The Value of Being Known by a Few

There is a kind of recognition that feels good but does not go very deep. A Slack emoji reaction. A round of applause in an all-hands. A line in a quarterly update. These moments matter—they affirm that your reputation is intact, that people generally see you as smart, kind, and hardworking. And it is good to maintain that reputation with as many people as possible.

But I am learning that real growth often comes not from widespread acclaim, but from directed and contextual feedback from a few key people.

Widespread Recognition Is Hard to Measure

Unless you have a PR team managing your image, trying to keep track of how the whole organization sees you can be a frustrating and fuzzy metric. You cannot know what everyone thinks. You cannot control every impression. And the effort to do so often pulls energy away from the work itself.

What you can do is cultivate a circle of people whose perspective you trust, who know what you are actually working on, and who are close enough to see both your strengths and your blind spots.

Context Matters

Generic praise feels nice, but it is not always actionable. “Great work!” is encouraging, but it does not help you know whether your test suite design, your release notes, or your leadership approach is actually hitting the mark.

The best feedback is directed and contextual:

– From the colleague who reviewed your code and noticed how you structured your assertions.

– From the manager who saw how you facilitated a tense conversation without shutting anyone down.

– From the teammate who watched you debug a thorny issue and appreciated your calm approach.

That kind of recognition, rooted in specific contexts, tells you what to repeat and what to improve.

Leadership Parallel

The same principle applies in leadership. Leaders who chase broad acclaim often miss the signals that matter. But leaders who cultivate trusted feedback loops—whether from their immediate reports, peers, or mentors—are better equipped to guide with clarity.

Widespread recognition is not wrong, but it is fragile. Directed feedback is durable. It forms the bedrock of real trust.

A Gentle Encouragement

So yes, keep your reputation healthy. Do your work with integrity so that people in every corner of the organization know you can be trusted. But do not measure your worth by the volume of applause. Measure it by the depth of the conversations with the few people who really see your work.

Because in the end, being known deeply by a few is more valuable than being vaguely recognized by many.

—

Beau Brown

Testing in the real world: messy, human, worth it.