Accessibility, Reciprocity, and the Need to Refuel
Introverted managers should clearly communicate how they work best, but that is only half of defining a healthy working relationship.
The other half is understanding how the people you manage work best.
Your temperament may explain your preferences, but it does not release you from the responsibility to lead people whose needs are different from your own.
When explaining your management style to employees, avoid giving them a list of restrictions:
“I don’t like interruptions.”
“I don’t want people stopping by my office.”
“I don’t enjoy lengthy conversations.”
“I need everything in an email.”
That may be honest, but it is not particularly helpful. It places the entire burden of the relationship on the other person.
A productive conversation should do three things:
First, attach reasons to restrictions.
Explain why you protect certain blocks of time or prefer to receive information in a particular way. Employees are more likely to respect a boundary when they understand the purpose behind it.
Second, provide alternate paths for people to get what they need.
If constant interruptions make it difficult for you to concentrate, establish regular check-in times. One manager I worked with created a weekly “dump meeting” where an employee could bring the questions, updates, and concerns that had accumulated during the week.
The employee received predictable access. The manager received protected concentration time.
Third, acknowledge the value of the other person’s working style.
An extroverted employee may need to process ideas out loud. A highly relational employee may need more frequent connection than you naturally provide. A spontaneous employee may struggle with your preference for preparation and structure.
Their needs are not character defects. They are interpersonal realities.
Healthy workplace relationships require reciprocity. That means mutual respect and support for the needs associated with both performance and well-being.
Introverted leaders can practice what I call strategic ambiversion. We deliberately step into more outwardly engaged behaviors when those behaviors serve the people and purposes we lead.
One practical example is walk-around management.
Before retreating to your office, take a few minutes to move through the workplace and initiate several brief conversations. Ask what people are working on, whether they are encountering any obstacles, and what they need from you.
Those few minutes can build relationship collateral, increase management efficiency, and reduce the likelihood that people will interrupt you later because they have been waiting all morning for access.
It also communicates something important: “I may be quiet, but I am not unavailable.”
All relationships involve give and take. Introverts need organizational consideration, but we must also understand the needs of extroverts and go a reasonable distance to meet them.
That can be difficult when someone’s way of seeing, processing, and responding to life is almost the opposite of ours.
Many years ago, my wife and I worked with a large group of college students providing support for the practical matters of their life and spiritual guidance. As you might suspect, that role involved a tremendous amount of relationship advice.
One of my favorite things to tell couples was this:
Early in a relationship, you spend a lot of energy trying to get the other person to like you. Later, you can sabotage the relationship by trying to get the other person to be like you.
We have developed a wicked cultural habit of expecting people to think, react, communicate, hold values, and even vote the way we do as a condition of liking them.
The same tendency appears in workplaces.
It is easier to form relationships with people who are similarly hardwired. But similarity cliques create clear lines between insiders and outsiders. Eventually, those lines contribute to social segregation, organizational silos, and the loss of perspectives we desperately need.
Introverts are wonderful, smart, talented, and, if I may say so, damned good looking. Our strengths are necessary for the wise and lasting function of organizations.
But we also need the energy, talent, ideas, and perspectives of the equally good looking people who are distinctly different from us.
Celebrate them. Include them. Choose to enjoy them.
Then, after practicing all that ambiversion, make time to recover.
Activities that require sustained extroverted behavior can be psychologically draining for introverts. Effective self-management requires patterns, routines, and restorative practices that help us maintain or reset our equilibrium.
Take the quiet drive home. Protect some empty space on your calendar. Walk without listening to anything. Close the door. Read. Think. Sit in silence.
You do not need to apologize for restoring the energy you have spent.
Introverted leadership is not about becoming an extrovert.
It is about learning when to step forward, how to remain accessible, and when to become quiet again.