Why Visibility is a Leadership Skill, Not an Ego Trip
- 3 days ago
- 8 min read
Written by Chitra Soerdjbalie, Business Owner
Chitra Soerdjbalie is an international model and entrepreneur who bridges the worlds of fashion, event planning, and female leadership. She is passionate about helping others build confidence, create meaningful experiences, and lead with authenticity in both business and life.
Many women know they have something valuable to contribute, yet still hesitate to speak up, put themselves forward, or take up space. Visibility is often mistaken for attention-seeking, when in reality, showing up authentically can be an important part of leadership, confidence, and creating opportunities. The question is not whether you should be seen, but whether you can allow yourself to be seen without becoming someone you are not.
What does visibility mean in leadership?
Visibility can easily seem like something that belongs to the loudest person in the room: the one who speaks first, promotes themselves constantly, and appears completely comfortable being noticed. But that is not what visibility means to me.
To me, visibility is having the courage to show people who you are, what you can contribute, and what you stand for. It is speaking when you have something valuable to say and putting yourself forward for an opportunity without knowing whether you will be chosen. Sometimes, it simply means allowing yourself to be considered.
There is a Dutch saying I have always liked: “Nee heb je, ja kun je krijgen.” Loosely translated, you already have a no, but you might get a yes. I used to think a lot about what could go wrong. What if I was not chosen, did not get the opportunity, or reached out and the answer was no? All of those things were possible, but so was something else: the answer could be yes.
Once I understood that avoiding rejection also meant avoiding possibility, I started approaching opportunities differently. Leadership often requires exactly that: being willing to act without knowing how others will respond.
Why are women sometimes afraid to be visible?
I do not believe that a fear of visibility suddenly appears when someone enters the workplace, starts a business, or takes on a leadership position. For some women, it begins much earlier.
How we are raised can shape how comfortable we eventually become with taking up space. Culture, religion, family expectations, and personal experiences can all influence the way a girl learns to express herself. Was she encouraged to speak? Was she expected to be modest? Did she learn that being outspoken was a positive quality, or that it made her difficult? Was making mistakes accepted, or did failure feel like something to be ashamed of?
Those experiences do not simply disappear when we become adults. They can follow us into meetings, job interviews, networking events, relationships, and entrepreneurship. What started as uncertainty can eventually become a barrier we no longer consciously question. This is also why building confidence as an emerging woman leader often requires more than simply learning new professional skills.
Research by Christine Exley and Judd Kessler also suggests that women may describe their own performance less favourably than men who perform equally well. Their work on the gender gap in self-promotion shows that this difference can appear surprisingly early. For me, that raises an important question: how many decisions are we making today based on beliefs about ourselves that were created years ago?
Fear of failure is real, but when avoiding failure becomes more important than pursuing possibility, fear quietly begins making decisions for us.
What modelling taught me about speaking up
Modelling taught me something about visibility that I did not fully understand when I started: being seen is not the same as having a voice.
You can walk into a room, stand in front of a camera, or step onto a runway and still make yourself small. Over time, I learned to speak, ask questions, introduce myself, express an opinion, and allow people to experience my personality instead of believing that simply being physically present was enough. That does not mean becoming arrogant or dominating every conversation. There is a difference between having a presence and demanding attention.
What I discovered is that people do not only respond to what you look like or what is written on your Curriculum Vitae (CV). They respond to your personality, your energy, your professionalism, and the way you interact with the people around you. There is a reason certain people stay in our minds after they leave a room.
I also started to understand that hiding parts of myself in an attempt to appear less present was not always humility. Sometimes, it was simply holding myself back. That lesson followed me far beyond modelling. Whether I am in a business environment, working on an entrepreneurial idea, networking, or entering a new professional space, I know that I cannot expect everyone else to communicate my value for me. Sometimes, I have to be willing to do that myself.
Visibility versus attention seeking
This is where I think conversations about visibility need more nuance. I do not believe that more visibility is automatically better. For me, the dividing line is authenticity.
Visibility becomes unhealthy when you start forcing yourself to become someone you are not in order to gain access to a certain room, industry, social circle, or level of success. We can become so focused on fitting into a particular world that we begin changing how we speak, present ourselves, or even what we say we believe.
Of course, growth requires change. Becoming more confident may change how you carry yourself, and developing professionally may change how you communicate. But evolving is different from pretending.
