The legibility gap: why capable people are often overlooked
One of the enduring myths of professional life is that presence belongs to a fortunate few.
We talk about it as though it were innate: a blend of confidence, charisma, and authority that certain people simply possess. Yet this framing misses something more important.
The question is not who has presence – it’s rather how presence is read.
This idea sits at the heart of Vitruvian Woman. Just as Leonardo’s figure occupies both a circle and a square simultaneously, professional life requires us to navigate two realities at once: who we are and how we are interpreted. Presence emerges and endures where those realities align.
Every workplace is saturated with signals. Pace, tone, silence, posture, dress, and timing are all read continuously against context and expectation. Long before our expertise can be assessed, people are forming impressions about our judgement, credibility, and trustworthiness.
Seen this way, presence resembles a literacy more than a personality trait.
Some people communicate their capability fluently. Others struggle to make themselves legible. The difference is rarely talent; instead, and more often, it lies in the gap between what is intended and what is perceived. Like a signal travelling through interference, the message may be clear at its source yet distorted by the time it reaches its audience.
Success depends less on broadcasting a stronger message than on ensuring the signal survives the journey intact and this is exactly why performance is such an imperfect remedy.
Still, conventional advice is familiar: be more visible, speak more often, project confidence. Yet, amplification and clarity are not the same thing. Performance adds layers, while literacy improves what most of the times matters most, translation.
It’s a stark reality that when presence becomes overly performative, proportion begins to break down. We see it everywhere: in the media, the boardroom, and on the shop, and dance floor, too. Visibility can often overtake relevance, and attention grows while trust and engagement remains unchanged.
The Vitruvian lens offers a different perspective. Like a tightrope walker suspended between two points, I advocate for a learning approach on how to constantly negotiate: between who you are and how you are perceived, between expertise and expression, between authenticity and adaptation.
Ultimately, enduring presence doesn’t emerge from choosing one side over the other, but from maintaining exactly this proportion between them. When capability, contextual awareness, and coherence work together, people understand and are understood, these are the power skills of leadership; this is felt, both ways. A dancer needs a partner to tango.
That is why image literacy matters – and I am talking about professional legibility rather than self-promotion.
So, would the more useful question be ‘Where might my work already be strong, yet difficult to read?’ rather than ‘How can I be more visible?’
Our presence begins when our capability, character, and communication come into balance – when the signal we send is proportionate to the person we are. It’s not enough to be seen but it is vital that we become understandable.
Perhaps that is the real challenge of professional presence. Not learning how to take up more space but learning how to inhabit it with greater coherence. Like the Vitruvian examples I bring into my book, the aim is not to choose between substance and visibility, authenticity and adaptation, but to hold them in balance. When we do, presence ceases to be a performance for others and becomes a clearer expression of who we already are.
A question to consider
Where, in your own career, have you had to balance substance and visibility, authenticity and adaptation?
The conversation around presence often focuses on standing out. Still, the more enduring challenge is becoming easier to understand.
I’d welcome your reflections.
The themes explored here form part of Vitruvian Woman, my book about image literacy, executive presence, and the balance between strength, relevance, and beauty. Pre-orders are now available globally from your bookseller of choice. Visit: https://image-ability.com/vitruvian-woman/