Working your introvert

I am an introvert, an INTJ in the Myers Briggs Type Indicator world and  basically off the dial on introversion. Yet I balance this with a job that involves a huge amount of people interaction, talking in front of groups, leading and participating in many meetings with complex interactions and as a result, often with very little time to myself to charge my batteries.

Learning to successfully balance this is an ongoing journey and finding the time for recharge is a challenge. I’m interested in working my introvert side, understanding its strengths and weaknesses, capitalising on it, identifying what I can bring to a situation. I am interested in how to work it rather than have it working, and sometimes exhausting, me.

Here are some gems I have found on being an introvert especially in the work sphere and how to bring your innate strengths into play for positive outcomes.

Leveraging the advantages of being an introvert at work – Penelope Trunk

This article from Penelope Trunk discusses how the world of work rewards and is basically set up around the needs of extroverts. Her article provides a balance to this by offering some tips for leveraging the advantages of introverts. These tips include: working from the world of ideas; giving full attentiveness for a short, concentrated time; improving your self-knowledge of your type; teaching other people how best to interact with you as an introvert; and learning about the job roles that would best suit you.  There are also some excellent references for further reading embedded in this insightful article.

Caring for your introvert – Jonathan Rauch

This classic 2003 article from The Atlantic is about understanding the orientations and needs of introverts. It looks at some common myths or assumptions about introverts and provides a balanced point of view. The article takes the perspective that introverts are misunderstood and dogged by stereotypes such as being shy. Rauch corrects this one by saying that “introverts are people who find other people tiring.” Rauch has some good pointers for balancing time with people and finding time to charge again. His answers to a scan of issues about introverts (are they misunderstood? are they oppressed? what are the implications of extroverts dominating public life?) provide useful  perspectives for introverts seeking to find points of strength and balance. I especially love the distinction between introverts who typically ‘think before talking’ vs extroverts who typically ‘think by talking’.

Top ten myths about introverts – Carl King

This article, in a similar vein and drawing on the book ‘The Introvert Advantage: How to thrive in an Extrovert World’ by Marti Olsen-Laney (also highlighted in Penelope Trunk’s article), lists Carl’s top ten myths about introverts. It captures them in a pithy way I could instantly recognise. The article concludes:

‘It can be terribly destructive for an Introvert to deny themselves in order to get along in an Extrovert-Dominant World.’

Suggestions for managing this include: understanding the myths, linking in with other introverts for support and the need for extroverts to respect the ways of introverts.

Extroverts, introverts, aspies and codies – Venkatesh (Venkat) Rao

This article is a fascinating summary of introvert and extrovert issues but takes a step further into the realm of micro-economics, transactions and social psychology. The article explores where the energy is stored in the terms of exchange from the introvert and extrovert point of view. It also reviews how introverts and extroverts manage isolation vs physical contact; 1:1 encounters and their depth; weak-link social fields such as coffee shops; strong-link social fields such as family gatherings; relationships over time and relationships with strangers. Venkat also looks at how the tension between extroverts and introverts plays out in the slang terms they use or might use for each other: aspies (a term used by extroverts for introverts and linked to Asberger’s Syndrome) and codies ( a possible term as none exists and linked to co-dependency). Venkat concludes by saying that introversion is becoming far more visible, resulting in shifts in the landscape of social psychology.

I was fascinated to read in Penelope Trunk’s article above that my type, INTJ, has the longest Wikipedia page:

‘Because the combination of being an introvert and being ideas-driven makes one very interested in learning about oneself. INTJ’s are an extreme case, but all introverts have this combination to some extent, and the self-knowledge will help you put yourself in situations where you’ll have the most positive impact.’

It’s true, I am an extreme case and this summary is a piece of evidence testifying to that, an addition to the INTJ genre. Hopefully though, it is of use in finding tips and resources to unpack your strengths and work your introvert or to understand the ways of those around you. True to type,  I can’t tell you how energising I found the experience of researching and writing it.

How do you work your introvert?

Looking back, moving forward

A new year is traditionally a time for resolutions; however, there seems to be a renewed focus on the more concrete work of reviewing the past year and celebrating milestones and special moments as a prelude to future planning.

I am especially enjoying this review process in the blogs I read: the people’s journeys I follow there; their aims and strivings; the progress and success they celebrate in various ways and the collective cheering on in progress to their goals I can take part in. This looking back, checking progress, highlighting achievements and tracking the journey is a critical part of moving forward and I am inspired and informed by the journeys of others.

