Quiet Strategies to Increase Visibility and Influence at Work

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Dallow the Bleacher Report app today, so you never miss a moment. [♪ OUTRO MUSIC PLAYING [♪ Have you ever walked out of a meeting thinking I really had something important to say, but the moment just moved too fast. Or ever wondered why you’re quiet or way of leading, even when it’s thoughtful and strategic. Still seems invisible next to louder personalities. Welcome to the Introverted Leader, a podcast helping introverted professionals embrace your underrated, quiet strengths to get promoted and earn what you deserve. I’m Greg Wanger. I have over 25 years of leadership experience, and yes, I am an introvert. Today, I’m speaking with Stacey Chazin. She’s a leadership coach, keynote speaker, and founder of I Factor Leadership. Stacey specializes in helping introverts break through what she calls the extrovert ceiling, that invisible bias that keeps introverts stuck, underpaid, and overlooked. With the background in health policy, organizational leadership, and Myers-Briggs certification, she spent years coaching professionals through high stakes moments, where quiet leaders often get drowned out. In this episode, you’ll discover how to speak up in fast-paced meetings, even when you process information more deeply and slowly. Number two, a visibility strategy for introverts that doesn’t require self-promotion or performance. It’s rooted entirely in your written and relational strengths. And number three, how to manage your energy in extroverted cultures, so you can perform it your best without burning out. This episode is packed with tools that you can apply right here today, so you can show up with quiet authority without becoming someone you’re not. I really hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did with Stacey. Introverts earn nearly $10,000 less on average than their extroverted counterparts, and while half the US population is introverted, a mere 4% of leaders are introverts. Folks, this is not because introverts are less capable. In fact, research proves the opposite. Absolutely great to have you on the show. Welcome, Stacey. Thanks so much, Greg. I’m thrilled to be here. Awesome. Well, I am astounded by those statistics. I mean, I know intuitively these things are true. Really, 4%, really. Is that right? Yeah, I’ve seen the estimates are from 2% to 4%, and we’re talking about folks who are in senior leadership roles. So in the C-suite, vice presidential roles, yeah. And I share your, when I saw those statistics, I did a wow that can’t be right. And then intuitively I knew, yeah, of course it’s right. Yeah. Yeah, so what’s going on there? What’s going on there primarily is that quite simply, our workplaces have an extrovert focused bias that traditional definitions of leadership really emphasize the strengths, gifts, and approaches to work that extroverts have versus their introverted counterparts. So we’re talking about people who are louder in the simplest terms, people who like to socialize, to network who are out up there in front of a crowd, within a crowd, have that larger than life personality. And we’ve been conditioned to think that those traits equate with leadership. And what happens is when there’s a mindset like that anywhere, but especially in organizations and corporate America, it’s hard to break it because it’s kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy when we equate extroversion with leadership. We have more extroverts in those leadership roles. And we are likely to hire and promote folks who we think are like ourselves. So it’s perpetuating the people who are in the roles are more likely to be extroverted. And they are promoting the other folks who are more likely to be extroverted. Right. Well, we have more work to do than I realized. So let’s get into it. But before we do, I want to talk a little bit about your introvert origin story. And when did you realize this and how did you eventually come to focus your career on this? Yeah. So my story started when I was in preschool. And I say that because we get messages as soon as we start to be in social environments, that being more social, having more friends, playing with the other kids on the playground at recess, right, is somehow better than kids who want to maybe build a tower of blocks by themselves or read a book as they’re getting older. And we get that message from our teachers, from parents, from media. And as I moved through my life, through my schooling, I didn’t realize at the time, but the messages I was receiving were that because I preferred to do those things, not necessarily build a tower of blocks, but to read a book or to do a crossword puzzle or to have a fewer number of friends where I had deeper friendships was somehow inferior to going out every Saturday night and having a whole slew of friends in the cafeteria. And those messages followed me and they follow most introverts into adulthood and into my career. And I, again, didn’t realize this was what it was rooted in, but I struggled for a while as it became a professional, not fitting that mold of the person who seemed to be getting promoted, of the person who I could do it and I was getting promoted, but it took a whole lot more work and it took a lot more energy for me sometimes to convince my managers that the way that I’m contributing is just as good as those people who are more boisterous and engaging. And I had this aha moment. It was, I was at a large conference, Phoenix, Arizona about five or 600 people there. And one of the conference organizers came over to me and said, hey, Stacey, when we come back from the lunch break, we’re all gonna get on stage, a bunch of us are gonna get on stage and do a flash mob. We’re gonna start dancing, which is a way to get people back into the room, get them energized. You know, would you be up there with us? And every alarm in my head was going off. I am not a good dancer. I hate to dance, probably those two things are related. And I thought the idea of being up on a stage doing that with 490 sets of eyes, which I envisioned being just on me, was awful, but I felt pressure to say yes, because I felt that, well, that’s what a leader would