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How to be an introvert at work when you’re surrounded by extroverts

It can be hard when everyone else on your team is more outgoing. Here’s how to stay comfortable without missing out on chances for career advancement.

How to be an introvert at work when you’re surrounded by extroverts
[照片:Lucas Marconnet/Unsplash]

在工作中内向的人可能很难。您可能需要在会议上大声疾呼,在活动中进行交流或召集团队的成就。您可能会感到害羞,并希望避免很多社会关注。

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The difficulty being an introvert can be compounded when you’re surrounded by extroverts who relish the attention and opportunity to speak out. You may feel like you’re not going to get noticed or get the same opportunities to take on new challenges and advance as your more gregarious colleagues.

引起注意的方法

Often, when leaders are trying to figure out the right people to include in a project, they draw up a list based on the names that spring to mind. What determines whether memories of you are going to be available (or what psychologists call “accessible”) when these lists are being drawn up?

如果人们想到的是他们所做的工作质量,那将是很棒的。但并非总是如此。特别是,领导者需要与您之间的工作质量和想法建立牢固的联系。

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Extroverts have an advantage here, because they speak up in meetings (which gets them associated with their engagement with work) and they’re likely to mention projects that have gone well (which increases the association between them and successful projects).

内向的人需要竭尽全力与组织中的主要领导者交谈,以发展融洽的关系,并提供谈论成功的机会。这可能包括在会议之前或之后与领导者接触,以进行一句话或安排对话的时间,以讨论进度并在具有挑战性的任务上寻求帮助。关键是找到与领导者互动的舒适方法,以弥补在更大的社交场合中可能错过的其他人的机会。

处理会议

当然,仅仅因为您对会议感到不舒服并不意味着您可以完全检查一下。因为您被外向的人包围,所以如果您允许的话,会议将在没有您的情况下继续进行。但是,在会议中做出了许多关键决定(而外向的人与有好主意无关),因此您的反馈和专业知识对于帮助您的组织评估期权可能至关重要。如果您不分享自己的想法,那么您将剥夺小组的重要信息。

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You’re going to need to get comfortable expressing opinions—even ones that fly in the face of the prevailing opinion. That will take some work. Take a few notes on what you want to say. If you know the issues before the meeting, all the better: Give yourself a few bullet points and practice talking about them. If not, you can still scribble some notes to work from.

After you know what you’re going to say, don’t overthink the next step. Raise your hand or get yourself on the meeting agenda right away. The more anxious you are about speaking to the group, the less likely you are to do it if you delay.

Finally, say what you’re going to say forcefully and without hedges or apologies. When you don’t want to draw attention to yourself, you will often use hedges like “I think maybe . . .” or apologies “I’m hate to derail the discussion, but . . .” While those hedges may make you feel better about speaking up, they will diminish the impact of what you’re saying on other people.

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在会议上大声疾呼的美之处在于,您要做的越多,下次下次做的就越容易。

Getting attention for your team

As you get more responsibility in an organization, you’re often called on to lead a team. That might be just for a particular project, or it might be baked into your role as people start to report to you. Once you have other people following your lead, you have some responsibility for them and their advancement as well as your own. Extroverts naturally talk about the things they are working on, so key group projects are likely to get discussed as part of team meetings and organizational social events.

Even if you don’t like having attention called to yourself, you have to bring attention to other team members so that other leaders in the organization also know about their great contributions.

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在这个地方,您可能可以作为性格发光。因为对内向的人的关注光芒很痛苦,所以专注于团队成员的贡献引起他们的注意。同时,每当您扮演领导角色时,您都会获得成功的项目的更多信用,而不是应有的。这意味着谈论团队的优势也可以很好地反映您。它使您有机会间接突出自我。因此,谈论团队可能是一种在组织职能上获得几句话并同时为他人提供服务的方式。

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