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Knowing how to advocate for yourself at work is one of the most powerful things you can do for your career — and one of the things most people consistently avoid. We tell ourselves a good manager should just know when we are ready for more. They should notice the signals, pick up on the quiet desires we have been carrying around without saying out loud. Here is the problem: they can't. They are managing too many other things to track what is going on inside your head — and that gap is not their fault. It is just how organizational life works.

In this episode, I share a story from after a keynote I delivered at a conference. Someone came up to me during the networking session and told me he had been overlooked for months for something he genuinely wanted — the chance to present his team's market research findings to the product team and senior leaders. He had a clear, cogent case for why he should get that opportunity. He had just never said a word of it to his boss. When I asked him whether his boss knew he wanted this, the pause said everything.

It is not only promotions and career moves that stay invisible. It is the everyday things: the training opportunity you would love, the project you want to be considered for, travel assignments, the fact that you are at capacity and need help prioritizing, the vacation days you are afraid to ask for at a busy time. All of it is invisible until you make it visible. Your boss cannot act on information they do not have — and when they do not act, we tend to interpret it as a slight when the real explanation is simply a lack of information.

The Name It, Frame It, Say It framework gives you a three-step process for making the implicit explicit. Name It: get specific about the one thing you want your boss to know — not a vague feeling, one concrete ask. Frame It: translate it into terms that connect to the work, the team, and the business, so your ask sounds like a mini business case rather than a personal favor. Say It: have the actual conversation, explicitly, and build the habit of doing it regularly. Episode 285 on the four communication styles at work is a companion episode worth listening to alongside this one, because knowing your boss's communication style shapes not just what you say, but how to deliver it so it actually lands.

Listen and catch the full episode here or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also watch it and replay it on my YouTube channel, JanelAndersonPhD.

LINKS RELATED TO THIS EPISODE:

Episode 285 — The Four Communication Styles at Work — knowing your boss's communication style helps you frame and deliver your message more effectively.

Have you ever felt passed over for an opportunity by your manager, a stretch assignment, a project, a promotion, a training opportunity, and you quietly wondered why? Why doesn't he or she know that I want to do this? Well, what if it had nothing to do with your performance? What if they simply didn't know you wanted it because you never told them?

We so often think that our managers can read minds, but guess what? They can't. They don't know the quiet desires that we have if we're not saying them out loud. So we often tell ourselves that a good boss should just know.

They should notice when we're ready for the next opportunity. They should pick up on the signals that we've been really been working hard and that we're ready for what's next. But that's not how it works. Your boss is managing their own deliverables.

They're managing team dynamics. They're managing some sexual harassment case on the team that you don't even know anything about. They're managing somebody else's underperformance. They've got all these other things going on on their plate.

All these plates that are spinning, and your specific concern or desire for more is not necessarily a top priority for them. Now they're doing all of these other things all at once, and they're you know managing their own boss and their own situation and their own career and all of that as well. And what's going on inside your head about what they should know about you is just a big should. So we need to figure out a way to close that gap between what you want and what you think that they should know about what you want, and what they actually know.

So your manager is not being neglectful. They are not giving somebody else opportunities instead of you, just to spite you or anything like that. There is a gap, and we need to close that gap. Now, this came up at a conference that I was speaking at recently after I finished my keynote, and I'm at the networking session.

Somebody comes up to me, and this is often the case. And anyway, in this particular case, he says, Hey, can I talk to you about something? And he says, I think my boss is overlooking me for. And then he went on to explain he works in a market research team inside of a large organization, and so he and his team members and his boss do these big market research studies about different products that they're taking to market, and he never gets an opportunity to be the one who reports out to the product management team, which includes some senior leaders.

And he's feeling overlooked and neglected because other people on the team always get the chance to do these report outs, and so he's like, my boss is like skipping me, passing me over, you know, skipping me and passing me over for these opportunities, and he just lays out like all of the reasons why he should have a chance at doing this. And it sounded like he had the right skills and the right competencies. He just maybe hadn't put in as many reps, but it's because other people were getting selected to do it instead of him. And as he laid this all out for me, it sounded like he had a very cohesive, cogent argument about why he should get a chance to present some of these report outs to again the product team and senior leaders.