do. That’s what someone who was supportive and a team player, so I said yes, it was probably worse than I thought it was gonna be. And as soon as it was over, I fled the conference room and hit out in the ladies room, probably for about an hour. And when I emerged from the stall, I looked at myself in the mirror and I said, what are you doing? You knew you shouldn’t have done that. And it was just this, and I ended up missing an hour of the conference. I physically felt ill. And it was this moment for me when I realized I needed to just stop saying yes to things I knew weren’t right for me, things I knew would drain me, and that I needed to start leaning into who I was as an all around human. And that was inclusive of my introversion. That’s great story. I mean, I have a lot of echoes of your career journey and starting out and saying, oh yeah, I wanna be a leader and they’re like you. Yeah, it was like, oh, I just didn’t see you that way for all of these reasons. And so you had this realization and have you been doing reading about this at the time or what led you to really focus on introversion and that part of it? Yeah, so I wanna say about four or five years before that, the employer I was working for offered everyone the opportunity to not everyone had to, I think, take a Myers-Briggs type indicator assessment or MBTI and for any of your audience who are not familiar with MBTI, it’s the world’s most commonly used personality assessment. And it’s actually what I use in my coaching practice now. And I did the assessment and they brought in a leadership coach who helped us at a workplace retreat to understand what the different letters meant. So Myers-Briggs, it’s four different letters, one of which, the first of which is either an IR&E for introverted or extroverted, which speaks to how you lose or gain energy from the world. So those of us who are introverted tend to lose energy when we’re engaging with other people or in a large group or talking, thinking out loud, things like that. And I learned about what my profile was, including my introversion and also how I take in information, how I make decisions and how I engage with the world. Those are all things that, whether you’re a plan full or more spontaneous, those are all dimensions that Myers-Briggs covers. And it helped me to see that, okay, this is my profile, I’m an ISTJ, introverted sensing, thinking, and judging. And I learned that people around me, we were a whole mix of letters. And when I saw that the person across the hall for me who drove me crazy had the absolute opposite letters, she was an ENFP. And it made me see, okay, that’s why you drive me crazy. But also what I learned was the way I do things, the way I approach the world, is no better than the way someone else does. It’s just different. We’re wired differently. And I began to see that the beauty of it is, is when you have a team that, it’s like the alphabet soup, the beauty’s in the alphabet soup. You want to be working with people who have a mix of the letters. So you’re bringing a really wide range of skill sets. So that was the start for me to start thinking about, okay, I’m introverted. And that’s not a bad thing. That when I read my assessment, there were all these wonderful things that come along with being introverted. Right, we tend to have a higher level of emotional intelligence. We’re good at seeing nuances. We’re good at analytics. We tend to be strong writers. That’s one of my core strengths. And that was the beginning for me to start paying attention to that and leaning into it some more. And then fast forward a few years, I kind of became a leadership junkie. I was so interested in this topic. I had the opportunity to design a leadership academy for state health agency leaders, and ultimately went back to school to get a master’s in organizational development and leadership. Because I knew it was what I was meant to do. And then the final piece of that, of the story is, when I finished my master’s, I looked back on it and realized that the whole program, the theme of the whole program, really was leadership from a place of self-awareness. And to the extent that we can be aware, not only of our strengths and our gifts, but what we lack so that we can begin engaging other people who fill the holes of what we lack, see who can we work with, who can we collaborate with, that will help us be the best leader we can be. That’s our greatest opportunity for success. And I now coach introverted professionals to do that. And I work with organizations to help them cultivate and recognize the strengths of their introverted employees. That’s fantastic. And you’re starting to lay it out here, but help connect the dots for us. What are the problems with our default mode of leadership, which is extrovert only? Yep, so one problem is, let’s take meetings, for example. Meetings are often a great proxy for how people are viewed as leaders. Are you speaking up? Are you assertive? Do you have an immediate answer to questions that are on the table? So extroverts tend to think out loud. That’s how they process information. They’re thinking out loud. They’re sharing their thought process with others. They’re coming up with answers quickly. They’re moving from topic to topic. These are things that we say, wow, this person really knows their stuff. They’re really great at leading this conversation or contributing in a way that’s making a difference. But we as introverts, we’re gonna do our best work when we have time to think. When we see the array of information, we hear the questions that are on the table and we can process on our own or maybe in conversation with one other person. We might come up with an idea that is just as good, if not better, than what our extroverted colleague did in that meeting. But it’s not seen, that is not seen as being a leader in the way that speed and flexibility and being able to cover all these topics in one sitting. That’s what we equate with leadership. So it puts us at a disadvantage. That’s been a theme that I have tried to call out just from my personal experience. The meeting is that in a microcosm, in a snapshot. So you started to develop frameworks and things like that. Maybe could we start talking about your