How to lead introverts without harm to health

Introverts are shy, silent and closed in their little world. Extroverts are friendly, open, always ready to talk. This is the opinion of the inhabitant.

In the IT sphere, introverts are commonplace, so there are few stereotypes about them. If the admin colleague prefers silence and loneliness, he will not be accused of being separated from the team. Everyone knows that he is so comfortable. The leader is the first person to take this into account.
')

Introverts and extraverts at work: what's important to know

Comfort

Extrovert is able and loves to work in a team. Once or twice, he establishes contacts and generates ideas on the fly.

Introvert is productive in silence and solitude. He prefers to communicate less often, better in a chat. For ideas he needs time, but they will be weighed from all sides.

A responsibility

The extrovert is used to sharing both work and responsibility. It is difficult for him to lead the task alone. But on the other hand, he is a master of negotiations (he is having a great interview, he quickly agrees with colleagues from other departments).

Introvert works alone and is responsible for everything. Even if he asks for the advice of colleagues, he considers only himself responsible for the task. May lead a large project, where extraverts will be responsible for communication.



It is important to remember that in addition to comfort in communication, there is comfort in the traditional sense. Conditions for rest: exercise equipment, massage chair or just a chair in the negotiation room. And conditions for work: a screen with high resolution and color for the designer, the second monitor for the programmer. These comfort attributes are equally important to all employees. With them, they work more efficiently.

But introverts may have specific needs. Screen-partition for the table to hide from neighbors in the office. Headphones to hear less and think better. A separate office, if you need complete solitude. Find out what comfort your introvert needs. Give what he wants and the employee will work better.

It seems simple, but imagine that a new person has come to your team. If this is an extrovert, he will quickly show himself on a near brainstorming session. The introvert is more difficult: it will take more time to evaluate it. In the meantime, he huddled in his working corner, buried his face in the screen and does something. And you immediately chair him softer and more powerful laptop. Well, it will be gone in a week, and the new expensive equipment will be gathering dust in the warehouse - not terrible, is it? Not true. More comfortable working and rest conditions are the privilege of a trusted employee.

Opaque employees

How to gain trust, illustrates a simple matrix. We stumbled upon it on the Stratoplan blog .



Item A. Any new employee is here. He has a minimal reserve of trust (otherwise how was he hired?), But he has not yet ensured the transparency of his actions. At first, this is normal, but if the employee does not develop, this is the way to dismissal.

Consider the saddest outcome in our example. Tanya, marketing director : “When I took office, a programmer worked in the department. Let's call him Peter. Peter was creating the site. As an old employee, I trusted him, as a new person for me — not so much. Petya didn't care. He did not go to the Friday department meetings: “Well, I’m not a marketer.” About the task with the site did not tell - "I will make in time what else to explain?". I doubted, but kept: thought, probably, for a programmer in marketing, this is normal. And when the deadline came, Peter did not have time. I could not explain myself, because I couldn’t have been warned in advance about any “I don't have time”. Despite the failure, Petya did not want to change and talk about new tasks. I had to part.

How could Peter change? Let's return to the matrix:

Item D. Increased confidence without increased transparency. This is possible, but this is a shaky way - promotion at the expense of connections. Petya could provide his boss a personal service. With Tanya, this would hardly have passed, but it is quite possible in another team. This is a simple and fast, but unreliable growth option: if you do something wrong in your work, you can’t regain your former trust.

Item B. Increased transparency - quality development of the employee. He is always followed by an increase in trust. Increase transparency can be a detailed discussion of the tasks, additional questions to the head and regular check-ins. This is exactly what Tanya expected from Petit.

Point C. Petya could get here from point B if he began to tell more about his tasks. Here he would have both development and good career growth.

Over time, Petya could reduce his reports and move from point B to D - this is a natural development. When a manager trusts an employee and sees his work in full view - he asks to reduce transparency in order to save his time. And only a large fail, which deprives an employee of every confidence, moves him to point A - to the beginning of the path.



The employee must understand: the matrix does not just help to achieve the confidence of the manager. It shows the path to organic development and growth in the company. Reduces control and gives more weight to your word during discussions.

Use comfort as an additional motivation. Explain that when confidence in a novice grows, you will be able to provide more comfortable working and relaxing conditions. On mandatory introverts, this acts perfectly: a situation without trust for them is stressful, and without comfort and trust all the more.

When an employee is smarter than a manager

Basically the matrix works fine. But if the new employee is more qualified in his field than the manager, the battle for leadership begins.

When Egor came to the department, Tanya already used the matrix of trust / transparency. Yegor agreed that the scheme was excellent, but it did not work with him.

Egor was engaged in SEO and analytics. He did so incomprehensible work for the manager that reports required too much time and effort. It took a long time to explain the obvious things for Egor, which is painful for any introvert.

Tanya couldn’t ask less from Yegor - she didn’t talk about anything to her. Had to risk and let go of control. As soon as she left him alone for one task, everything changed.

The task was to set up contextual advertising. At that time, she was engaged in the agency. There was some kind of result, some kind of income, but the money was poured more out of habit. Egor analyzed the campaign and said that she did not bring a single client. Tanya did not believe it. For another half a year she did not give up under the pressure of persuasion. During this time, we set up e-commerce in analytics - we made sure that people go, but there are no purchases. Then the ads turned off, and the income has not changed. We refused the services of the agency, and Egor set up a new campaign. She brought targeted visitors who paid. Income grew 8 times, and the cost of one customer decreased 6 times.

Egor showed the result - proved that he was a cool specialist, and Tanya began to trust him. With confidence appeared and transparency. Now it was enough for him to describe the work in general terms, and Tanya knew that he was busy with work.

We build a team on interests

Trust in a relationship with a manager is half the beginner's problems. For comfortable work it is important for him to make friends with the whole team. Introversion is especially difficult - he is selective in communication and has difficulty making contacts.

Someone grows strawberries on the wall, someone plays in the Warhammer, bodybuilding, riding a board. The task of the head - to find points of contact. For this you need talent - you will not teach, you will not drink. But there is a simpler way ...



Choose something commanding and non-trivial, like karting or paintball (we have set off with a bang). Introvert relax, feel part of the team. Now you can in the pub - a great place to get to know better. Let the story of yourself begin the oldest employees. Until you reach the new, there will be no restraint. After such an event, the newcomer will be his own - tested on a dozen of our introverts :)



Cases are based on facts from the life of FirstVDS marketing. Almost all names are saved, any coincidences with real people and events are intended.

PS: We did not seek to give a universal strategy for introverting leadership. In the article only our experience.

Share your stories in the comments - discuss;)