Two introverted participants in a recent communications seminar told me how frustrated they both were. What about? It turns out their company wants them to “talk out” project ideas to a variety of people outside their internal group. This is the new expectation in their culture – that they float ideas in the early stages. These introverted leaders are concerned that this reluctance to carefully think through ideas before sending them half baked into the “corporate universe”results in lower quality output.
Yet they know that they will have to get with the program and are trying to figure out how to create a healthy balance between thinking and talking..a common organizational challenge for introverts.
Taking time to pause so that we can carefully consider proposals(even sleep on it?) makes total sense. It is hard to do when the message is “Talk to us, talk to us!”
There is nothing quite as nerve-racking as walking up to the stage to expose your every weakness, physical and mental, before an audience who is all too familiar with the repertoire. You think you will make a mistake, then you do, and everybody knows when it happened. Continue reading the rest of this article...
“They (Introverts) just didn’t place a larger weight on social stimuli than they did on any other stimuli, of which flowers are one example,” said.
“[This] supports the claim that introverts, or their brains, might be indifferent to people — they can take them or leave them, so to speak. The introvert’s brain treats interactions with people the same way it treats encounters with other, non-human information, such as inanimate objects for example,” Inna Fishman said.
They concluded that, “The results strongly suggest that human faces, or people in general, hold more significance for extroverts, or are more meaningful for them.” Continue reading the rest of this article...
What’s mystifying to Stewart—and likely to anyone with either a shred of empathy or a tendency to clam up in public—is the looking- glass reality in which her manner, rather than eliciting sympathy or mere shrugs, has made her a figure of derision. “I think it’s funny that when I go onstage to accept an award, they think I’m nervous, uncomfortable, and awkward—and I am—but those are bad words for them,” Stewart says. Continue reading the rest of this article...
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As an introvert, I find that we really don’t mind talking about things, its just that we don’t want to talk to EVERYBODY about it. We are articulate, creative, intelligent and fluent to change, the problem comes when we have to do that for the massess.
I love the “everybody” comment. “One on one’s work great, don’t they?”
I’m an introvert (often prefer the term “lone wolf”) and find myself collaborating on a joint venture. While talking through everything important takes time and energy and even can put me at the breaking point if I don’t manage it, the benefits of collaboration far outweigh my personal preferences and needs. The quality of a creative endeavor or a decision can be greater if diverse minds are involved.