Extroversion is praised within American (and similar) society. People who speak the most, process thoughts out loud, or are very social often get a lot of attention, and it is typically positive. They often appear more confident or assertive. Extroversion can be a proxy for competency.
But it wasn’t always this way. In Susan Cain’s book “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking,” she traces the history of valuing extroversion to the changing society of the industrial revolution. American values shifted when we moved from distributed agricultural communities and migrated into larger metropolitan areas. As members of small, close-knit communities centered around farming and family, society placed value on inward traits like work ethic, integrity, and kindness. But the new industrial cities created more anonymous environments, and the ability to stand out or have your individual ideas heard became more important. Extroversion was realized as a positive trait. (Susan Cain also has an excellent TED Talk on the power of introversion.)
Introversion and extroversion may be opposites, but most people fall somewhere on the spectrum between them. The exact middle would be defined as an ambivert, a true balance of either end. Introversion or extroversion also may depend on a person’s environment or familiarity with a group.
Regardless, the goal of a product team is to empower all members of the team to actively contribute. We are also always looking for team members bringing a variety opinions and outlooks, and having a diverse team in terms of personalities is beneficial. Having introverts on the team can balance the more outspoken personalities. Introverts can also bring a level of thoughtful deliberation and depth of perspective, where extroverts may be quicker to act.
However, just having diverse personalities on the team is not enough - you must accommodate everyone’s communication styles to encourage their participation. In addition to psychological safety, there are other ways to create a more inclusive experience for all personalities, especially in our meeting-centric business environment. Generally these accommodations lead to more thorough and thoughtful discussions and decision-making.
Collaboration Tools - I am a huge proponent of Miro, but any collaborative virtual space can do the trick if it provides real-time commenting in multiple modes. Polling during a meeting can also be helpful here.
Collective Brainstorm prior to discussion - Many of my stand-up prompts follow a similar format of asking a question of the team, providing an opportunity to answer individually (usually through stickies on a board) and then coming back together to discuss. Even if all ideas don’t get discussed, they are usually all read, and will be recorded in meeting artifacts.
Agendas! - Letting meeting attendees know what topics will be discussed or what decisions will be made provide those people who need a longer deliberation time to do so prior to the meeting starting.
Asynchronous “meetings” - Beginning a dedicated discussion thread via Teams or Slack allows team members to answer once they are confident, or to decide on the correct wording before sharing.
What else? Brainstorm more accommodations with your team through the stand-up exercise below.
And, perhaps one of the best considerations of all personalities is simply making space for them. Paying attention to the different needs and preferences of everyone - and valuing those individual differences - creates a culture of respect and acceptance within the team. That leads to better team health, and happier team members - regardless of personality.
STAND-UP EXERCISE
Ask your team to take an introversion/extroversion quiz to see where they might fall on the scale. I had my team use this one from TED.
In our stand-up, we discussed results by polling based on the quiz result. Then, they answered the question of their own accord, placing a dot on a spectrum of where they felt they landed between extrovert and introvert both in their professional life and their personal life. Discussing how these roles flipped for folks between the two environments was very interesting.
We ended with a brainstorm and discussion prompted by the question “How can we better accommodate team members along all points on the scale in meetings / ceremonies / work streams?” The goal is to incorporate those ideas into our product team meetings.
