Innovation often depends on people who cross boundaries: entering unfamiliar rooms, translating between professional languages, and building the trust that enables others to move together.

Far from being peripheral, this is how complex work gets done.

We see this work every day in the person described as “good with people.” They navigate friction, connect dots others have missed, build confidence around an idea, and create the conditions for others to succeed.

Precisely because they make it look easy, the work involved can be obscured—even as organizations depend on it more.

That dependence is reflected in research by the Center for Creative Leadership : more than 90% of 125 senior executives rated the ability to work across boundaries as important at middle and senior levels within organizations.

The paradox is that while the outcomes are visible, the connective labor that produces them often is not.

Why then does work that organizations depend on remain so easy to overlook—and so difficult to recognize and reward?

When Valuable Work Disappears

Relational work creates significant value, yet the capacity to do it remains scarce.

Deloitte’s 2023 Global Human Capital Trends survey found that just 23% of respondents believed their organization’s leaders had the capabilities to lead effectively in an increasingly boundaryless world.

But capability is only part of the problem.

A 2023 study in Journalism shows how organizational design can make the problem worse. During a major transformation at a local news organization, boundary spanners helped different groups work together and move change forward.

They were central to the transformation. Yet performance systems continued to prioritize individual and departmental goals.

The relationships on which change depended remained largely unrewarded.

Organizations clearly need this work. The problem is that their systems are often unable to see it.

Mistaking Skill For Personality

Part of the tension lies in how organizations describe contribution and how those descriptions shape who receives recognition.

When relational work is treated as personality rather than performance, the contribution—and the basis for recognizing it—can disappear.

Early research published by MIT Press in 1999 on female engineers described this as a “disappearing act.” Technical expertise was named as skill; connecting work was attributed to personality.

These dynamics can affect women in particular, but the wider lesson applies. Language does more than describe contribution; it helps determine whose work is credited, measured, and rewarded.

Some organizations are starting to notice—and to count what they once overlooked.

McKinsey puts the prize in hard numbers: organizations with effective performance systems can achieve revenues 30% higher than their peers whilst promoting positive workplace culture.

But a performance system can only reward what it is designed to see.

Across its work with more than 50 companies, McKinsey found that organizations were widening what they count as performance.

Some moved beyond individual targets to include team outcomes, cross-functional collaboration, and adapted the weight attributed to how goals were achieved.

The principle is simple: reward the result, but also see the work that made it possible.

Recognition Is an Organizational Choice

As work becomes more complex, organizations will depend on increasingly sophisticated relational capabilities.

The real test is whether they build those capabilities into job design, appraisal, promotion, and career progression.

That means capturing the teams strengthened, partnerships built, and outcomes enabled—not only the person most visibly associated with the result.

If the future of work is relational, the question is whether reward will catch up.