leadership formula and what types of topics are you covering there? Yeah, so the framework that I use is called appreciative coaching. And the notion of appreciative coaching is it’s an entirely positive asset based approach to growth, planning and goal setting, who typically when we’re planning strategically as an organization or you’re working on goals individually, typically there’s a tendency to say, okay, what am I falling short on and how can I improve that? What’s not working and coach please help me? What can you help me do to become better at this or to become a better networker or a better communicator? What appreciative coaching does is it starts off by helping an individual identify what’s great about you. What’s working well for you? And the research overwhelmingly shows that when we focus on our strengths and use those in our career, in our personal life even, and we try to build upon those, we have a much greater chance, we have greater opportunities and it’s significantly greater likelihood of growing and succeeding than if we focus on trying to fix what either we think is wrong with us or someone told us is wrong with us. So what I start off with my clients, my coaching clients, is we do something called, we reflect on peak experiences. And peak experiences essentially are times in your life, especially at work when you felt like you were at your best, when you felt like you were making a difference, you were having an impact, you were having an opportunity to bring all of your skills, values, experiences, perspectives to the forefront. And when you start to identify a number of peak experiences in your life, you’ll begin to see commonalities in terms of what were you doing? How were you approaching it? What role were you playing? So for example, introverts tend to be very good at, have a high level of emotional intelligence, reading nuances, managing conflicts. So you might see that, wow, a number of my peak experiences involved helping teams or individuals come to difficult decisions because I was able to see the connections to see ways that they could meet in the middle or meet everyone’s needs in a way that was acceptable to the group. We’ll start off that way. What are your peak experiences? And then what are the strengths that you were bringing to bear? And that full group of strengths and values and perspectives are what is known as your positive core. That’s essentially the best of who you are. And then the rest of the coaching builds on that positive core. What is the dream you have for yourself as a professional? And how can you use your positive core to get there? Entirely rooted in the positive, it doesn’t disregard the negative. But if there are challenges in a workplace or challenges in a person’s development, the questions are always, how can you use your strengths to improve it? One of you had a situation like this in the past and how did you address it in a way that was successful, that relied on your strengths and your skills. That’s the crux of it. And obviously if introversion and extroversion is hardwired, then you’re going to be leaning into your strengths as an introvert and that involves some self-awareness and self-acceptance of who you are. And then what do you say to people? They’re like, well, everyone is just telling me I need to speak up more. And I got to be more assertive and dominate my way. If I want to get ahead in my particular company. Well, a couple of things. One is I like to suggest to people. I say this to teams and to individuals. The first time a team comes together, whether it’s a formal team or an ad hoc team, I love to have everyone go around the room and say, what’s one thing you want the rest of the group to know about what you need to succeed? What you need to show up as your best. And this is a great opportunity for introverts and extroverts alike. But for introverts to say, for example, I’m going to do my best work. You’re going to get the best of me when I have a meeting agenda ahead of time, which is a best practice for everyone I’d say. Well, and I have an opportunity to give something some thought before responding when I can meet with you one on one, when I can submit ideas in writing. And it lets people see that, okay, it’s not that Stacy doesn’t know the answer to the question or she’s not a smart or doesn’t have as much leadership potential as someone else around the table. But she’s going to get there, but this is the way that she’s going to need to do it. So that’s one thing. And I actually, I will have you. I’ll give you a link. I have a resource that’s a meetings playbook for introverts with strategies to have your voice heard and your ideas respected in meetings. If your listeners want to check that out. Other communication, other approaches to communication is I think you need to show, right? When someone asks you for an idea, speaking up doesn’t need to be literally speaking with your mouth. Speaking up can be sending an email. It can be or it could be using, you know, responding verbally, but in a one-on-one situation, rather than with a large group. And if someone is pushing, say, now I need to hear your voice more, you need to speak up, push back and say, I’m going to give you my best work. You’re going to get great ideas out of me or you’re going to get my best thinking any 24 hours. Or would it be okay if I give it to you in writing, send you an email, could we meet over coffee? Could we schedule time to talk about this? Just one-on-one. Yeah. And I imagine a lot of this, especially senior leadership, this is embedded in the culture and there may not be very much awareness about that. Have you had opportunities to speak to senior leadership when advising companies, trying to bridge that awareness or guide people who need to do that for themselves to try to increase that awareness? Yeah, yeah. And guiding people to do with themselves, it’s giving them phrases to use, saying, you know, I’d like to give this some more thought. I have a lot of ideas brewing right now. I’d like to go circle back to the data. So you’re showing that you’re being thoughtful. It’s not that you’re lazy or that you don’t want to come up with the answer, but, you’re gonna have it and you have thoughts in your