Honest advice for introverts
Simple advice for making your personality a creative asset
A reader asked about what advice I have for introverts. I wrote about this in Why Design Is Hard and the entire section from the book is shared in this post.
I know it is possible to have great influence over organizations without being an extrovert. It just takes awareness, curiosity and energy, all of which you have.
Imagine a scenario where everything goes right:
You are the lead designer at MegaStinkCo working on a blue-sky project to redesign the flagship product (MegaStink8).
Everyone does great work, on time and under budget. Designers, PMs, and engineers get along smashingly well, dancing in the hallways and singing on Zoom calls. Your work doubles revenue and triples all UX metrics, while reducing corporate greenhouse gas emissions by 420% and creating jobs for 4,812 deserving, unemployed, unhoused citizens.
The Universe is so inspired by the brilliance of your work that dogs and cats become friends, all wars end, racism disappears, and hell freezes over.
Your VP asks for someone to present the project results at the next executive briefing. It’s a five-minute slot so only one person can present. Who should do it?
No matter who gets chosen, that person will become more visible. More leaders will know her name and be more likely to respond to her requests. She will get more questions about the project than others in the future, and her opinions will carry more weight. It’s not anyone’s fault — it’s the simple fact that visibility has advantages. It’s human nature to find it harder to trust someone you’ve never met or heard from.
Many people prefer to avoid visibility, or label themselves introverts, avoiding public speaking or exposure of any kind. Assuming they are good at what they do, this almost certainly works against them sooner or later just because of how human nature works.
But we’re not here to transform you into a mega extrovert. That’s not necessary and would likely make you very annoying to your coworkers. However, we do want you to know four things:
Introvert vs. extrovert is a false dichotomy. Most people are on the spectrum between extremes. In one study, 77% of people reported being somewhere in the middle.
The best definition of these terms is about sources of energy. Introverts tend to want to be alone to recharge, whereas extroverts tend to get energy from others.
You can be an introvert with excellent social skills, or an extrovert with terrible ones (which may help you better understand certain people in your life). Don’t assume your personal preferences constrain your abilities.
These are not genetically encoded traits that never change. Your desire for social interaction almost certainly shifts depending on mood, context, environment, and other factors.
These facts are important because organizations are systems of people. The more open and curious you are about people, the more the system is an advantage. If you go out of your way to make connections, the system will provide more useful maps and leverage points. You can act on your curiosity and still be an introvert.
Alternatively, if you go out of your way to avoid connection, you will have fewer. Maybe you don’t need many and have all the power and influence you need — flying under the radar can work sometimes. But if you’re reading this book, odds are that’s not the case.
Being a connector in an organization is a natural role for designers, because it’s at the heart of all the work we do. Most kinds of design are about communication, and the powers we explored in part 2 included investigation, explanation, and negotiation, which all make connections between ideas and people. The more you can use your abilities to be a connector, the easier design work becomes.
You don’t have to be a social butterfly, you just have to notice important things and get them attention. You can do this asynchronously in Slack or email, where there is less social pressure. Or communicate your insights to one trusted teammate instead of broadcasting it to everyone. But you have to act. No one knows what you know unless you tell them.
A powerful metaphor that helps is what Makoto Fujimura calls border-walking. He describes this as people who choose to spend time on the edges of ideas, cultures, and tribes. He explained that these were individuals who lived on the edges of their groups, going in and out of them, sometimes bringing back news to the tribe. They lower barriers to understanding and communication, and start to defuse the culture wars. It’s a role of cultural leadership in a new mode, serving functions including empathy, memory, warning, guidance, mediation, and reconciliation. Those who journey to the borders of their group and beyond will encounter new vistas and knowledge that can enrich the group.
Does this require being an extrovert? Not at all. Instead, it requires being curious and taking initiative, which anyone can do. Most people appreciate those who are genuinely interested in the work they are doing, ask good thoughtful questions, have respect for their skills and beliefs, and are helpful.
If once a week you “walk the border” between teams, roles, hierarchies, or wherever there’s the most tension or ignorance in your world, and embody the list above, you will be making connections. Good leaders do this frequently, sometimes calling it management by walking around (MBWA), or in the parlance of Toyota’s Lean philosophy, a Gemba walk — the act of seeing where the work happens. Dieter Rams’s legendary bottle of Cognac was inspired by his border-walk into the engineering hallway, a gift he knew would be useful simply because he’d taken those steps.
It could also be a thoughtful email you send, a helpful comment you leave, or a clever video you make — it doesn’t have to be in-person or in real-time. Sincerely asking someone “What’s the most interesting thing you are working on right now?” or “What’s your favorite and least favorite part of your job?” invites them to connect on their terms first.
Treat your coworkers like customers: they are users of your ideas after all, at least that’s what you’re hoping. This makes border-walking a kind of user research. Some of your walks will be ignored or politely declined, but every time someone engages and a connection is made, the feedback loops in the organizational system will reinforce you more than before.
Learn to revive your design superpowers, or just get the book, Why Design Is Hard already,
I got a lot out of this article. Was there book or article on introverts / extroverts you’d recommend reading?