An introverted perspective: Collaboration
An introverted perspective: Collaboration
Ā I have considered myself and have shown the characteristics of an introvert for an incredibly large portion of my life. I am not going to say that my views and experiences reflect those of all introverts, but I go by the rule that the more you know the better. Now, I am under the impression that introverts do not like revealing too much about themselves in a public setting, so my writing a blog post about my experiences would probably be unusual, but useful for us of the introvert race, for letting the world know a bit more about us.
Now collaboration and teamwork has been an incredibly hard thing for me for a really long time. But ever since about a year ago, a semester through my freshman year in college, a couple of things happened that resulted in me re-evaluating my situation (limitations) as an introvert and setting off on a journey of self-exploration to find why it is that I am not as out-going with strangers as I am with my friends. As I write this a year later, I find myself in a completely different frame of mind. Now when I reveal my past and current struggles as an introvert to new people I meet, they are surprised. Their first impression of me is this bubbly, cheerful, outgoing girl who is not afraid to speak her mind and stand for what she believes in. So, I like to think Iāve come a long way in this year.
As a large step forward in my journey, over the last six days, I was at a leadership retreat called LeaderShape, where I met many brilliant, diverse, incredible people, and grew and learned so much about myself and others. Hereās a few things I learned.
We all know there are different personality types among people (in LeaderShape, we did a DiSC assessment, where it listed four different types.) I will not get into the details of the different types or their traits, but there is one type that I think almost everyone is aware of. This is what the DiSC assessment referred to as the Ds or the dominant personality type. They usually the most vocal, quick to take charge, quick to make decisions, not afraid to be direct in their criticism and the most visible. And for a person like me, the most intimidating of all people.
I had a problem of avoiding people who came off as Ds in the past. When I worked with them, I always had the feeling that my opinions were not valued, and I never attempted to disagree with them, let alone get into arguments, because I know I would end up losing and getting emotionally hurt in the process. So, whenever we had a D in the team, I would slowly lose interest in the project, not do a lot of work and fall in a downward spiral, making the experience just miserable. But at LeaderShape, I learned something. The quality I found most intimidating about them, their straightforwardedness, stemmed from their own affinity of being straightforward to. They arenāt hurt by direct criticism, and they donāt realize that other people are. And then it all made sense to me. The Ds werenāt being intimidating on purpose, they just didnāt realize they were scaring some others. And after meeting quite a few people who were identified as Ds at LeaderShape, the realization strengthened in me. They were people who did care about others and their opinions, they just werenāt used to listening as much as speaking. And once they understood the difference, and became more aware of how different people work, with some being more patient and quiet and others being more quick and loud, they were much more accommodating.
Being a person who does more listening than speaking, I never realized how much trouble people, especially the Ds, had with listening closely. And when they realized that, they asked, how can we listen better? Well, hereās how:
Pay Attention: be present and observe body language
Hold Judgment: be patient and try to understand the other personās perspective
Clarify: use open-ended, clarifying and probing questions
Reflect: repeat back what you heard and name the emotions you observe or intuit
Summarize: check your understanding by periodically stating what you have heard so far
Share: share thoughts, feelings and experiences that deepen or check for understanding
(from āactive listeningā, page 2.14 in the LeaderShape Participant Manual)
The one of these I found, even after years of listening, to be quite new to me was holding judgment. I found that I quietly judged quite a bit (more on that later), and once I noticed it and set it aside, I noticed that I was paying more attention and seeing their point of view clearer, making for a much more pleasant and insightful conversation.
First impressions and Judgment.
Ah, judgment, one of my deadly sins. I tend to judge people based on my first impression of them. I tend to assume things about them, and I tend to act around them based on these assumptions. I know it sounds bad, but itās normal. Itās human to judge, but the key is to know when you are judging, realize that it is probably wrong, put it aside and actually go talk to the person. I have been guilty of judging a few people quite hard when I met them at LeaderShape a few days ago. But I noticed it, and I decided to act on it. I talked to the people even though I assumed that I wouldnāt get along with them, and to my surprise, I found that quite often we did have things to talk about and got along quite well.
That brings me to the second part of first impressions and judgment: other peopleās first impression of you. I havenāt done quite a lot of thinking about this, but I did figure out something in the last few months. People are much more friendly and receptive towards you if you are enthusiastic about meeting them. Being an introvert for most of my life, I had a tendency of shying away from meeting new people, never, ever initiating contact or conversations, and probably seeming rather disinterested. But over the last few months, I realized the power of enthusiasm. Meeting people with excitement, being interested in them, initiating conversations, I found, was usually met with similar energy. Even other quiet people came out of their shell just a bit and accepted my energy to make their own. It made the atmosphere much friendlier. It was just a win-win situation.
I have a tendency of keeping my thoughts about other people, even my appreciation of them, to myself. And I understand now how bad of a thing it is not to tell people how much I like and appreciate them. It feels as though expressing oneās appreciation is a taboo in our society, as if revealing things we like about people somehow makes us smaller or gives them power over us. Or maybe thatās just how I felt. But I understand now the power of appreciation. Just telling a person how much they matter and how they affect our lives instead of keeping it to ourselves can be such a powerful thing. On the last day of LeaderShape, we did a tapping-circle, that is, we got in a circle and closed our eyes and some people went around in the middle tapping people as a response to questions such as ātap someone who made you laugh,ā āsomeone who youād like to know better,ā āsomeone who changed your outlook.ā I could never imagine the sheer emotions going through a person sitting in the circle if I hadnāt been sitting there myself. Knowing that I had touched so many lives in so many ways was just overwhelming. Yes, tears did flow.
One of the best things about LeaderShape was the intense conversations we ended up having with people who were complete strangers just six days ago. And it could not have happened had it not been for the environment we had created. It was an environment of trust, of understanding, of openness, of non-judgment, of vulnerability. It was the best possible environment for the deep conversations we ended up having. The most important of these for me were openness and non-judgment. One of the biggest problems I have had in the past about being open about myself is that I feared being judged. I have sometimes found myself hiding my own opinions when they flowed against the majority. But in the safe space, I decided to reveal things that I am careful about keeping to myself otherwise. Because in the safe space, even if they did judge me, they would set it aside and be open about their own opinions and disagreements, whence we could have a constructive conversation about it so that no one left with false assumptions or bitterness about the other.
I am a person who has a really hard time with subtleness. And I have decided that it would be the best for me in new group situations to let the cat out of the bag from the outset. To take charge and reveal my own personality type, my work style, my thoughts and any other relevant thing the very first time my new team meets. I want to make myself vulnerable and encourage others to do the same so that we can figure out the best way the team can interact and work together.
People are hard for introverts like me. But I have realized that I have big, big goals for this world, and to accomplish them, I need to work with people. Hence my journey. I have so much further to go, but I know much more than I did before and I know where to go next. Exciting!
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