head, but in order to give them your best ideas, your best work, you need that time. So I think giving them insights into how you’re wired essentially and doing some explanation of why it is that you’re not answering right then and there. And ideally, when you have a manager, when you have a boss, that person will learn over time or even your peers, they’ll begin to see over time, hey, when I give Stacy that time, she’s doing some pretty stellar work. And that’s what she needs. So that’s the one thing. And then in terms of talking to senior leadership, I think one thing that helps in talking to them is doing some educating about different leadership styles. Myers breaks is a great framework for explaining that. Really showing, this is how introverts are wired, this is how extroverts are wired, this is what the two things mean for leadership. Here are some things I’d encourage you to be on the lookout for. So for example, thought leadership can show up in ways that aren’t just loud or boisterous or in the moment. Yeah, and I imagine really you need both sides to move to an extent. You need to develop some awareness and openness to different styles. And then there are things that introverts can do like you were mentioning. I’m going to share a little bit, give some insight into my thought process a little bit. While I’m thinking about this, or I need time to do this and I’m going to circle back, whether you’re articulating it, what’s happening in the moment for you, or you’re just trying to ask for time or explain what’s going on. Either way, you’re opening a window into our quiet thinking brain for other people. Yeah, yeah, that’s exactly right. Because especially if you’re an extrovert and you’re new to thinking, it’s a mind shift. So you need to give people, and rightfully, by think, the evidence. It’s not don’t just take my word for it, or the person’s word for it, but here are evidence-based frameworks that show you that these types of leadership skills that are typically innate to introverted individuals. Here’s how they equate with leadership. Here’s how they can help your organization advance its mission. Yeah. Well, we’ve got the frameworks on our side, but we’ve still got a lot of work to do with our four percent. It’s like changing any deeply embedded beliefs we have about anything, really. Yeah. It’s very hard when that bias in the workplace exists among the people who benefit from it, or they have benefited. Yeah. It’s really embedded into the power structure, and power structures aren’t easily changed. That’s exactly right. Yeah. There’s a bunch of these situations that are challenging for introverts. So the first thing would be presentation. How do you coach your clients on that? Yeah, I love that question, because I think that’s one of the myths that people have about introversion that we’re not good presenters. We might not like to present sometimes, but I don’t know if that’s necessarily associated with being introverted. So I’ll tell you, here’s why introverts make great presenters. First of all, we tend to be really good at preparing, right? And rarely will you be asked to give a presentation on the spot. So you have an opportunity to create your slides if you’re using them to create your talking points, your script, to practice depending on how formal it is. So presenting aligns with our pension for preparation. We also tend to be very good storytellers. And stories are really one of the most impactful things you can do during a presentation to make an impression on people. Chances are someone will leave a presentation not remembering a data point you presented, but they’ll remember the story you told. So we tend to be good storytellers, in part because many of us, myself included, are voracious readers. So we’re very comfortable with narrative arcs. And the third one, that third reason I’ll highlight, is… Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, no! Hear that? Exactly. That’s the sound of McDonald’s extra-value meal. Sausage McMuffin with egg, hash brown, small hot coffee, and sweet golden silence. All for only $5. Price and participation may vary. Promotion pricing may be lower than meal pricing. Ba-da-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. Because when you’re up on a stage, or you’re in front of a boardroom, people aren’t making small talk with you. You kind of have this barrier, especially if you’re out of conference, if it’s a keynote, for example. You’re up on a stage, you’re behind a microphone, or maybe you’re walking on the stage, but people aren’t popping over to you to suck your energy with small talk, or on the fly questions. And our energy is really protected in that way. So all of those things mean that we’re predisposed to be good presenters. And my recommendation then is do it, right? Seek opportunities to present if they’re not coming your way because maybe people assume you’re not a good presenter or that you don’t wanna present, and that will typically happen with introverts, but look for the opportunities, even if they’re on a small scale, maybe presenting at a team meeting or a staff meeting, and then work your way up to a small conference. And the more you do it, the more you’ll realize that you’re very well-wired to be a good presenter. You just probably need that confidence. That’s right. And I don’t know if you found this to be true. To me, a related scale that you can develop for confidence in that side of the thing is leading meetings, because, and that’s a little bit of a broader question is how do you participate and speak up in meetings, and I’ll just share mine real quick and then come back to you. Just leading a meeting, you’ve got a dedicated task, and in some ways, people expect you to be speaking up, so it actually gives you a lot more control of the situation, and I recommend that. There’s a meeting and opportunity to lead meetings, that’s a whole skill in and itself, and that’s something that introverts can do really well too, because we’re good listeners. Or can be good to listen to. Yeah, absolutely. And you have an opportunity there too to prepare, to come up with your talking points, and it’s a great way, I think, to your point, to demonstrate your thought leadership, to show that when