Introvert in Business

Being an introvert in business can mean that you need to be “out there” and doing things that will help you grow the business. Sometimes it can seem as if the business world is designed for extroverts.

Some people look completely natural with those behaviours and others, especially introverts, struggle with them.

There are some behaviours which seem to be expected in the business world, for example:

• Growing your business means being outgoing, chatting, enjoying being with people, selling to a room full of strangers, being life and soul of the (business) party. Are these the only way to network, grow your business and convince people that you can do the job for them?
• Having people work for you means enjoying small talk with them, being ‘inspirational’ (often confused with charismatic, being life and soul of the office, being comfortable dismissing people or telling them what to do)
• Going to conferences – let’s not get started on the expectations that you’re meant to love being surrounded by all these happy energetic people, while you learn from them, network with them, develop relationships with them, and like being surrounded by people for three days solid!

These behaviours may be easier for an extrovert, leading to introverts being frustrated at a lack of progress. It doesn’t have to be that way! If you want to succeed as an introvert in business, without having to pretend you’re an extrovert, or an “introvert extrovert” (whatever that is), this website has ideas to help you.

Maybe you’re not introverted, but recognise that you need to be able to support the introverts in your team. You’re still in the right place. It can be really hard for an extrovert leader to manage introverts, unless they understand introversion.