At our school, when we run a special event the students are in charge of the sound system. My line to them is that their job is to: ‘Be invisible’. The best job they can do is not to be noticed. We notice the sound crew when we hear microphone feedback, or static, or music starts too early, too late, or too loudly. Or someone speaks but the mic is off or too quiet. If none of these hiccups happen, the sound team are not ever in the limelight… and they have done an excellent job.
At a dinner meeting last night a colleague reminded me of a different kind of invisible, and that’s being invisible until it’s important to be seen. The metaphor he used was a referee. A referee should be invisible or not a factor in the game, doing his or her job, making the right calls, and not disrupting the flow of the game. However, there are also times when refs need to be the center of attention. They need to stop the game and make the big call. At this point they are crucial, and the wrong call can be devastating for a team.
They can spend most of the game being somewhat invisible, and going relatively unnoticed, and then suddenly they are front and center, making a key call that could pivot the outcome of the game significantly. A lot of jobs are more like the referee than the sound tech, as long as the person in the job is focussed on wanting to be invisible.
A good teacher or school counsellor can invisibly be doing a fantastic job, handling behavioural or social issues that never reach the office to be dealt with by a principal. These staff members may not get a lot of attention but they are quietly doing an excellent job… and when they ask for help or escalate a situation, the leader knows to step in and support them. Rather than explain the opposite, just know that sometimes situations demand more attention regardless of how good a teacher or school counsellor is, and other times the attention is required because the ‘referee’ is making less than ideal calls.
The point being, it’s ideal in many positions to be invisible, to take care of issues in the background, unseen. But there are also times to make the tough calls and to be in front of the issues and addressing them head on. The magic is in staying invisible most of the time and knowing when to reveal yourself.