you’re sitting in the front of the table, it’s a self-contained or a more contained forum for doing that. Yeah, so if you’re not leading the meeting, how do you break into, sometimes these really dynamic, loud conversations and contribute? Yeah, so a couple of things. One, and I mentioned it earlier, make sure you get the agenda in advance, request it. Hopefully it’ll be sent out anyway, but you want to request the meeting agenda in advance. Take a look at the items on the agenda, and figure out, okay, which of these do I want to weigh in on? Is it important for me to weigh in on? Do I have the expertise? Do I have added value to weigh in? And take a look at that, and ahead of the meeting, write a couple bullet points for yourself. And I suggest one bullet point for each of the items, each of the topics that you want to weigh in on. So it makes it for you, that you’ve done the preparation, it takes some of the pressure off because you’re not feeling like, oh gosh, there are all these things I want to make sure I say about this topic. And maybe there are more than one, but don’t make quantity your goal. So it’s not the goal of how often can I have my voice heard? Because when someone in the meeting like an extroverted individual is talking throughout, sometimes it just starts to sound like noise, because we’ve heard their voice so many times, but when someone who’s introverted or someone who otherwise hasn’t spoken up before, and they chime in, you see, well Greg, Greg, you know, he isn’t said anything, this must be important if he’s finding this opportunity to speak up, or he must have really given his some thought. It makes a difference when your voice isn’t heard as often as someone else’s. And then there are phrases you can use to signal that you want to chime in with something, you have something important to say. And you can do that by saying something like, this is a topic I’ve given a lot of thought to. I’d like to share my thoughts. Tell them you’ve been thinking about it. Let them know that what they’re about to hear is actually not something you’ve just come up with on the fly, but it’s actually rooted in thought or analytics or something that you’ve really considered. And I have to, I’ll give you the link, a list of phrases that people can use to chime in in a meeting to make sure that they’re being heard and recognized. Nice, so that will catch people up a little bit. It’s like, oh, what, you know, that sounds interesting. We’re all distracted both. You’re like, oh, I’ve been giving this a lot of thought. Yeah, that’s a good one. Yeah, how about holding the floor? Because sometimes you start speaking and that’s the pace of those meetings is sometimes not suited to the way an introvert would explain their ideas. You know, it’s like short form versus long form content of the internet. Right, you can do one of two things. One is, I would start off by saying, I’d love to finish my thought before you move on and you’re signaling that you weren’t finished. Yeah. And that will not always work because it could be that the meeting does need to move on for whatever reason or another. And so you can then do, I guess, two A and two B. Two A would be to say, I do have some additional thoughts on this. I’ll share it with a group after we’re in an email. Or if anyone wants to come see me about that, I’d love to talk about this some more. And if you’re not comfortable saying that, you could just simply do it. Just simply send the email. We didn’t have time to finish the conversation about X. And I have some additional valuable thoughts that I want to share. So just because the meeting has ended or they’ve moved on from the topic at hand, doesn’t mean your opportunity to continue contributing value and demonstrating your leadership has ended. Yeah, that’s a good point. Yeah. Another challenge that introverts have and probably very related to the promotion thing is our tendency not to promote ourselves. Well, is that true? And why should introverts self-promote? Yeah, it is generally true. And really all of these preferences and behaviors and skills that we’ve been talking about today, they will not apply to every single person who has a preference for introversion. But generally speaking, or on average, yes. Introverts have a harder time self-promoting because the typical way that we see that’s done is aligned with extroverted behaviors. Speaking up to say, hey, I want to let you know, I just did X, Y, or Z, or being more out there talking to people and networking even internally in an organization to be a little more braggadocious about what they’ve done. And it’s super important for us to do this. It’s critical for us to do this because the way our extroverted peers are showing up, the way they’re performing, they’re doing their work, they’re engaging, that’s a lot more visible than the way we’re doing it. And when that’s what’s seen, when people are thinking about it, okay, who should we be promoting? Or what kind of raise should we be giving Greg this year? They’re gonna be thinking, you better, what have I seen, what have I heard? And since as an introvert, you’re not as visible in what you’re doing, how you’re showing up, you do need to call those things out for your boss, for your manager in different ways. But the ways need to be aligned with who you are. So everything I recommend is all about doing the same things that extroverts do, but you need to do it in ways that align with your introverted strengths and preferences. Because if you try to do it in a way that isn’t true to who you are, you’re not gonna be successful. And that’s true really with anything in life. You respect how you’re wired, and you’re purposeful and saying, okay, I’m a really good writer. So instead of trying to speak up in staff meetings to let people know about all my contributions, I am going to keep a list of different ways that I’ve contributed, that I’ve moved the mission forward, that I’ve helped our team meet its goals. And before my periodic check-ins with my manager, I’m gonna share an email with her saying, looking forward, let’s say you check in quarterly, looking forward to our check-in meeting tomorrow. In advance, I wanna share a number of things that I’m proud of that I did this