And so I asked him, Well, does your boss know that you want to do this? And that question gave him pause. He sat there and thought about it for a while, and I said, Like you just explained this perfectly well to me. Have you have this conversation that we're having right now with your boss?

And he he kind of sheepishly said, Well, no, but I shouldn't have to. And I this is where I said you're expecting your boss to read your mind, and your job, your boss has a very exhaustive job description. But reading your mind is not one of the items on it. So what they had been waiting for, what they had just been wanting, genuinely wanting, but never said out loud, was not something that was on their boss's radar.

Now, why hadn't they said anything? Well, they assumed that their boss already knew. He assumed that he would be pushy or perceived as pushy or overly aggressive if he was asking for this opportunity. So he was, you know, just waiting for his boss or the fairy godmother to come along and like tap him on the shoulder and say it's your turn now.

So, but that's never going to happen. Your boss has like so many things on their plate; they cannot be thinking about exactly what your next opportunity or your next career move or your next project or role in a project could be so. What your boss and what this guy's boss was doing is not insufficient. I mean, they have all of the other things on their plate that they need to be doing.

The boss just doesn't know what your next move is or what your desires are. So what stays inside of you is invisible in the organization, so it's not only about like promotions and career advancement if that's what you want. It's also the the little things like this guy just wanted to present the research findings to the product development team again, which included some senior leaders. Now he knew, as he explained to me, that this was a visibility move on his part because he wanted to be more widely known in the organization.

Which, quite frankly, I think everyone should be more widely known in the organization, and especially when you're at that individual contributor role who is maybe leading from the side or somebody who wants eventual career promotion. I mean, he wasn't like gunning for a promotion right now. He wasn't asking for a raise. He just wanted to present the research findings that he was intimately related with because he was on that research team for the market research group.

So, whether it's a bigger career goal or whether it's a smaller next step like this particular person, we have to be explicit about those. We have to be verbal about those. We have to let our supervisors, our bosses, our senior leaders, whoever it is that you report to, we have to let them know. And it could just simply be a development interest, like I want to take on more of this kind of work, or I want to learn that skill, or I'd love to go to a training class on this particular thing.

So again, it could be a very small thing, or it could be a bigger thing. Again, everything from learning a new skill to assignment and project preferences to bigger career moves. Another one I've heard about recently is somebody wanted to be doing more travel, so there were pockets in their team that got to do occasional travel, and this particular gentleman was not getting selected for travel, and he has little kids, and he's got a whole bunch of other stuff going on in his life. And again, I and this isn't somebody that I had a one-on-one conversation with this about this.

This one I just heard about from somebody else, but I was just like the same advice applies. So I said, Well, tell your friend this because I heard about it second secondhand. It's not somebody that I was in a conversation with or I knew personally. But I said, tell your friend this.

Like your boss probably doesn't know that you want those travel assignments, and your boss might be incorrectly assuming that you don't want to travel because of some of your other life circumstances. So, I also now this particular instance I did hear about. Somebody told me about this one, which was they had a family commitment that they were apprehensive about asking for a vacation day because they they weren't really sure if it was a good time to be taking I think it was two days off with their family for something when the kids had off school and so I was like, does your boss know that you want those days off even though it comes at a very busy time inside of the product unit or project unit that you're part of, and he's just just like, no, I don't think my boss really gets it. My boss, you know, doesn't understand that school's out during that time, and and I was like, well, you're gonna need to tell him because your boss isn't gonna just guess that you need a couple of vacation days in the middle of fall because your kids have off school.

