Building inclusive workplaces that make everyone feel that they belong is something all employers should be focusing on. One topic that I don’t hear talked about very often in our industry though is the difference in working styles between introverts and extraverts. So how can employers make sure their working practices, communication and talent acquisition strategies are working for everyone
My guest this week is Jennifer Kahnweiler, an author speaker and consultant who is hailed as a “champion for introverts” Her latest book explores how employers can unlock the potential of all of their talent by making workplaces more introvert-friendly.
In the interview, we discuss:
• The difference between introverts and extroverts in the context of work
• Differing communication styles
• Working from home and working alone
• Being visible and being heard
• What are employers doing to be more inclusive for introverts?
• The impact of the pandemic on communication
• Avoiding bias in interviewing and hiring
Subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts
Transcription:
Matt Alder [00:00:00]:
Support for this podcast is provided by Smart Recruiters. Smart recruiters offer an enterprise grade talent acquisition suite designed for hiring success. Future Proof your talent acquisition with a modern enterprise platform with everything you need to attract, select and hire the best talent. Over 4000 leading brands like Bosch, IKEA, LinkedIn and Visa Trust smart recruiters to deliver hiring success with them on a global scale. Visit smartrecruiters.com to take the first step on the path to hiring success.
Matt Alder [00:00:50]:
Hi everyone, this is Matt Alder. Welcome to episode 297 of the Recruiting Future podcast. Building inclusive workplaces that make everyone feel like they belong is something all employers should be focusing on. One topic that I don’t hear talked about very often in our industry though, is the difference in working styles between introverts and extroverts. So how can employers make sure their working practices, communication and talent acquisition strategies are working for everyone? My guest this week is Jennifer Kahnweiler, an author, speaker and consultant who is hailed as a champion for introverts. Her latest book explores how employers can unlock the potential of all of their talent by making workplaces more introvert friendly. Hi Jennifer, and welcome to the podcast.
Jennifer Kahnweiler [00:01:54]:
Matt, it’s a pleasure to be here.
Matt Alder [00:01:56]:
An absolute pleasure to have you on the show. Could you just introduce yourself and tell us what you do?
Jennifer Kahnweiler [00:02:02]:
Sure. My name’s Jennifer Kahnweiler and I am a speaker both virtually and live nowadays. And I also do consulting with companies. I’m an author of four books now on introverts at work. That is my niche, as we might say, and I’ve been working in that area for 12 years. Before that I was working inside companies and also had several businesses doing work in leadership development and career coaching.
Matt Alder [00:02:32]:
Fantastic stuff. Now this is really interesting to me because this is a topic that I wanted to cover on the podcast for some time and I think it’s something that I’ve not really seen talked about much in the recruiting and HR space. So I’m kind of really sort of excited to have this conversation with you today. Give us a little bit of context around introverts and extroverts in the context of work. What are the differences? Talk us through this topic.
Jennifer Kahnweiler [00:02:59]:
Sure. And I’m glad you’re asking the question, Matt, because a lot of people assume what, you know, what an introvert is or isn’t. And there is a lot more awareness, say over the last decade because of Many of us working in this area, but it’s really about energy. You know, this term came up way back in the time of Carl Jung, the psychologist, when he talked about energy that introverts got from within. And that’s still sort of what we go by, that introverts get energized by quiet time, by having solitude, by being calm, and all of those things that we attribute to sort of a just a quiet temperament. There are many other characteristics that we associate with introverts, but that’s really what it’s about. If you think of it like a battery. Introverts can certainly be out with people and very engaging. In fact, many leaders who I work with in companies, people think that they’re extroverts and they’re really introverts. And how they determine that? Well, sometimes through testing, but it’s really about how much you need to decompress after being with people. So that’s really how we think about introverts. And you know, Matt, it’s really like a spectrum now that’s kind of also how we think about personality type. And so all of us have both qualities within us. You know, extroverts on the other end of the scale tend to be energized by being out there, you know, and people. It’s not like introverts don’t like people, but extroverts crave that time and they get charged up by people, you know, when they go to a party, it’s as many people that they can get to talk to is what really gives them, you know, a lot of stimuli, excitement. And of course that depends how strong an introvert or an extrovert you are. So they don’t need. They like decompressing. But extroverts don’t need it, must not absolutely have to have it where introverts do in order to go out again into the world. So I hope that gives you kind of a clarity on that.
Matt Alder [00:05:00]:
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s interesting that you say it’s on a scale because I can never work out whether I’m an introvert or an extrovert because sometimes I have to be by myself and as you say, decompress. And sometimes I love being on stage and feeding off the energies of the energy of the room and meeting people.
Jennifer Kahnweiler [00:05:17]:
Yes, and I was just going to say there was just some adjectives too that people use to determine whether they are or not. And I tell them not to get hung up in the definition, Matt either, you know, but things like I said, like if you like these one on one conversations. If you like to prepare, if you’re, you know, if listening is really a strength of your. There’s many sort of clues that might reveal whether you’re introverted. That’s all I wanted to say on that. So it’s not just about energy.
Matt Alder [00:05:42]:
So how does this manifest itself at.
