This is an audio transcript of the Working It podcast episode — ‘Managing introverts in your team: quiet voices in a loud world’

Morra Arrons-Mele
Let’s use the analogy of having a busy day out at the office. Even if you’ve been at home for two years, you can probably remember the feeling. (chuckles) Maybe you were going to a conference, right? And so you were staying at a hotel and you went to the hotel lobby and you checked in and it was really loud and there was music on and there was TVs blaring from the bar and the lights were really bright and there were a lot of people, (sounds of people laughing at a bar) and it didn’t feel comfortable for you. You felt like, oh my gosh, I really want to go right up to my room (laughter). (Woman speaking in conference) And then as you’re at the conference and you’re on your third panel of the day and you’re thinking ahead to the networking event that evening, and maybe some colleagues are gonna go to dinner that night, you’re like, wow, I’m really tired. By 5:00, my mouth is gonna hurt because I’ve been talking and smiling all day. I really would prefer rather just to go up to my hotel room and be alone. Or after you give a talk. You like giving the talk, you’re awesome, but you feel really drained and you just want to go be alone in a dark room and be with yourself. All of that paints a picture of being an introvert.

Isabel Berwick
That’s Morra Aarons, the host of the LinkedIn Presents podcast, Anxious Overachiever. She’s also an author, public speaker and ex-political consultant and entrepreneur. So achiever being the operative word for Morra there. Morra is also an introvert.

Morra Arrons-Mele
Introversion is not about necessarily being shy or being quiet, although many introverts are. It’s really a preference and a need for a life that gives you more space, more alone time, maybe less external stimuli on a constant basis, and indeed some quiet time in a world that is really busy and loud.

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Isabel Berwick
Fact is, we’re all different. Some of us thrive from intense social interaction, and we’re at our best when we’re speaking out and sparring with people, while others need a little more space, recuperation and one-on-one communication. We’re all doing this really careful dance between nurturing our own best working practices, but also trying to accommodate others. And it can be really hard when you’re working within big teams or you deal with lots of different clients.

So today on Working It with me, Isabel Berwick, we’re gonna look into one of these character traits: introversion. If you’re an introvert or you think you might be, we’ll delve into the best ways to thrive and make your voice heard in a working world that too often favours the loudest voices. And if you’re a manager, we’ll discuss how to get the best from the quieter, more considered people on your team and help them succeed.

So during the pandemic, I’ve read wildly conflicting reports about whether remote work was helpful for introverts or not helpful. What are your thoughts about that?

Morra Arrons-Mele
There’s a myth that introverts don’t like people and that we don’t get a buzz off being with other people. And that’s not true, actually. We love an exciting gathering. We love a good meeting. We like seeing our colleagues. We just may not want to do it as often or as intensely, right? We like to take space from it. So I think for a lot of people, especially introverts, especially introverts who weren’t able to work at home before the pandemic, initially, it was amazing. But like all of us, by the end of the first year (laughter), I think it got tiring, you know. The problem with working remotely is that you don’t get a lot of the energy from human interaction that we all crave. And so even for the introvertiest introvert, I think that only being remote and not building in intentional contact and culture is hard.

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Isabel Berwick
So I guess I’d describe myself as an extrovert, although I have my limits. And while I hope I’m the sort of person that is accommodating of introverts in the office, I’m sure there are things I don’t pick up. So I’ve persuaded my self-identifying introverted colleague and friend into the recording booth today, Kesewah Hennessy, the FT’s head of audience diversity.

So Kes, have I already broken the secret introvert rules of conduct by asking you to come on the podcast? Or is the idea that all introverts are also shy and may be afraid of the mic a bit of a myth?

Kesewa Hennessy
Well, first of all, it’s a delight to be on my favourite podcast, (laughter) so that is already (chuckles) welcome but I think that there’s something about this format that’s quite friendly to an introvert because it’s just talking to one other person in a room and that’s a comfortable place to be. You can just forget about the other people who are listening.

Isabel Berwick
So a bit about you. When did you first identify yourself as introverted?

Kesewa Hennessy
I think it was probably like a lot of people when I read Quiet by Susan Cain and that would have been about 2014. But that was just a really nice way to articulate and so it was a bit of a realisation there. But it was something I was familiar with but I just didn’t have the words for so I would have been told a lot that, you know, you’re too quiet, you need to come out of your shell or these quite negative words, which actually when I read Quiet, I was like, these are just characteristics. They’re not bad, they’re not good. They’re just different from the dominant style in the average workplace.

Isabel Berwick
How does that impact your work? Because I forced you to write a column for me during lockdown, and you were very positive about the way that being away from the office, it impacted your work. Can you tell us a bit about that and whether your thoughts changed as Morra’s did over time?