So this is the kind of thing I'm talking about. Like our supervisors, your managers, your senior leaders-they have no idea what's going on in your life, or your career aspirations, or the next skill that you want to develop, or a you know a skill in the workplace like presenting to senior leaders or presenting to product teams that you want to develop. So all of this is invisible until you make it visible. They cannot act on information they don't have, and when they don't act, we think it's a slight to us, like an intentional slight, or maybe we interpret it as lack of interest when the actual explanation is just simply lack of information.

They don't know. Okay, so let me give you a practical tool that you can put in place to make the implicit explicit, so that they know what you want. I call it name it, frame it, say it. Okay, three steps.

Simple in theory. In theory, a little bit harder to actually do, especially for people who have been waiting for their boss to notice. I mean, you are not Cinderella waiting for somebody to ask you to the ball. You need to advocate for yourself.

Okay, so we're gonna name it, frame it, and say it. Let me give you the three steps of the framework, and then we'll talk about how you put it to work. Okay, so first name it. You need to get really specific about what it is that you want your boss to know.

This is not vague, a vague feeling. Okay, of I want more opportunities. Okay, that's wimpy. Nobody can just act on that.

So a concrete, specific thing. If you can't name it clearly for yourself, you definitely can't communicate it clearly to your boss. So let me use the example of the person who was talking to me after my keynote at that conference during their networking time. He said very specifically, I want to present research findings from our market research projects to the product teams that are you know basically their internal customers, so it was a very specific ask.

He knew exactly what he wanted to do, and he knew what the you know what the outcome was. Okay, so you want to get really really specific like that. Okay, then frame it. So translate it into terms that are relevant to your boss's world and connect it to the work, to the team, to the business partners, to the business outcomes that you want.

And this is where the conversation really becomes actionable. And this is really the underlying why. And that's just not just the why for you, but it's the why for the team as well, and so you might say something like, in in this particular case, the reason I want a chance at presenting those findings is because you know I'm I'm right there doing the work as well, and I also think this would be a good opportunity for me to get more visibility in the organization as well as for me to be known as an expert in this area in the organization, so that I get called on to to help with some of these other projects. So making a business case for yourself for why you want this, not just I want to grow, but I'd like to take on client facing projects because I want to build the skills for an upcoming senior role, or I want to build the skills just to be known more in the organization, or to whatever it is for you.

I mean, I could come up with a bunch of ideas, but you need to hone in on this specifically for you. How does it help you? How does it help your team? This also goes for if you're pushing back to say no to something, because it might just be you're totally overwhelmed with work, and you think your boss should know that.

And if that, I mean, a lot of times we again we implicitly think our boss should know that. But if you're the kind of person who has high capacity and you keep taking on and saying yes to things that are handed to you, you might feel really overwhelmed. And if you need to push back on that as you frame that up, it's not just I'm overwhelmed. Instead, you're going to say something more specific, like, Hey, I'm totally at capacity this month.

I'm doing the Acme project, the the B project, the C project, right? The ABC projects. You say all the specific things. Can we talk about what to prioritize, or can I help you think of some other people on the team who might be able to handle that new project?

Okay, so you can use this for pushback as well as for when you're asking for more responsibilities. So again, you're not just saying something mamby pamby or loosey goosey like I want a new project. You're saying I would like to specifically be considered for this next new account that's coming through. If we land that account, I've been working towards this kind of responsibility, and this would give me an opportunity to take that on.

Okay, so that's how you're framing it-not only for yourself, but really you're making a business case for it. This means thinking about also when and how to have the conversation. So not every boss wants this in their email, nor do I think this would be a good email. Um, maybe a follow up email after you have had the conversation, either over Teams or face to face, if you're in the office together.

So have that conversation in your next one on one, for example, and then follow up with a quick email. Hey, I'm so glad we got a chance to talk about me presenting findings of our market research team to the product team. Okay, so you follow that up with an email, but don't start it with an email. Okay, but then you're gonna-I haven't even gotten to actually saying it.

Okay, so the third part is to say it. So have the actual conversation again. I think in your one-on-one is a perfect time to have that conversation. Most cases, it doesn't need to be scheduled as a separate conversation.

