How to manage up and avoid getting an Elon Musk-style email asking you to show your work

• If you want to keep your job, show your work.
• That's Elon Musk's latest directive to federal employees, and it highlights the importance of self-promotion at work.
• Career experts shared tips with BI for how to make your achievements at work visible to higher-ups.

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Depends on who you ask.

This one's easier: If you accomplish an important task at work and your boss doesn't hear about it, did you even do it? That answer, unfortunately, is a resounding no.

After President Trump said Elon Musk should "get more aggressive" with slashing federal spending, Musk sent an email to federal employees last Saturday telling them to reply with five things they accomplished in the prior week and cc their manager. Failure to respond would be tantamount to resignation, he said in a post on X.

Why showing your work matters

Career experts told BI Musk's approach is "fear-based management." While his approach may have been blunt, it reflects at its core something pretty mundane, and certainly not exclusive to Musk: Employers want to know what employees are doing.

"Your work can't speak for itself," said Melody Wilding, executive coach and author of the forthcoming book "Managing Up: How to Get What You Need from the People in Charge."

It's a crucial time to make sure your work is visible.

Layoffs are sweeping tech and other industries. And many employers are increasingly concerned about what employees are working on, especially since remote and hybrid arrangements make their activities less visible. As a result, they are turning to employee surveillance tools to monitor workers.

Power in the workplace has shifted back to employers after a blip during the pandemic when it briefly tilted toward workers.

"Managing up is more important now than ever," said Mary Abbajay, president of Careerstone Group and author of "Managing Up: How to Move up, Win at Work, and Succeed with Any Type of Boss."

Your boss is juggling their own responsibilities, so they can't track all of your work, Abbajay said.

Many people, though, particularly women, feel uncomfortable about self-promotion in the workplace, research has shown. Abbajay says she'd remind these people that discussing their wins at work shows confidence, not arrogance.

"When we talk about our accomplishments, we are stating facts," she said. "And when we state facts, there's no aggrandizing in that. We are just saying, 'I finished this project two weeks ahead of schedule and $5,000 under budget.'"

How to highlight achievements big and small

If you've just had a big win at work, consider sending an email to your boss about it, or bring it up in a hallway conversation or a meeting. Wilding also recommends kicking off your regular check-ins with your boss by recapping what you accomplished since you last met.

Wilding said to talk about not just what you did, but also the impact of your work: What business value or efficiency did it create, or what time or money did it save your team?

Instead of approaching this as self-promotion, think of it as simply informing your manager, so they can communicate these accomplishments and outcomes up their own chain of command to get your team more resources or influence, Wilding said.

She said that in a meeting, you might bring up a significant milestone on a project as a teaching moment so you can share what you learned with your teammates.

This has the added benefit of giving visibility into how you process information and make decisions in the company's best interest, she said. Showing those in leadership your higher-level thinking at work could help with your career advancement more than simply saying you hit your KPIs.

If the cadence feels appropriate, consider sending an email on Mondays of what's on tap for the week, and another on Fridays recapping what you accomplished that week, Wilding says. You can preemptively say no response is necessary to avoid creating additional work for your boss.

Wilding says some of her clients have also experimented with creating a newsletter of sorts that gives a monthly or quarterly rundown on what the team accomplished in that time. Sometimes, this newsletter features a small case study or a spotlight on an individual team member. With this approach, you might even reach a bigger audience, such as cross-functional partners, vendors, or skip-level managers.

Keep your digital calendar up-to-date with what you're working on so your boss can readily see, Abbajay says. You might even ask a quick question about a project you're working on, a question you don't necessarily need an answer to, just to subtly remind your boss what's on your plate.

And bear in mind that your approach to making your work visible also depends on your boss' management style.

While a micromanager might expect a weekly email detailing your progress, a more laissez-faire boss might require you to be more proactive drawing attention to your accomplishments.

Highlighting your own accomplishments at work can feel uncomfortable. But self-promotion is key to securing an actual promotion.

"It is your responsibility to make sure people know how good you are, how successful you are, and what your accomplishments are," said Abbajay. "Because if you don't tell them, who will?"