When you think of a great leader, who comes to mind? If you’re a nerd like me, you might think of Captain Kirk. Or Captain America. Or General Organa. Or Nick Fury.
I mean, those characters fit the classic leader profile, right? We all know that good leaders are bold, decisive, confident, and naturally gifted with people. And they can provide an inspirational speech on demand.
What if instead, I suggested Eeyore? Neville Longbottom? That Sadness character from Inside Out? It’s a little harder to imagine, because none of those people (or donkeys or emotional entities) quite seem to fit the expected profile of a leader.
But as someone who spent his career as a leader and executive in Corporate America, I often felt I had more in common with those latter characters than with the Captain Kirks of the world. I’m an extreme introvert who experienced social anxiety, imposter syndrome, and fear of public speaking, among other things.
And as I’ve spoken with successful leaders throughout my career, I’ve found that there are more people like me than there are people who fit that “classic” leadership profile. It’s just that we all feel like we need to hide that fact and instead pretend that we fit the expected profile and personality.
So maybe we need to redefine our assumptions about who is equipped to be a successful leader in the workplace. There’s a tendency to think that good leaders are all super-confident extroverts who have a natural gift with people. And it can lead to the rest of us putting artificial limits on ourselves (“I could never be as successful a leader as that person, because they don’t have to deal with <insert challenge here> like I do.”). But the reality is that we all have internal struggles, even the most successful leaders. The key is to be aware of them, figure out how to mitigate them so that they don’t become derailers, and then figure out how to make them work to your advantage. Because those challenges don’t have to be limitations; instead, they can provide a diversity of experience and thought that help you thrive as a leader.
The challenge of being an introverted leader
There’s a common misconception that being an introvert is the same as having poor social skills or being painfully shy. But the real difference between an introvert and an extrovert is where your energy comes from. An introvert gets energy from being alone. An extrovert gets energy from being around others. It’s not about ability to socialize. An introvert can have great social skills (just like an extrovert can have terrible social skills). But those interactions drain their energy. And for a leader, that can be a challenge.
Leaders frequently find that they spend a majority of their time in various meetings and interactions with their co-workers. For an introvert, that means being in a constant state of being drained and therefore a constant state of wanting some alone time to recharge their batteries. When there’s down time, the inclination might be to close your door and catch up on emails so that you can recharge. For me, as an extreme introvert, I was never going to choose to spontaneously socialize with my co-workers, ask someone to go to a last-minute lunch with me, or exercise the technique of management by walking around (MBWA), which is an unstructured method of informally touching base with employees to build relationships, hear issues and ideas from staff, and get status updates. No matter what my intentions were, I just wasn’t going to do it because I so badly needed some alone time. It’s not in my nature, plus my calendar usually didn’t allow for it.
But, in many ways, our success as leaders is all about relationships. Relationships with the members of the team that we’re responsible for leading. Relationships with our stakeholders. Relationships with our peers (and our boss). None of us are successful on our own. We all need the support of others. And that’s doubly true once you’re in a position of formal leadership, because your job becomes less about your personal ‘output’ and more about your ability to lead and partner with others.
Obviously, being an extreme introvert who seeks to maximize alone time can create challenges in building the relationships and connections with people that are necessary for your success as a leader.
But there are tactics that can help mitigate the potential limitations of being a leader who’s also an extreme introvert. We’ll look at one method that I was able to successfully use in my career.
Turning relationship-building into a task
When I recognized this as a potential issue early in my career, I took stock of my strengths to see if I could leverage any of them to overcome this challenge. One of my strengths is that I’m extremely task-oriented and organized. If I say I’m going to do something, it’s going to get done and it’s going to get done on time. I love to-do lists, and if something is on my to-do list, it’s going to be completed and checked off. If something is on my calendar, I’m going to be there. A commitment is a commitment.
I realized that, because I’m so structured, I could mitigate my inclination to be alone by turning relationship-building into a task.
