The €80K Cost of Unconscious Impact

Your fear wants you to stay invisible.

It whispers: "Keep your head down. Focus on the technical work. Don't speak up. Let others present your ideas. At least you won't be wrong publicly. Don't rock the boat. Maybe someone will eventually notice your brilliance."

But here's what that voice doesn't want you to know: You're already having an impact on the people around you, and in many cases, your fear of visibility is mistakenly perceived as a lack of responsibility and interest.

Quick Math on Missed Opportunities:

One rejected proposal due unrecognised stakeholder dynamics: €50K
One missed promotion because your impact wasn't visible to decision-makers: €15K+ annual salary difference
One critical relationship damaged by unconscious communication patterns: Months of reduced team effectiveness

€80K+ in measurable impact from unconscious influence. Yes, those numbers are made up, but they show what is happening. Fear keeps you in the comfort of invisible influence - where you can't see your patterns, can't measure your impact, and can't systematically improve. It's predictable. It's safe. It's also a dead end.

My tool against it: CONSCIOUS IMPACT!

First of all, you would need to understand what you want to achieve, as well as why. Then you need to figure out how to achieve it.

Then you would need to do some of the following:

✅ stop wasting energy on ineffective communication styles.
✅ build systematic influence instead of hoping for luck!
✅ be comfortable that you become known as someone who 'gets things done'.

Self-awareness instead of guesswork!

"Sounds interesting, but... how should I put it... Isn't this just manipulation?"

OK, let's talk about the perception of the words 'impact' and 'influence'.

It is manipulation if it has a hidden agenda and steers things in your direction at the expense of others.

Nothing what I am addressing here is from that category.
I am talking about your conscious influence: clear goals, a systematic approach, and win-win outcomes.

You're already influencing people, just badly.

ffRight now, you're accidentally influential:

Sometimes it works (and you don't know why).
Sometimes it backfires (and you don't know why).
Brilliant ideas sometimes get ignored, and you don't know why.

Are you not tired of it?

Every email you send influences how people view your competence.
Every meeting you attend influences how people view your ideas.
Every technical explanation you give influences whether people trust your recommendations.
The question isn't whether you influence people. You do so every day.
The question is: Do you do so consciously and effectively, or unconsciously and poorly?

When you put thoughts into what you want to achieve and have a systematic approach to it, you may start to practise some of these activities:
- Acknowledging people's concerns instead of dismissing them
- sharing your reasoning instead of just your conclusions.

-Finding solutions that work for everyone, rather than just pushing your own agenda.
-Building long-term trust instead of winning short-term arguments.

Your next step: micro-experiment

Identify one recent situation where the outcome was different from what you expected. Maybe a stakeholder rejected a your proposal, a meeting didn't go as planned, or a colleague reacted unexpectedly to your communication.

Now reverse-engineer it: What impact did you actually create versus what you intended? Study it like debugging code - trace backwards from the unexpected result to identify which variables you might not have considered.

Document the gap between intended and actual impact. What data can you collect about what really happened versus what you thought would happen?

Are you ready to investigate your existing impact systematically? My Weekly Impact Review could be just what you need!

Categories: : awareness, confidence, influence, reflection