The review can take the form of the writing of a blog as a way of accountability, checking in with readers on the set metrics of progress; for others, it is sheer celebration; for others, it’s a ‘warts and all’ reflection on what happened in 2010 and also what created interest in readers. For most, it’s a combination of all these.

I’m loving reading some of my favourite bloggers’ reflections on their work and achievements in 2010 and directions for 2011. Here are some of my favourite recent reviews:

Joanna Penn’s Review of the Creative Penn Goals for 2010 celebrates the accountability of blogging and how it motivates. Joanna set some incredibly high goals for 2010 and has achieved much. Read about her wonderful achievements including completing her novel and being way up on the lists of bloggers in the writing field.

For sheer celebratory energy, you can’t beat the white hot retrospective by Danielle La Porte. I am big believer in celebrating achievements as a solid and strengthening base for moving forward and this post just shows you why it’s so powerful. I especially loved the manifesto of encouragement - one of my favourite posts of 2010. As Danielle says:

With 900+ tweets, 3800 Facebook shares and 2,600+ StumbleUpons, the manifesto of encouragement took on a life of its own.

It truly was a magical piece of inspired thought and writing that engendered so much depth of heartfelt words in others. I look forward to the sequel and something I can hold in my hand!

Colleen Wainwright, aka The Communicatrix, reflects on the 100 things I learned in 2010 and what’s more has been doing this same process since 2004. Clever, funny, insightful as always, and like Colleen’s weekly round-ups, a rich read – especially for a fellow Virgo. I am thankful for the many valued reflections and resources that come through Colleen’s annual reviews such as how much growth can come from the darkest times.

I’ve only recently started reading Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist blog though clearly many other people are ahead of me here. It’s honest, on the edge and often controversial, it seems, as reflected in the number of comments and the level of engagement of her readers. In her recent, Most popular posts of 2010, Penelope provides a summary of the posts that generated the most comments. It’s another great way of reflecting on progress and a clever way to review.

Shanna Germain, whom I love reading for her incredible commitment to writing and publication and her documentation of the journey, has written a fantastic 2010 Writing Stats post demonstrating her passion and productivity in writing in 2010 and setting the metrics for writing goals for 2011. Chris Guillebeau emphasises the importance of metrics in personal planning and this is a great example of how to measure progress and success: number of submissions, rejections, words written, progress to goal. It’s super impressive in both process and achievements.

My seven stars  still mostly light the way for me as I blog forward but I’m loving finding new voices to read to inform my own path. And yes, I know, I need to work on my own review and goals. It’s coming in its own good time and I look forward to it.

In the meantime, reading and reflecting on the reviews of others is very inspiring in informing my own moving forward.

Who’s lighting your path for 2011?

Gems #12 Planning and Productivity

 

Happy New Year!

It’s great to be reading all my favourite blogging writers reflecting on 2010 and plans for 2011. It’s an exciting time for planning to be productive in whatever priority areas are critical for you. I thought I’d share some gems on planning and productivity that might be of interest for setting your agenda for 2011. They will certainly be part of my own personal planning.

Chris Guillebeau is something of a guru of personal planning. With a successful track record of setting and reviewing yearly goals, Chris shares his processes and goals with his readers generously. Chris has recently been working on his annual review of 2010 to inform planning for 2011. It starts with two simple questions:

What went well in 2010?

What did not go well in 2010?

From there, Chris reflects on 2010 and builds his plan for 2011, including setting the metrics for checking the achievement of his goals. I love his process and have found it personally rewarding over the last two years. Here are a couple of links to Chris’s recent writing on his annual review process:

2010 Annual Review – The Beginning

2010 Annual Review – Looking Forward

All of Chris’s recent posts on his annual review process are excellent and I will be revisiting them in full soon when I sit down to do my own reflection and planning process for 2011.

Charlie Gilkey has some excellent planning tools also at Productive Flourishing on his Free Planners page. There are all kinds of planning tools: ones for planning blog posts and daily, weekly and monthly action planners. There are also tools for identifying your most productive times. I will be looking to apply these in 2011. Highly recommended and again, shared generously which is appreciated.

In the writing field, Sage Cohen’s new book The Productive Writer provides strategies and systems for writers looking to maximise their time with all types of writing. Sage’s background crosses a broad range of writing areas including being a writer of strategic marketing content as well as a successful published poet. She is also a skilled and sensitive teacher; I have been an avid and appreciative student of her ‘Poetry for the People’ online courses. She is the author of one of my favourite books on writing, ‘Writing the Life Poetic: an Invitation to Read and Write Poetry’.  

