I have been hearing the cry of “enough already” from Introverts. Here is a well expressed example from an introverted virtual assistant.
“Much of my work as a virtual assistant involves social media these days. Initially, this was much easier for me to handle as an (extreme) introvert. Strangely enough, I find that as friend counts climb and the volume of online communication grows, I react with the same sense of overwhelm, stress and exhaustion as I do to live or phone communications. Have you heard this from others?”, she asks.
I spoke with a social networking guru recently who told me the trend is moving away from massive social networks with random friends and towards more selective managable lists of contacts. He pointed me towards FourSquare, a cool application that lets you share places and updates with friends. This may be one answer for introverts (and extroverts alike) who want to get a handle on more meaningful connections.
Actors like Streep prepare extensively to take us into the world of that character. Likewise, introverts often emphasize how much they prepare for meetings, calls, presentations, etc. so that they perform at their best ( a side note: Meryl Streep is an introvert like many actors). Yet, despite careful preparation, you can’t always anticipate what is thrown at you. Handling the moment sometimes trumps preparation. Continue reading the rest of this article...
The sort of coaching that fosters effective innovation and judgment, not merely the replication of technique, may not be so easy to cultivate. Yet modern society increasingly depends on ordinary people taking responsibility for doing extraordinary things: operating inside people’s bodies, teaching eighth graders algebraic concepts that Euclid would have struggled with, building a highway through a mountain, constructing a wireless computer network across a state, running a factory, reducing a city’s crime rate. In the absence of guidance, how many people can do such complex tasks at the level we require? With a diploma, a few will achieve sustained mastery; with a good coach, many could. We treat guidance for professionals as a luxury—you can guess what gets cut first when school-district budgets are slashed. But coaching may prove essential to the success of modern society. Continue reading the rest of this article...
Introverts are so often mischaracterized and even blamed for the woes of the world. Now government workers seem to be taking the hit. Continue reading the rest of this article...
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