past quarter. And not in your face really how awesome, am I gonna wait for it a little bit? I guess, right? You wanna not sell yourself short. And do it in a way that I’m doing it in writing and I’m collecting data, I’m looking at, okay, I took this action and this is the actual impact it had on sales, let’s say. And I’m doing it in a way that lets me prepare. So I’m not just sitting down with my manager, if she says to me, so what do you think about this past quarter? I can actually, I’ve given that thought already. Yeah, and then as you go into senior leadership, then it’s not just what I’ve done, it’s what my group has done, or it is creating visibility for your team, or your department. And so it’s not just your manager, it’s you want people around the company to understand these things and that can all be accomplished similar to writing, posting things in a Slack channel, a group email on a certain cadence and reporting out, so you’re creating visibility and finding the opportunities for presentation. And yeah, so and some of these things will be uncomfortable. How do you talk to your clients about accepting or embracing discomfort? Oh, yeah, I’d say they just comfort, it depends. Right, so you don’t wanna be, you don’t wanna accept and put yourself in situations that are unnecessarily uncomfortable. And or you wanna manage the way you show up there, so I’ll give you an example, networking is a situation that makes most introverts uncomfortable myself included. And I have a resource for that too that I’ll give you. How do you network as an introvert without having all your energy sucked? That’s not the title, but that’s essentially what it’s all about. They’re phrasing. They’re phrasing. So we go to a networking event and we feel like, oh gosh, I need to stay in here for an hour and I’m gonna have to talk to 20 people and make mindless small talk and probably that person’s gonna end up hiding out in the ladies room like I did after the flash mob or hiding out in their hotel room or wherever. So the idea is you’re in this uncomfortable, default uncomfortable situation. What can you do to make it less uncomfortable for yourself? And so that goes back again to how do you network in a way that taps into your strengths and respects your introversion? And what I do is, and I recommend to my clients, if you’re going to a conference, for example, for each day that you’re there, identify ahead of time three people who you want to meet. Three-day conference, you want to try to meet nine people. And identify who those people are ahead of time if you can. So typically conferences these days, you’ll have a conference app where you can see the list of attendees or maybe there’s a website. See, who is it that I’d like to meet? What’s my goal for each of these meetings, right? Do I want to get career advice? Do I want to talk about a paper? They just wrote, don’t want a job. Whatever it is, identify okay. I want to meet Joe and I really like to get his feedback on this study that I’m working on right now. So that’s why I want to meet Joe. And come up ahead of time with an opening line for when you approach Joe. Joe, I’m Stacy Chesa and I really enjoyed reading about your research in this field. I’m working on a study that I’d love to, could we chat about it? So once you’ve checked three people off your list for the day, give yourself some grace, you’ve done it, and don’t try to do anymore. And then for the additional follow up, when you’re back at your desk, back at home, connect with them on LinkedIn. Send them a follow up email that talks about the conversation that you had with them. And as an introvert, you’re more likely to remember the details of it, you took notes afterward. And so you’re more likely actually to have forged a more meaningful new connection and you’ve protected your energy. Yeah, that’s good. I like setting that specific goal and it’s helpful advice for networking. And there’s other things that I’ve thought about in these events is planning breaks because yeah, you’ve got your three people you wanted to meet, but there’s all these opportunities for a small talk in between these long blocks of time. It’s not ideal for an introvert with less they’re figuring out how to manage energy in general. And is that something that you talk about planning just through the day for introverts that do you talk about energy management? Absolutely. Yeah. So as an introvert, right, if we’re engaging with people and this applies to whether you’re on Zoom or you’re in a virtual or an in-person work situation, when you’re back to back to back to back with people and that could be one on one conversations or bigger meetings, you’re not gonna thrive. And so to the extent that you can, try not to schedule back-to-back meetings, I love to recommend to organizations that don’t have your meetings go 60 minutes but I haven’t go 50 minutes. So people have that 10 minute buffer to recharge, whether it’s a bio break or it’s just getting your head in a calmer place to, you know, taking a walk around the block, whatever it is, make it so it’s not back-to-back throughout your day. The other thing I recommend is task batching. So task batching means putting time on your calendar each day to do particular types of tasks at the same time. And when I say a type of task, I mean administrative versus creative versus strategic versus sales, let’s say, when you are switching between types of tasks, it tends to drain your energy more than when you just stay within one type of task for a period of time. And that’s especially true for introverts. So block one hour, try to get all your administrative work done. Rather than making sales calls at different times throughout the day, block an hour or however long you need to do all your sales calls at once, work on your strategy all at once. And fake your out for you personally. What time of day your rhythms align with those different activities. So as an example, I’m a morning person. I have my best brain power in the morning. It’s 10.43 a.m. Eastern time. So I think you’re getting the best of me right now. I do my best work in the morning. I will often block for myself creative or strategic tasks to do in the morning. And then I’ll leave my administrative