I’ll write a fuller review of ‘The Productive Writer’ soon and Sage will also visit here soon for a guest post, so stay tuned. Sage’s writing is always clear, heartfelt and grounded in practicality and this book will be of great value to writers in getting organised and maximising their creative time. Sage’s new Path of Possibility site offers advice and resources for productivity in writing and in life.

What tips do you have for planning and productivity for 2011?

The one clear thing Part 3: the essential work

There has been a bit of a gap between parts 2 and 3 of this little series on clarity so let’s recap. These thoughts stem from a year of struggling with some complex challenges especially culminating at the end of the year. I have learnt much from this experience and am distilling this here as a form of clarity for myself and others.

My experiences this year taught me that it is very easy to over-complicate things. Keeping things simple is a very powerful cut-through tool to keep a focus on solving issues. So my suggestions for moving forward are to find the one clear thing that is the essence of what you are trying to do or solve. The one clear thing emerges for me as:

1. Finding the single question to ask that will answer much in its wake
2. Identifying the essential work that needs to be done to answer it
3. Putting in place the daily steps to get there and keep moving

Let’s think here about the essential work. Once you have identified the single question to ask, then you need to identify the essential work to be done to answer it. The key word here is ‘essential‘. It’s so easy to get side-tracked and over-complicate at this stage. So, at this point, identify the essential work that needs to be done to reach your goal or answer your question.

Examples of questions to ask at this point to identify or begin the essential work include:

• How do we isolate the critical work to be done?
• What data would provide clarity?
• What tools would really help move through this block?
• What’s the one change that would make the biggest difference?
• What are the essential priority tasks to be completed now?
• What is the immediate step forward to achieve this?
• What’s the one real block to moving on?
• Which critical people could help solve this issue?

Focused thought on these or similar questions can help you move through issues that are often quite simple and apparent but have become complex and muddy. If we can step away for some higher level thinking and rise above the detail, we can get a clearer view.

Talking to critical others can also be of great assistance: trusted friends, coaches, mentors, external customers and other stakeholders. Sometimes we are simply too close. A quick, sharply focused survey might assist for feedback to get improved clarity.

Mind-mapping, brain-storming and other problem-solving tools can also be of great value at this point. I have had a lot of success with Appreciative Inquiry as an overall framework for moving forward through complex situations as it focuses on the positive and what the future might look like. The four steps of Appreciative Inquiry are in themselves tools for identifying the essential work and getting a roadmap for moving forward.

Looking for the essential work, the key question and how to answer it, can also help overcome resistance, as complexity and murkiness are in themselves engaging and can stop resolution of issues. You can find yourself easily stuck and doing a lot of busywork and conceptualising and achieve very little.

What’s the essential work for you at present? How can you progress it?

Image, The sky is clear now by vincepal from flickr and used under a Creative Commons license with thanks

Gems #11 Managing complexity

Some recent gems about managing complexity.

While working on ‘the one clear thing’ series of posts and also while managing much complexity at work this year, I have been reading and reflecting about complexity: how we make things complex, how we can make them simpler and what enables this. Here are three great recent posts on this topic:

1. Pruning for Better Growth - Dr Monique Beedles

Part of the search for simplicity and clarity may relate to cutting back: weeding out , uncluttering the physical and psychological space and deciding where effort is best directed. Dr Monique Beedles says:

It seems counterintuitive, to cut something back in order to help it grow – but any gardener knows that a good prune is essential to healthy growth.

Are you, your blog or your business trying to be all things to all people? Maybe it’s time to review what’s really important and where to focus strategy and effort. See Monique’s article, a beautiful clear statement in itself, for some powerful questions to help review the focus of your business.

2. It’s complicated! Or is managing complexity simpler than you think? -  Australian School of Business

This excellent article discusses mindsets for managing complexity. It recognises that the old hierarchical, command and control models of leadership may not serve us in increasingly complex and competitive environments. The shift is to new leadership models that focus on creative problem-solving and the enabling of others to be solution focused.

