I heard a comment recently about assurance and how the best professionals are often unseen. It’s an interesting premise. If you’re great at what you do, people probably don’t need to know you’re there. Your work just…works. Problems are solved before they’re visible. Things flow.

The challenge for L&D is that invisibility comes with a cost. If people don’t know what you do, how do you get recognition? And if you don’t get recognition, how do you get the backing you need to keep making things work?

If you design and embed learning so well that it blends into the everyday, you’ve created something powerful. People just do the right things and performance improves without anyone tracing it back to L&D. That’s the goal. But it also means the link between your work and the result is easy to miss.

The answer isn’t to start waving for attention every time something goes right. It’s to make sure the effects are visible, even if the process is not. That means:

• Showing the gap between “before” and “after” in what matters to the organisation.
• Telling the story so people can see the link between your work and the outcome.
• Staying close enough to decision–makers so they understand the shift you’ve made possible.

Great L&D can be invisible in delivery but obvious in impact. The best professionals might work quietly, but the results should speak for them. And speak loudly.