stuff for the afternoon when I’m feeling a little more burnt. Experiment with that. Maybe you know yourself. And I know I do my best work or I’m most creative, I’m most bold to reach out to customers in the afternoon. After I’ve had my lunch and I’m feeling really awake for the day, or maybe you’re a morning person in that way. So figure out what works best for you. That’s really good advice and helpful for people whether they’re in a corporate environment or self-employed or a small business. Is that self-awareness again attuning into your needs when you have certain types of energy or certain resources that you might not have at other times of the day? Yeah, yeah, for sure. And then another thing is you want to make sure that your work environment is aligned with your introversion. Meaning the outside noises for us can be more draining. The din of the office, people having conversations around us. You cannot always control if you’re in an on-site environment. You can’t always control. Maybe you have a cubicle that’s out in the world. But figure out what can you do? Can you wear noise-cancelling headphones? Is there a conference room that you can go to to do some work if you’re going to thrive better in the quiet? Can you take a walk around the office complex just to hear some quiet, to hear nature, hopefully, so that from a sensory perspective, you’re protecting your energy. Yeah, that comes back to taking breaks and planning. How long can you really go focus to the certain kind of task? You’re going to be much more productive if you take that 10 minutes to take a walk around the block even better if you can find some nature. Yeah, absolutely. It’s self-awareness that’s knowing what do I need to be successful? What is the ideal structure of my day to be producing my best work? And again, I acknowledge most people, some do, but most people do not have total control over what that looks like. It could be that your boss throws on a strategic planning meeting at a time of day that that’s not your best for strategic planning and it is what it is, but to the extent that you have control over your schedule and to the extent that you can make that happen, it’s going to help you. So we haven’t touched on relationships, which I think is another kind of hidden superpower for introverts. Yeah, so relationships, when we’re talking, you mean professional relationships we’re talking about, or? Yeah, one-on-one relationships in general, but yeah, in your context, how does that support you in the workplace? I think we’re very good at having deeper relationships. We’re very good at much better at going one-on-one with people. And so what I would recommend is that I know that I have heard this about myself that I can come across as being unfriendly. When I used to work in an office, I would close my door to work or I’d close my door when I ate lunch sometimes. And it can make an impression on people that, oh, Stacy doesn’t like people or she’s not social, she doesn’t want to get to know people. So what I recommend is being purposeful in scheduling those get to know you relationship building opportunities. So it’s not that we might not do well hanging out in the break room or by the water cooler, just chatting with whoever comes by, but invite a particular colleague who, either someone you work with already or someone you’d like to work with or want to get to know a little better, say, hey, could we meet for coffee? Could we go out to lunch? And they could be a Zoom coffee or a Zoom lunch, right? We’re gonna eat our lunch together while we talk on Zoom. A client of mine in my coaching practice told me that there was someone who she meets with, I think every month they do a check-in call and network-in-call. And they both put the same Zoom background on. So they meet virtually. They both Zoom background on of a beach with the palm tree swaying in the breeze. Right? They’re not really at the beach, but it makes them feel like they’re both in the same place, or at least in the same virtual place. And it’s different than having your bookcases behind you. That’s cute. Yeah, I thought that was great. And so the one on one, and I think you need to, like I said, you need to be planful about it. You need to not just do it spontaneously and hope it’s gonna happen, because it might, the opportunity to chat with someone might not be at a time or in a space that’s conducive to how you’re gonna be most energized and show up as your best self. Yeah, I agree. Especially to expand your leadership or your influence one-on-one conversations and my experience has been a key part of that as an introvert, because you really establish the rapport and the relationship and the deep trust with people that comes into the meetings, and it’s useful in supportive in all kinds of situations. Yeah, yeah. And that’s what’s worked for me. And I continue to do it on, I continue to do it on Zoom. I’ve even seen some folks who will send a new colleague a $5 Starbucks gift card and say, hey, how about we each get a Starbucks and or a local coffee shop, whatever it is, and have our coffee together over Zoom. Yeah, it sounds like you’re observing or coming up with creative ways to create those bonds, even though it’s a virtual environment. Yeah, and that’s probably something extraverted folks can benefit from too, right? Because we’re a permanently altered world in this hybrid work world. We now all live in to some extent or another. Unbalanced, do you think that’s been better, better or worse for introvert? I’m gonna say on balance, better, but not 100%. So I’ll give you some caveats to it. I think it’s better because, well, it’s gonna vary by person. So it’s gonna vary based on what your homework and environment is like, for example. So I’ll say I’m an empty nester. When I take a break between calls, I can go anywhere in my house and no one is here. My husband is in his office, my kids are launched, they’re adults, but if you are a parent of children who are in the house, especially very young children, it might be a little harder for you as an introvert because if you leave your office, your home office, you’re not necessarily getting that quiet. There might be chaos all around you. But I do think for the most part, it’s given