If you have to perform a completely different version of yourself to belong somewhere, you eventually have to ask whether belonging there is worth the cost. You might successfully enter the room and still become deeply unhappy trying to stay there.
Authentic visibility says: this is who I am, this is what I bring, and this is how I choose to contribute. Not everyone will connect with that, and that is okay. Not every room is meant for you, especially if entering it requires you to stop being yourself.
Does confidence come before visibility?
We often talk about confidence as though it is a requirement for action. We tell ourselves that once we feel confident, we will apply, speak up, start the business, or finally allow ourselves to be seen. As I have previously shared in my Brainz Magazine interview about visibility and authentic leadership, confidence does not always have to come before action. Sometimes, confidence comes afterward.
I have learned to look at it differently. You put yourself forward while still wondering whether you are ready. You speak while still feeling nervous. You hear no and discover that rejection did not destroy you. You try again, and slowly you start accumulating evidence that you can handle more than you once believed. That evidence becomes confidence.
You do not always become visible because you suddenly stop being afraid. Sometimes, you become visible because you decide that fear is no longer going to make your decisions for you.
How can visibility create more opportunities?
Putting yourself forward always creates some vulnerability. Someone might decide you are not the right fit, you might not get the deal, or your message might receive no response. But staying invisible often removes the possibility altogether.
People cannot consider you if they do not know you are interested. They cannot discover what you bring if you never show them, and they cannot say yes to a question you never ask.
Sometimes, opportunity begins with something very simple: sending the message, making the introduction, sharing the idea, applying, asking, or speaking up. None of these actions guarantees a particular outcome, but that is exactly the point.
Leadership is not about having control over every outcome. It is about being willing to move even when you do not.
How to become more visible without losing yourself
If you want to become more visible, I would not start by asking how you can become louder. I would start by asking what you are currently hiding.
Maybe it is your knowledge, ambition, personality, accomplishments, an idea, or an opinion. Then ask yourself why. There may be a valid reason, but there may also be an old belief underneath it: I am not ready enough, I do not want people to think I am arrogant, what if they say no, or someone else probably knows more than I do.
Becoming visible does not mean eliminating every one of those thoughts. It means learning that they do not all deserve authority over your decisions.
You also do not need to copy the visibility strategy of the loudest person you know. One woman might lead from a stage, another around a table, and someone else through a business, an idea, or a conversation. Visibility should fit your personality. The goal is not to become someone else. It is to stop hiding the person who is already there.
Before focusing on your next goal, look at what you have already achieved
Before making another list of everything you still want to accomplish, look backward. Not at what you planned to achieve by this age, not at where you thought your career would be, and not at what someone else has accomplished. Look at what you have actually done.
Think about the situations you navigated when you did not have all the answers, the moments you stood up for yourself, the opportunities you created, the setbacks you survived, and the times you were scared but moved anyway.
We spend so much time focusing on the distance between where we are and where we want to be that we forget to acknowledge the person who already carried us this far.
There is evidence of your strength in your own history. There is evidence of your ability, your resilience, and your capacity to learn. Some of your best moments may already have happened because, at some point, you were willing to take a chance.
Take that version of yourself with you into your next goal. You do not need to invent a completely different woman first.
Your next step
Take five minutes today and write down three things you have achieved that once required courage from you. They do not need to look impressive to anyone else.
Then choose one situation in your life where you are currently holding yourself back and ask yourself: if I knew I could handle either answer, what would I do? Maybe you would apply, ask, share the idea, or finally speak.
You do not need to become the loudest person in the room to become visible. You do not need to perform confidence, and you certainly do not need to become someone else.
Visibility is not about demanding that people look at you. It is about having enough trust in what you already bring to stop disappearing from your own story.
Read more from Chitra Soerdjbalie
Chitra Soerdjbalie, Business Owner
Chitra Soerdjbalie is an international model, entrepreneur, and founder of Curated Moments by Chitra. After stepping onto her first international runway during Milan Fashion Week in 2022, she continued to build her presence in the fashion industry while championing confidence, representation, and authenticity. Through her work in fashion and event planning, she creates meaningful experiences that bring people together and leave a lasting impact. Passionate about female leadership and personal growth, Chitra inspires others to embrace their visibility, pursue their ambitions, and lead with confidence.