For example, for each job I held, I would document that role’s key stakeholders and important relationships by asking myself “who are the people that are important for me to have good relationships with if I want to be successful in this role?” and making a list of those people. The list would usually include the people on the team I was managing, my peers, my boss, and key customers/stakeholders. I would then determine the best way for building and maintaining each of those relationships and turn that into a repeatable process. For some people, I might decide a regularly scheduled one-on-one meeting (e.g., weekly or monthly) was the best process, and I would set it up with them as a recurring meeting. For large groups where meeting one-on-one with everyone wasn’t realistic, I might schedule regular roundtables with smaller sub-groups. I also would put time on my calendar for MBWA and plan to spend 30-60 minutes of my day walking around and catching up with people. Because I knew I’d never do MBWA spontaneously, I would put it on my calendar so I could know in advance that it was part of my day and be prepared for it. Bottom line, for each important relationship, I established a goal for that relationship and figured out how to meet that goal, in a concrete and structured way.
And because spontaneous social events, such as being invited to lunch at the last minute, tend to cause me anxiety, I started scheduling lunches and other “social” activities in advance with my friends at work. That allowed me to mentally prepare for socialization and have those lunches in a way that I could enjoy.
The fact that I had to schedule and plan these relationship-building “tasks” didn’t mean that the relationships were “phony” or that I was only doing it out of a sense of obligation. Quite the opposite, it demonstrated how much I valued the relationships, because they were important enough to me for me to want to put in the extra effort to mitigate my default nature of seeking solitude.
Creating an agenda that includes time for personal connections
While the above technique helped me get my “foot in the door” by making sure that I had time set aside for building relationships, I had to make sure I was successful in how I used that time. I’m a very structured person. I like for meetings to have an agenda, and I want to stick to that agenda. I want to use the time efficiently so that I can move on to the next thing (and so that I can get back to being alone as soon as possible). But I found that “getting down to business” as soon as a meeting started wasn’t the way to go. “Hi Cathy, come in and have a seat. How are you? Yeah, yeah, that’s great. Anyway, do you have those numbers I asked for?” That’s a bit off-putting and certainly doesn’t communicate to the person that I care about them and value them as an individual. And it’s not as enjoyable for me either. Conversations are a lot more enjoyable if I’m able to connect with people on a personal level and if I can have some fun. I just had to give myself permission to do so. Since I like structure, it was as simple as having a rule in my head that an unofficial and unwritten part of the agenda for any but the most formal of meetings was to spend the first few minutes talking about anything but work. If it was a one-on-one meeting with a person I already knew well, it was easy to come up with topics. Otherwise, I had my standbys (asking about their weekend, family, upcoming trips, etc.) that could get the conversation started so I could see where it took us. If it was a meeting with a small group of people, I might throw out a generic “How was everyone’s weekend?” or “Did everyone see the <insert big game or big event here>?” Only after spending those first few minutes in more personal conversation would I dive into work topics.
Conclusion
Talking to people can be exhausting (and stressful), especially for those of us who are extreme introverts. But relationships are critical to our ability to succeed as leaders.
Consider taking a three-step approach to honing your relationship-building skills:
Inventory your strengths: Determine what strengths you have that you can leverage to help overcome your tendency to maximize alone time.
Develop and apply mitigation techniques: Once you’ve identified a strength you can leverage, determine how you can use it to ensure you’re getting out of your office and spending time with people who are going to be important to your success.
Develop authentic relationships: Once you’ve applied mitigation techniques to ensure you’re spending time with people, make sure you’re leveraging that time to build authentic relationships.
Instead of being a derailer, relationship building can become an area of strength, even for those of us who are extreme introverts, due to the focus and intentionality we put into building those relationships.
This article is adapted from my new book, High Impact at Low Decibels: How Anxiety-Filled Introverts (and others) Can Thrive in the Workplace.
Mike Schiller, author of High Impact at Low Decibels: How Anxiety-Filled Introverts (and others) Can Thrive in the Workplace, has more than 30 years of experience at Fortune 500 companies and most recently was vice president and chief information security officer at Texas Instruments. He is a graduate of Texas A&M University and is currently president of Onward Consulting, specializing in information security and audit consulting. Schiller is an anxiety-filled introvert and enjoys helping others with similar challenges succeed. For more information, please visit https://www.businessexpertpress.com/books/high-impact-at-low-decibels-how-anxiety-filled-introverts-and-others-can-thrive-in-the-workplace/
