Work Beneath the Work

There was a project that nearly derailed six months of planning because two senior leaders couldn't be in the same room without the temperature dropping fifteen degrees.

It wasn't my project. It wasn't technically my problem. But someone had to manage the tension, broker the handoffs, and translate what one person said into language the other could actually hear. So I did.

That work never showed up in a status report. It didn't get tracked in a project plan. And when the project landed successfully, no one mentioned the hours I spent making sure those two people never had to speak directly to each other.

That's invisible labor. And some of the most important work I've done has looked exactly like that.

In operations, invisible labor looked like late-night escalations and early-morning handoffs. It was managing tension between teams, redesigning systems in real time when the original plan hit a snag, and saying yes to deadlines that should've been impossible… but quietly figuring out how to make them happen.

In DEI work, it looked different but felt the same. It was saying the quiet thing out loud before others even realized it needed to be said. Translating corporate speak into something human. Holding pain in rooms that wanted professionalism instead of presence. Coaching micro-shifts in leadership behavior that made real change possible, one conversation at a time.

Across both roles, the through line was clear: I was doing work that mattered deeply but was almost never named, measured, or compensated.

And I wasn't alone in that.

Here's what I've learned: Invisible labor becomes visible when leaders name it, measure it, and compensate for it.

And when they don't? That work doesn't disappear. It just gets absorbed.

Usually by the people who care the most. The people who can't walk past a problem without trying to fix it. The people whose identity is wrapped up in being the one who makes things work.

The dashboards rarely capture emotional labor, culture work, or the hours spent building trust across teams. Performance reviews don't measure the influence it takes to shift a room, or the impact of preventing a crisis no one else saw coming.

But without that work, the rest doesn't stick. The strategy doesn't land. The culture doesn't shift. The project falls apart because no one thought to ask who was holding it together behind the scenes.

I started noticing the pattern after I was let go.

Suddenly, I had the distance to look back and see how much of my value had been tied to work that was never formally part of my role. Work that I took on because it needed doing, because I was good at it, because no one else was stepping in.

And I realized: I'd built a career on being indispensable in ways that were completely invisible.

That's not sustainable. And it's not fair… not to me, and not to anyone else doing that kind of work.

So here's what I'm sitting with now: What would change if job descriptions reflected the real work?

If performance reviews captured influence and impact, not just output? If compensation recognized the labor it takes to hold a system together, navigate conflict, build trust, and create the conditions for everyone else to do their best work?

What if we stopped treating that work as "extra" and started seeing it as essential?

Because here's the truth: The people doing invisible labor already know it's essential. They're the ones staying late, absorbing the tension, translating the chaos into something manageable.

The question is whether leadership knows it too. And whether they're willing to name it, value it, and build systems that don't quietly depend on people giving more than they're asked (or paid) to give.

I'm not saying I have the answers. This is complicated.

But I do know this: Invisible labor stays invisible until someone points at it and says, "This stuff matters. This is work. And it deserves to be seen."

So I'm saying it now.

What's the invisible labor you've been doing? And what would it look like if someone finally recognized it?