How to lead a team if you're an introvert

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Leadership isn't just for the outgoing.

According to one small study by C. Anderson, G. J. Kilduff. Why do dominant personalities attain influence in face-to-face groups? The competence-signaling effects of trait dominance / Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, people are more likely to hire and promote extroverts. They are more proactive, more responsive, more likely to come up with ideas, and therefore come across as more engaged and professional employees.

According to The Hidden Advantages of Quiet Bosses / Harvard Business Review of the Harvard Business Review, there are more extroverts than introverts in high positions, with the latter decreasing as the position is promoted.

At the same time, introversion is not an obstacle to becoming a good leader. Bill Gates once said in an interview that introverts do well and have many strengths that extroverts lack.

His opinion is confirmed by research: introverts are better than extroverts at managing teams with many proactive employees, because they are more inclined to listen to their subordinates and give them the freedom to implement ideas, including innovative ones.

However, if employees themselves are passive enough and do not take the initiative, it will be difficult for introverts. Inspiring, sparking, proposing ideas is not their strong point. Therefore, in order to successfully lead even a small team, it is important for an introverted leader to build on his strengths and know how to compensate for weaknesses.

Here are some recommendations from HR experts to help you with this.

1. Tell the team about your management style

A manager who spends a lot of time in his office is not too willing to contact employees, avoids noisy meetings and loud speeches, and at first may cause confusion among subordinates.

Therefore, it is important to dot the i's as early as possible and explain to people that this leadership style may be different from what they are used to. However, this does not mean that the workflow will suffer.

Explain that you need more time for thoughtful analytical work, explain how often and in what format the communication will take place, how you intend to track results, listen to and give feedback.

So employees will immediately see that you are not indifferent to work and you are not indifferent to their opinion. This will make the relationship in the team more trusting.

2. Listen and be attentive

Listening and hearing is one of the strengths of introverts. Therefore, use it to its fullest.

A small experiment involving 163 college students showed that introverts, as opposed to extroverts, are more willing to listen to the opinions of their team, take into account the ideas expressed - and as a result, they win.

Therefore, give your employees the opportunity to speak and be open to their thoughts and suggestions.

3. Optimize personal communication

Communication is a major stumbling block for introverts, especially when it comes to large gatherings. Introverts find it difficult to speak in front of large audiences, to hold the attention of listeners, to publicly argue and express ideas.

So you can change the format and have more face-to-face meetings, or get together in small groups of three or four. It is possible that this will turn out to be even more effective than large meetings, at which half of the participants usually remain silent and go about their business.

In addition, a personal approach to employees will make them more loyal to both the manager and the company. In the early 2000s, American canned soup maker Campbell’s was going through a crisis and, to cope with it, hired introvert Douglas Conant as CEO. He managed to pull the company out of the hole, increase sales, increase employee engagement and motivation.

Attention to each team member is one of the ways that Douglas Conant has achieved brilliant results. During his work, he personally wrote more than 30 thousand letters with gratitude for a good job. People answered him in return: when the manager was in the hospital, dozens of postcards with warm wishes began to come from all branches of the company.

4. Use different formats of communication

Many tasks, in principle, do not require personal contact. For reports and questions, group chats are suitable; for tracking work on projects - tables and kanban-boards; to inform about important events - mailings.

5. Hire proactive employees

An introverted leader, due to his peculiarities, will find it easiest to work with initiative and independent people. This is the approach Bill Gates recommended for introverts - to choose employees who are good at things in which the leaders of this type themselves are not strong.

The same idea was put forward by the Israeli business consultant Yitzhak Adizes when he formulated his system of hiring employees, which is called the Adizes code. The point is that one manager cannot combine all the qualities necessary for an ideal leader, that is, be a manufacturer, administrator, integrator and entrepreneur. And therefore, to work effectively, he must surround himself with people who will complement him well.

By the way, the revision of the personnel structure helped to pull Campbell's company out of the crisis: Douglas Conant replaced about 300 managers, and these decisions turned out to be successful.

6. Focus on analysis and planning

These are also the strengths of introverts. They are good at research, gathering information, analyzing data, making plans and strategies.

This means that this is exactly what you should devote as much time as possible. Yes, you may not make a bright and inspiring leader who can easily stand on the podium and lead people. But thanks to painstaking and thoughtful work, you can turn the company into a perfectly oiled mechanism.

7. Do not consider yourself worse than others

One of the problems with introverts is that they doubt themselves, often have negative thoughts, and set themselves up for failure rather than success. And therefore, sometimes they show not the best results.

At the same time, positive-minded introverts are not inferior to extroverts.

So it’s worth reminding yourself more often that you have many strengths and deserve to sit in the manager’s chair just as much as more open and sociable people.