folks more control over interacting with others. So generally speaking, when I go, if I take a coffee break, let’s say, I go downstairs in my kitchen, no one else is there. In an office, there are generally people there. That’s one thing. So that being said, I will say one of the reasons it’s maybe not better for introverts is that I think we need to be even more purposeful in connecting with people. That’s a lot easier for us just to close the laptop and say, oh, I don’t need to engage with people because I’m not at the office. So we don’t get those reminders as much as other people do. And we have to see, you know what? And I have felt this myself as an introvert. I was working from home even before the pandemic but I was traveling a lot more. And of course, all the business travels stopped during COVID. And at least in my spaces, it hasn’t resumed fully. I travel less than I used to. And I realized that travel was one of the things that gave me balance between my alone time and my needing to be with people time. And I don’t have that as much anymore. So I need to be more purposeful. I’ve joined local networking groups. That’s been a big thing for me. I go to networking events in my community. So it just, it’s forced me to put myself out there in ways that weren’t automatic as they were in the past. Yeah. And that comes back to self-awareness and understanding what your needs are because just because you’re in an introvert doesn’t mean that you don’t have a fundamental need to socialize with people and spend time with people and form those connections. So yeah, what is it that you truly need in recognizing that’s one of the things? Yeah, for sure. Stacy, so you’ve been doing this for a while now. Just looking at the culture, do you think things are moving in a particular direction? Do you think things are getting better for introverts or is there more awareness developing or are we in a retrograde moment? I will see in my clients removing in a good direction, they have the tools to be able to speak up more, to get recognized. And I’m seeing that they’re having success in their workplaces. But based on what I hear from them, I know the default in the workplace that that’s not something I’m seeing significant movement on from my perspective, I do think one of the words I’ve been using, which I know is a bit of a hot button word these days, is diversity. When we think about diverse working styles and diverse approaches to work and diverse ways that people are wired to be successful, I’ve been trying to have those conversations a little more and inject that word into conversations with employers and teams and HR managers that one of the ways we want to make sure we are inclusive is when we think about leadership that we’re not just thinking about leaders as one particular type that we’re diversifying our leadership pipelines. We’re diversifying the types of leadership development offerings we give our employees. So it’s not just, okay, we’re going to have a company retreat or we’re going to have a group training session. There are going to actually be different ways that people can use professional development and training that align with how they’re best going to learn and have the greatest likelihood of getting benefit from the resources you’re investing in that as an employer. So yeah, the short answer is no. From the employer perspective, I can say I’ve seen a shift quite yet. Yeah, yeah, that’s interesting. That is an angle that I’ve heard of people working in HR, even who’s speaking to somebody on my show where she explicitly addresses introversion and neurodiversity through the lens of diversity in HR and in Europe and I think that’s working. So maybe that’s our angle. We’re going to have to keep railing if we’re going to make headway against this 4% 2 to 4% it’s even worse. Maybe the answer is more flashmob’s I think. Oh gosh, I really hope that the answer is a more flashmob. Yeah, me either. Awesome. It’s been so great to cover all this ground with you, Stacey of People. And you mentioned a number of resources. We’ll make sure those are in the show notes if people want to learn more about your work. Where should they go? Folks, can check me out at iFactorLeadership.com. I have a number of free resources to help introverted professionals speak up more network, become more productive in their day. Some of the things we talked about about scheduling your day and eliminating distractions. A number of free guides there. I have an on-demand course called the Introverts Leadership Formula where folks can go through a series of video learning related to communicating more powerfully, preventing burnout, and how do you actually negotiate for yourself and get a razor of promotion in ways that tap into your strengths. And then I also do private coaching. So information about all of that is available at iFactorLeadership.com. Fantastic. Check it out. Thanks so much for being here today. Thank you, Gregor, with such a pleasure. All right. Let’s take a moment to recap. The most important ideas from today’s conversation with Stacey. Remember, you don’t need to match the pace of fast talkers in order to lead. Start noticing where your best ideas come from. It’s through quiet preparation, that deeper analysis and the clarity that follows thoughtful reflection. These are your strengths, not liabilities. Number two, remember that visibility doesn’t come from being louder. It requires becoming more strategic, whether it’s a written follow-up, one-on-one conversation you have afterward, or just a well-timed observation in a meeting, you can demonstrate your value in ways that align with your introverted strengths. And number three, pay attention to your energy, manage it. Introverts lead best when we aren’t depleted. Protect your focus, design breaks into your day, and structure your work in a way that lets your brain work the way it naturally wants to do. If this episode has helped you see your quiet strengths in a new way, make sure you’re subscribed. Every week I share practical tools to help you rise in leadership because of your introversion, not in spite of it. Subscribing ensures you never miss a new episode. I’m Greg Wanger, keep leading quietly, and I’ll see you next time.