Kesewa Hennessy
Yeah, so at the time, like I think like Morra described, it was great, it was revelatory. And then just sort of on reflection, I remember hearing from other people who I mean, they haven’t told me that they’re introverts, but their style seems to be that way. I’ve talked about mental health issues, like if you live on your own and you know, you like solitude, but it might be that you didn’t see anyone for weeks or months on end during lockdown. So the opportunity to come into the office, that might be the only time you saw anyone else that you knew. And also if you lived at home or an introvert. But your home life was now noisy because everyone was on lockdown and your kids and everything — the office could be the most peaceful place for you. And actually having come back, I really now enjoy seeing people and I enjoy those two days a week when I’m at home more and I do a different kind of work at home.

Isabel Berwick
Yes. And so what’s your tips for managers of introverts? As someone who’s been managed by, I guess, a range of people understanding and not so much.

Kesewa Hennessy
I would suggest being proactive in looking for the qualities of an introvert because they’re not going to be probably the person whose voice you will hear first in a meeting. And if you make an effort, you won’t be aware of what their best qualities are. You won’t be aware of the things they enjoy most and what they will thrive doing, where they can make the biggest contributions to your team’s work and to your organisation. And just on a sort of lower level, like a more practical day-to-day level, accepting that they might be sitting there with massive noise-cancelling headphones on or yellow earplugs sticking out of their ears. And it’s not because they don’t like working in teams and they’re not plugged in and are not making contribution. It’s just, it might be that that’s what they need to do to function day to day.

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Isabel Berwick
There was a kind of autonomy theme, which I think is something that’s been picked up more widely after the pandemic. You know, we’ve all had this autonomy and people are very loath to let go of it. But actually, I think there’s probably a lot that we can learn from people who are more introverted on a spectrum, if we’re calling it that. And I asked Morra for her tips on the best ways all of us can make our workplaces more inclusive for introverts.

Morra Arrons-Mele
The first thing that I would personally like to change and that I hear from everyone I talk to, is the fact that we now do meeting stacking, right? I mean, I think the thing that’s happened in the pandemic is that we’re so darn efficient. People realise that if we’re just sitting in our home offices or we’re not going anywhere, well, we can do meetings back to back to back and these meetings tend to be on camera. Being on camera is very draining for introverts because it’s a performance, right? You are thinking about how you look, how you sound. You’re watching the little thumbnails to see if people are reacting to you. So it can bring up a lot of social anxiety. But it’s also, let’s face it: you’re sort of performing to camera, you’re acting, you’re giving out a lot of energy that you’re not getting back. It’s actually harder to get heard in meetings, especially sort of bigger meetings on Zoom. I think some introverts really like it because they can use chat and they can use writing more. But I think for a lot of introverts too, it can feel very intimidating and the loudest people are still dominating. So we gotta fix meetings, number one.

Isabel Berwick
So Kes, does that resonate with you?

Kesewa Hennessy
It really does, actually. And then, you know, I would notice that there were days when I just like, I couldn’t have the camera on and I know it’s good practice, but it really made a difference sometimes. And I had a really understanding or have a very understanding team leader who’s kind of like, that’s fine. I did like meetings in lockdown because in work from home because an etiquette developed that really was helpful because everyone put their hand up and if it was a well-run meeting, you’d all have a turn to speak and it would all be kind of very ordered.

Isabel Berwick
Morra brought up a really interesting thing that I had never considered before, because I’m probably tone deaf and thick-skinned about accidentally shaming quiet people.

Morra Arrons-Mele
You see this happen in school with quieter kids, right? The teacher will say, “Oh, you know, Janet, we’d love to hear from you. We haven’t heard from you yet”. I’ve been in meetings and it’s sort of been like, “Does anybody else have anything to say? Steve?” you know, and poor Steve is sitting there and thinking, “Oh my God, now I have to say something really brilliant,” and “Ahh!” Right. So inadvertently the manager has made them feel worse. And so I think again, it comes down to putting forethought into structure, and meetings is a great place to start. How are you running your meetings? Do you have an agenda? If there’s someone introverted on your team, they may not be comfortable talking a tonne in meetings. And so, can you make space for them to have a role in the meeting where they feel great, right? And not just let the voices dominate? If you’re gonna have a brainstorming session, maybe that’s not gonna work for some of the more introverted or socially-anxious people in the room. And maybe you should have a “rightstorming” before so people can submit ideas via email and then contribute. So I think really putting more thought into how you structure work, especially on camera and on Zoom, is important. A lot of introverts will just be a bit more hesitant to speak ad hoc. (Laughter) There’s actually some data about this. You know, we prefer to have time to sort of gather our thoughts. One skill that I’ve really learned and that I try to tell to introverts is contribute something early in the meeting. So you’ve said something and you haven’t been quiet. It doesn’t have to be brilliant. Just get your voice in there early and then if you’re not feeling moved to speak in the rest of the meeting, send a really thoughtful email afterwards. Right? Put it in writing so that your input is heard, it’s distilled. You’re a wise voice, but you don’t have to be in the scrum.