If you already have a cadence of having one-on-ones with your boss, this is absolutely something you can bring up. But again, you're not going to hint around about it. You're not going to hope for it. You're not going to vaguely mention that you're hoping that something lands somewhere.

No, this is a direct statement. You've maybe even practiced it and rehearsed it, and then you're gonna make a very specific ask. And again, I don't want you to just do this once in a while. This should be something that you're regularly in the cadence of doing.

I mean, don't be asking for new huge things every time you meet with your boss for a one-on-one. But you should be regularly asking for stretch assignments. You should be regularly asking for whatever it is you want, whether it's a training opportunity, whatever you need. Regularly be asking and advocating for yourself.

Again, remember it is not your boss's job to be thinking about what's next for you, whether that be less work if you're feeling overwhelmed, or more work or different work if you want new opportunities, okay. So, number one, your boss is not neglecting you. As we start to wrap this up, they don't know what they haven't been told, and that is not a character flaw. That is just how organizational life and management works.

They've got a lot on their plate, and what's top of mind for you might not even be visible to them if they haven't told them. You haven't told them, rather. So number two, the burden of visibility is on you, not them. If there is something that you want, it is your responsibility to go after it, and that is not unfair.

That is empowering. You have more agency in this than you have been using up until this point. And number three, vague wants do not get acted on. Specific framed requests do.

I want to get a hand in having this kind of responsibility because it is a career growth and visibility move for me personally, and it's going to keep me engaged in my work. Okay. And number four, this applies to everything. It's not just career conversations.

It's not just scheduled. It's not just those moments when you're feeling overwhelmed. This is project preferences. Of course, it is also career moves, but it's all of the things, all of these development moments for you.

You need to advocate for yourself, and you need to captain your own ship on this. Okay, so the segment you've all been waiting for. Put it to work. I want you to think of one thing, one specific thing.

Could be small. It could be big. That your boss doesn't know about your desires right now. It could be a goal, a preference.

It could be that you are overwhelmed. It could be an aspiration. It could be a career move. And I want you to run it through the framework.

Number one, what is it? Name it exactly. What is it, and state it in one sentence. Number two, frame it.

How would you say it in terms that are relevant to your boss and to the work, so that it doesn't just sound like some, you know, irrelevant want that you want, but it's it's connected to the work. It's connected to you know. It's basically a mini business plan in one sentence. And number three, say it.

When and how will you have this conversation this week? And practice it out loud if you need to. So one thing that is your homework. Again, it could be a small thing, medium sized thing.

It could be a larger thing. But name it, frame it, Say it. Okay, so this is you know knowing your boss's communication style also may play a role into this. And I did an episode not too long ago, episode 285, on the four communication styles at work.

So that might be a useful companion episode to this episode because it will help you think about how do I position this in a way that's really going to land with my boss? Because you can think through what's their communication style, such that as you're thinking about how to frame it, not only are you framing it in relation to the work and the organization, but you're also framing it in relation to their communication style. So I will link that episode up in the show notes. This episode is episode 289, so you can find the show notes for this episode at janelanderson.com forward slash 289 for episode 289, and we'll link episode 285 up in the show notes because again, really nice companion episode to this one.

Now, as we wrap up, if you have not already shared an episode of Working Conversations with a friend, a colleague, or someone. It is my explicit ask of you, which makes sense given this episode. But I'm going to name it. So me naming it is please share the Working Conversations podcast with at least one other person this week.

Now I'm going to frame it. The reason I'm making this ask is because it helps me be found by other people when there are more downloads and listens and views of the episode. Whether you're downloading in a podcast player or whether you're watching it on YouTube, it helps me. And when more people find the when more people are finding my episodes, then the word is getting out more about what's what the work that I do, so it's a very easy and low cost way for you to do it.

Okay, and so I'm going to say it one last time. Please share this episode or another episode of this podcast with a friend, a colleague at work, perhaps your boss, because it helps me and it. The content will help them very will help them as well. All right, my friends, be well, and I will catch you next week here on Working Conversations.