Across a large organization, you’re going to have to have many projects, some that are more important than others. Some of them will need you to guide them. Others are important, but the people managing it are capable, so they don’t need you. Or do they?

As clear as we try to be, we are sending many conflicting messages about importance. I remember an eight month period where, every one or two months, I had a key stakeholder tell me something was the highest priority. The only problem was that it was different every time. It sounds absurd, but smart but fallible people can fall into that trap because we can’t remember and think about everything all the time. So you can say something is important as much as you want, but sometimes the message will still get lost because that is not the only message you’re sending, and your messages are not the only ones they’re receiving.

You know what sends an emphatic message about importance? Your presence. Over the last few years, I have made it a point to show up in person to the status meetings of critical projects. I tend to be a minor participant at most. Sometimes I ask questions or am asked a question. Sometimes I’m not paying attention at all (but I try to minimize that).

I’d be hard pressed to say that my interventions were consistently needed or valuable. But I will say with confidence that my presence was needed and valuable. It was a powerful symbol that I chose to spend my limited time on that project. Everyone knows I could be focusing on any of fifty different things, but I can’t actually attend to more than a few of them during any given cycle. And everyone knows that.

Think about it. Your boss’s boss(‘s boss’s boss?) spends a half hour or an hour every week or two in a project status meeting. He doesn’t say a whole lot, but he’s usually there. Then there’s another project that you know of that has a similar meeting. He says it’s important, but you’ve never seen him in that meeting. Which one is more important?

It’s been easy for me to think that my value comes from what I say. It’s been hard for me to accept that I have stature and power. Once I did, though, I realized that sometimes my value didn’t at all come from what I said. It didn’t even come from what I heard. It just came from being visible, in attaching whatever stature and power I had to a project, establishing its importance to anyone on or around it, without even having to say a word.