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Isabel Berwick
Your article resonated with so many readers. It got huge readership numbers and attracted hundreds of comments, and there were a couple that I just wanted to share with you and perhaps discuss. I mean, it’s a while since we’ve been in lockdown in the UK, but there were some interesting thoughts here. And here’s someone questioning the very notion of introverts versus extroverts. “Much as I admire Susan Cain’s work dispelling the notion that all good or effective management and leadership must somehow be loud, the idea that there is a type of person called an introvert and a type of person called an extrovert is fundamentally flawed. This idea has gained considerable traction as a result of the popular use of the Myers-Briggs test and as a personality test. And this test suffers from fundamental flaws, including construct validity.” Mmm, not sure what construct validity is. Anyway, “A much more valid approach,” they go on, “is to consider a scale of extroversion with some people scoring high, some people scoring low, but critically, a lot of people sitting mid-way, normally distributed about a mean. This is the basis of measurement in the former robustly validated Big Five personality test. Does it really matter? Well, I think it does, because otherwise we keep assigning ourselves and others to types that don’t really exist and then making all sorts of assumptions about what we and others prefer and why.”

So Kes, I like this letter because I’ve belatedly realised I do need time alone to recharge, partly through knowing you actually. And I will choose to sleep on my own rather than say share a room on a big group holiday, for example. Do you think the pandemic’s given us a more sophisticated or nuanced take on people’s temperaments and needs? And Susan Cain is mentioned there. We’ve mentioned her already. What are the key takeaways?

Kesewa Hennessy
I think we are all much more familiar with the idea of different personality types, different working styles, and that did seem to become a talking point during the pandemic. Maybe more people have realised they’re hybrids like you. Or potentially hybrids. One thing I really noticed on rereading the book was — but I didn’t really think of at the time — was how much the qualities she describes of both extroverts and introverts overlap with different forms of inequality, like gender inequality and ethnic inequality, for example. So when I was reading the book, many of the qualities she talked about sounded very similar to the sorts of things you read about in reports on gender inequality. So, you know, for example, the characteristics that go with the archetypal leader that you think of is probably a man you would imagine having this sort of loud, dominant, high conflict, sort of asserting their will, very forceful, and those kinds of qualities are the inverse of what’s welcome in women in the workplace. If you’re a black person who is direct, that might become translated into being angry or aggressive. So I hadn’t really thought about the overlaps there until I reread it. I thought that was really interesting, and it does sort of chime with me with that letter because it’s not as easy as black or white, extrovert/introvert, man/woman.

Isabel Berwick
Yes, exactly. I mean, I think what you’re saying here is fascinating because it’s for everyone, actually. And perhaps if more introverts were in charge of companies, we wouldn’t be in such a mess.

Kesewa Hennessy
Not for me to say. (Laughter)

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Isabel Berwick
So I came into this podcast thinking, I’m gonna learn some tips as a manager and as a colleague and as a friend and as a family member to help me accommodate people who are not as outgoing or, you know, feel socially awkward because that is something I generally don’t feel. But actually, I’ve come away from it thinking there’s something for all of us here. We can all learn to manage our meetings better. We can all learn to think about the importance of recharging between meetings. You know, there’s just different ways to be and maybe if we all thought like introverts the world would be a much better place.

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Isabel Berwick
Thanks to Morra Aarons and Kes Hennessy for this episode. And if you’re enjoying the podcast, we’d really appreciate it if you left us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Please do get in touch with us. We want to hear from you. We’re at workingit@ft.com or with me @IsabelBerwick on Twitter. If you’re an FT subscriber, please sign up for our Working It newsletter. We’ve got behind-the-scenes extras from the podcast and exclusive stories you won’t find anywhere else. Sign up at FT.com/newsletters. Working It is produced by Novel for the Financial Times. Thanks to the producer Anna Sinfield, executive producer Jo Wheeler, production assistance from Leigh Mayer and Amalie Sortland. And we have mix from Chris O’Shaughnessy. From the FT we have editorial direction from Renée Kaplan and Manuela Saragosa and production support from Persis Love. Thanks for listening.

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