes, and arguably it's even more important in those environments. The "we-then-I" framework is culturally sensitive because it leads with collective recognition. In cultures that prize modesty, the key is to frame your role as enabling and supporting—not commanding. The evidence stays the same; the emphasis shifts.

References

Harvard Business Review (2026). "How to Articulate Your Contributions as a Senior Leader." HBR, January 2026. Available at: https://hbr.org/2026/01/how-to-articulate-your-contributions-as-a-senior-leader

The core research and frameworks discussed in this article—including the credit-claiming tension, the "we-then-I" communication pattern, invisible work in leadership, the role of scale and context in performance evaluation, and the importance of stewardship in senior leadership assessment—are drawn from the above source and the body of empirical studies it references on leadership communication, impression management, leader identity, and performance evaluation.