You’re invited to an impromptu office happy hour gathering after an intense day at work. You generally like your co-workers and don’t have any other plans. Is your immediate physiological response to the invitation a grin or a grimace? You decide to pull it together and attend said gathering: does your evening out end with you closing down the joint or end early with an Irish goodbye? When making hotel reservations for an out-of-town work conference, do you stay at the conference venue or first look for alternative hotels within walking distance?
If you answered grimace, Irish goodbye, alternative hotel, this—my fellow introvert—is for you.
Unfortunately, some (read: many/most/all) US work cultures have a demonstrable bias in favor of the gregarious, life-of-the-party type. You already know that. And there’s no shortage of leadership training on developing executive presence and managing introverts, which only reinforces this bias.
As I reflect on my 28-year federal career, here’s what I’d tell my younger self to avoid some early angst—and what I’d like to share with those kindred souls still on their career journey: flip your thinking, seek growth-not change, conserve your energy.
1. Flip Your Thinking. Your introverted tendency is not a deficiency to overcome or illness to cure. It’s your superpower. Some researchers prefer to call us “highly sensitive” or “high-reactive,” meaning we’re keen observers who can connect the dots. We’re empathetic and pick up signals, we’re self-motivated and self-reflective, and we look before we leap. Work cultures may sometimes look less favorably on introversion because it can be confused with shyness. Experts in this field like Susan Cain point out the difference between shyness and introversion. Shyness is about the fear of social judgment. Introvert beau idéal Larry David of Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld fame is not one iota fearful of social judgment. Introversion is about how you respond to stimuli, including social stimuli. When you’re wired to pick up signals and you’re highly efficient at doing so, you have to filter out as much background noise as possible. All that continuous monitoring and filtering and processing can take a lot out of a gal or guy. At the end of the day, we’re just fried.
Anyway, while labels may be good for botanists and barbeque aficionados, in real life most people fall somewhere on the spectrum between the two extremes of introversion and extroversion. We’re born and raised with certain personality traits that become tendencies like introversion, but that doesn’t mean we always prefer to be alone, that we always hate public speaking, or that we never let our hair down. The I/E labels unfortunately can sometimes weigh us down, especially when we buy into the thinking that we need to learn to be more extroverted to get ahead. How about the extroverts learning to be more reserved?
You are you. You are made for shade, and your introverted tendency is your superpower. Train your brain and practice looking for things that others can’t see (because they’re too busy running their pieholes).
2. Seek Growth, Not Change. The reality is: being able to effectively communicate with small and large groups of people at work is an essential career competency. It’s not enough that you’re able to see what others can’t, you have to be able to effectively communicate your observations and insights. This is a skill that has little to do with introversion or extroversion, though, and can be honed over time. With intention and practice, you can grow and become a more effective communicator. I’ve yet to meet a leader, in the public or private sector and at whatever level, who couldn’t sharpen some dimension of their communication skills.
At the same time, it’s perfectly ok to be less than enthusiastic about some types of social workplace engagements, like public speaking. Let’s face it: you and I are no Tony Robbins and try as we might to Unleash the Power Within, we never will be. That’s ok. You can’t change who you are. Just be you and remember that effective communication is not about being comfortable. It’s about being authentic and delivering a sharp, compelling, and memorable message. When possible and appropriate (for example, when leading group meetings), collect and organize your thoughts in advance and write out your talking points. This will reduce your energy load.
Another strategy to grow your career and navigate the office day-to-day is to develop an adaptive work persona that you can don and doff for those social workplace engagements that may not exactly bring you joy. Your true authentic self and your adaptive work persona must be fundamentally aligned—to thine own self be true after all—but with an adaptive work persona you can think of social engagements as if you’re an actor playing a part in a scene. This persona strategy requires less energy, especially when you’re transparent with co-workers, staff and others about your natural preference for solitude. On certain occasions, the burdens of leadership will require you to put yourself out there. This strategy can enable you to be the situational extrovert the situation requires. Grow as an actor.
3. Conserve Your Energy. You know how in video games the characters often have to gobble up or grab stars, coins, or dots, to get temporary invincibility or extra lives? For us introverts, we know it’s solitude we need to power back up. And this is the easiest I/E test there is: after you emerge from a large social engagement, do you have less energy or more?
Conserve your energy by knowing your boundaries and controlling the setting. You don’t have to say yes to every social invitation. “Thanks, but that’s not really my bag” is a perfectly acceptable response, “but I’d be down with [alternative]” is an even better one if you can stomach it. Choose engagements wisely to reduce wasteful consumption.
The most important element of energy management is to regularly fine tune ways to recharge your batteries. Recharging might be a run at lunch or a walk in the woods. It may be reading a book or binging a new Netflix show. It may be spending your Saturday morning on the lake or out in the garden showing love to the flowers and shade loving plants. Don’t leave it to chance. Experiment with different activities that will give you respite from the noise.
* * *
Over a long career we sometimes can get stuck in a rut where it’s hard to see over the hedge. Trust me: the workplace a big, beautiful garden, and there’s plenty of room for both the sunnies and the shade-loving plants to grow and thrive.
.