Steve Vamos, president of the Society for Knowledge Economics (SKE) and the former chief executive of Microsoft Australia says:

The focus of modern leadership should be around breaking down complexity – or “making the complex simpler”…

Some of the key strategies discussed are around the concepts of:

• the need for clarity of purpose
• people understanding their place in the business
• being solution-focused
• the re-emergence of generalist leaders with strong problem-solving skills
• the value of conversation and story-telling
• the 80/20 rule and how to use it drive focus of effort
• managing ‘wicked’, seemingly impenetrable problems with a new mind-set
• bravery in tackling ‘wicked’ problems
• strong leadership as the enabling of others to find solutions
• persistence

Suggested approaches for superior leadership and the programs that develop it include: social entrepreneurship, design theory and innovation strategy. These skill-sets are seen as critical to encouraging different ways of thinking and promoting new solutions.

3. The eight word mission statement - Eric Hellweg, Harvard Business Review

Finally, a great approach from  Kevin Starr, the executive director of the Mulago Foundation which channels investments to socially minded businesses. His focus is around how clearly businesses can summarise their main reason for being through their mission statement.

So many mission statements are wordy, long, unclear and fall flat in the communication of their central message to those that matter in achieving it. Starr insists that companies he supports state their mission statement in under eight words using the format, “Verb, target, outcome.” Some examples provided are: “Save endangered species from extinction” and “Improve African children’s health.”

This is an excellent approach for enhancing personal and business focus. How clear are your personal and business goals? Can you express them in an eight word mission statement? How then can you measure success against the statement?

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How are you making the complex easier to manage and solve in your personal and business contexts?

Image, Simple yet Beautiful by pranav from flickr and used under a Creative Commons license with thanks

The one clear thing Part 2

 

In  The one clear thing Part 1, I talked about the complexity and challenge around me and how the writing of this blog has emerged as one clear thing I can focus on at present. 

Finding ‘the one clear thing’ is the message emerging from all the complexity and multiplicity around me. It can be so easy to get overwhelmed and do the wrong thing or nothing. There is an almost innate tendency to make things more complex than they need to be.

What does it mean to ‘find the one clear thing’? It means keeping the complex simple. It means providing a cut-through to moving on and solution. The one clear thing is emerging for me as:

1. Identifying the key question(s)

2. Beginning the essential work

3. Making the daily steps

 

 1. Identifying the key question(s)

What key question(s) can you focus on, ask, that if answered carefully and consciously, would enable all the rest to fall into place?

This approach enables you to:

• focus energy and effort 
• avoid resistance and distraction
• avoid the allure of complexity

As an example, in a workshop recently, we were working to resolve a complex business issue. The workshop was focused around a single, powerful question honed from a previous workshop of senior managers. It was our task to answer it. It was incredibly hard to keep the group focused but with the aid of a very skilled and dogged external facilitator, at the end, we were able to clearly and succinctly answer the question. We will use these principles to drive future business directions, structure and staff capability development now that we are clear.

Chris Guillebeau also uses the key question approach in his World Domination work to guide goal-setting for individuals and the difference they can make.  In ‘A Brief Guide to World Domination – How to live a remarkable life in a conventional world’, Chris talks about personal goals, ordinary people pursuing big ideas and also through this, making a difference in the lives of others. The key questions he asks you to consider, ‘the two most important questions in the universe’ are:

#1 What do you really want to get out of life?

#2 What can you offer the world that no-one else can?

I have written about this in an early post, ‘Why Transcending?’ and shown how answering these questions helped me to develop my focus here. Read Chris’s Art of Non-Conformity blog to see many examples of people who have used this technique to get them focused on the one clear thing that matters to them in their life’s work. For me now, the key question is reviewing ‘How can my blog work here bring my answers to those two key questions to life?’

Jonathan Fields in a recent post, The Bucket List Lie on his blog, Awake at the Wheel, also encourages us to keep it simple by making a list of one:

A single, meaningful action you’re going to take before the end of the day to move you one step closer to a single, deeply meaningful quest. 

Julie Kay of JK Leadership Development and the wonderful Developing Leaders Online encourages businesses to focus on The single most effective question you can ask in the context of customer service and feedback from clients. It’s a great question because it’s solution focused and provides some metrics for knowing when improvement has taken place.

You can see that the first step identifying the key question is:

• action oriented
• solution focused
• resistance averse

So what’s the key question for you right now, the one clear thing that can take you forward?

I’ll explore the next step ’The essential work to be done’ in a follow-up post very soon.

Image, The base of Looking Glass Falls near Asheville, North Carolina by Alaskan Dude from flickr and used under a Creative Commons license with thanks