World Introvert Day | Introvert in business

Jan 2^nd is #worldintrovertday . A day to reflect on the skills of introverts in an extrovert designed culture. To celebrate, this article covers 4 key points:

Why are introverts important in business?
What are the skills that introverts bring to the party (if only they’d go to the party)
What’s the suppression of introverts causing you business to lose?
How can you get more intropreneurs working in your business?

Is #worldintrovertday a real thing?

Well, how do you define real? There is a website dedicated to world introvert day, does that make it real enough?

But no, it wasn’t invented by me it’s here too.. Many of my introvert coaching and speaking colleagues from around the world are celebrating it too. You can see them discuss it at the bottom of this page.

Why are introverts important in business?

There is an increasing tendency in many western businesses to favour those who shout out first (normally extroverts). When different, perhaps more detailed and considered opinions get ignored or overlooked because they were slower and/ or quieter, the business loses out. Consider the resources being spent on diversity in many firms (rightly so); gender, colour, sexual orientation, etc. are ways of increasing diversity of thinking. 30%-50% of your workforce are introverts and you may be ignoring that diversity.

All of your work force can be creative, focused and entrepreneurial, is it time to unlock your intropreneurs?

To celebrate World Introvert Day, download any of the following

The 3 Ds of Active Listening

Unlocking the power of your quieter team members

STEP communications – your quick guide to better engagement

Running Meetings that make things happen (£8.50 on Amazon, free here today)

Ninja Networking (free today, costs £10 on Amazon)

What are the skills that introverts bring to the party (if only they’d go to the party)

Actually introverts do like parties, but let’s put that to one side for now! Introverts tend to:

Listen more.
Be good at facilitating and summarising arguments
Look into detail
Think about people
Be good leaders

Read more about introvert superpowers. Are there any of those skills you don’t want in your firm?

What’s the suppression of introverts causing your business to lose?

I’ve discussed introversion and feeling with over 500 business people (please complete the survey here), where 67% of introverts I’ve surveyed feel disadvantaged at work. Making people feel bad, excluding them (maybe unwittingly) from team discussions and not helping them work productively (read about noisy environments) is wasting your productivity. You can get more productivity, creativity and loyalty. So, are you wasting a third of your firm’s talent and want to change things?

How can you get more intropreneurs working in your business?

Rather than asking people to call out in team meetings, rather than encouraging people to wing it, rather than hearing the loudest people, change a few simple ways of running your team.

Meetings – get agendas and notes out earlier, allowing people quiet thinking time.
Meetings – check you’re helping all people to express their views.
Discussions – Allow people to consider your question, give them time to answer before providing an answer, or dismissing them
Networking – Be aware of the quieter business people in the room, include them in the conversations (read how to engage an introvert in conversation) and make your networking more introvert friendly. You’ll be more likely to get results from them.

These are quick and simple points to get started, if you want to discuss more – please get in touch.

What did you learn on #introvertday

As it’s the new year, how about starting a new habit? Subscribe to “Activate your Introvert“, a weekly 15 minute podcast on subjects relating to introverts and better performance.