Jennifer Kahnweiler [00:05:44]:
Well, in many ways. I mean people act in certain ways. As I mentioned, there’s behaviors so that people who are introverted have sometimes do things differently they tend to do than extroverts would. So I’ll give you some just specific examples. I’m all about, you know, behaviors and practices. So perhaps you might say that a person who doesn’t speak up in a meeting very often, but listens carefully and then contributes or maybe contributes after the meeting, that person might have more introverted tendencies. That might be one example. And so many times if somebody’s very thoughtful, let’s say in an interview, and they don’t rush to answer the question, but they might pause for a moment, that’s a clue that somebody’s showing more introverted tendencies. So again, it’s about observing and kind of being very sensitive to the way people are manifesting of their thoughts and their actions.
Matt Alder [00:06:41]:
Would I be right in saying that workplaces maybe tend to be set up more for people who are extroverts? So there’s this value in speaking up and promoting itself and pushing yourself forward with that. Would that still be an accurate thing to say?
Jennifer Kahnweiler [00:06:57]:
Yes, I would say if we’re looking globally, Western types organizations and many companies are now, even when they’re in the east, you know, are set up to be that way. You’re absolutely right, you know, to be out there, to be networking and schmoozing, to be actually talking about your accomplishments, you know, and we have an expression here in the south, in Atlanta where I live, where, you know, don’t brag on yourself like, don’t, don’t boast about yourself. But there’s some of that that goes on too. Like you’re, if you’re not kind of sharing what you’re doing, then you know, you really have nothing to contribute. Now, you know, connecting that again to talent acquisition. If people are getting promoted in an organization, I’ve heard this happen many, many times where somebody that hasn’t been talking about their accomplishments to others and has had their heads down, you know, doing the work and really accomplishing things, but not sharing those, then if people don’t know that, then they oftentimes very, very with, with some terrible Results you’ll get passed over. And that’s kind of what drew me to this work, Matt, was like I, I was working internally in organizations and I kept seeing people who were so talented and so competent going for positions either in their organizations or outside and not getting even a chance to interview or when they interviewed were seen as sort of not having that spunk, you know, or that energy. So yes, in many ways our companies and organizations are set up to be more extrovert friendly. And that’s why my latest book about creating introvert friendly workplaces was really, I felt needed. It was a book that needed to be written.
Matt Alder [00:08:36]:
Absolutely. And is there kind of any research around that in terms of how introverts feel? Do they feel valued? Do they, do they feel engaged?
Jennifer Kahnweiler [00:08:45]:
Well, you know, I went to, for, for every book I go and look and do my Google searches and you know, find what’s out there and I couldn’t find very much at all, almost nothing about, about companies and what they were doing as. But I did know that I wanted to reach out in a more formal way to my, my clients and, and introverts. You. And so what I did is I put together my own questionnaire and got really good response. We had over 240 respondents who were mostly introverts, Matt. And they talked about in very strong terms how they felt. It wasn’t all bad news, it wasn’t all negative, but there was some very passionate, I should say, comments about and I include a lot of these in the book. I wish that our executive director would take time to talk to me. With him, it’s all about who yells the loudest. I’m not like that. I feel very ostracized here because I’m quiet and do things differently. That wasn’t just one comment. It was a tremendous amount. I have found that through my 12 years in working in this that there’s a tremendous amount of frustration. That was a place to start to take a look at, well, what could I do to find pockets of introvert inclusion? Where are things working? Well, actually in our survey we found that, you know, there were some positive steps. Like even before COVID almost 60% of respondents said that working remotely was an acceptable option for them. And you know, many introverts really, if they don’t have lots of kids underfoot, let’s put that qualifier really do, like working from home because they can focus and they can manage their time. And so that was happening. And almost 60% said it was acceptable for them to work alone. So I was really Surprised about that. And, but you know, as, again, on the, on the frustrating side, you know, almost 30, about 30% of our respondents said that they actually observed efforts to engage them in meetings. And I think that’s even now more strongly felt on our virtual zoom meetings where people are having a hard time being, being visible and being heard. So, yeah, there’s, there’s, you know, frustration, but I always, I guess I’m a glass half full kind of, kind of person. I’m seeing also that there are some changes too.
Matt Alder [00:11:08]:
Just to dig into to that a little bit deeper. What are companies who, who are sort of thinking about this, you know, what are they doing to make the way they work more inclusive for people who are introverts?
Jennifer Kahnweiler [00:11:21]:
Well, I appreciate that question because there are, there are companies that are doing a really good job of starting that discussion. I can’t say that it’s been at the top of the mind of, of CEOs, but what they’re doing is really taking a look at this. One of the things, Matt, is under the diversity and inclusion and equity umbrella. So they’re looking at introversion. It’s just another thing that we consider another quality or personality temperament that we consider in the mix and most importantly, that we don’t use it as a knockout factor. So one of the things that some companies are doing are bringing in trainings on this and including it as an aw. So, you know, for instance, I’ve been doing quite a few lately, fireside chats with senior leaders where we talk about what introversion is, the qualities and strengths that introverts contribute, how to overcome our bias. You know, we all grow up with biases that we’re not even aware of, you know, of the person that doesn’t speak. They have nothing to say, you know, or they’re angry if they’re not showing anything on their face. We kind of take a look at those and really question our assumptions and we talk about those things in these discussions. And I got to tell you, the, the amount of, of engagement we get on these chats is just incredible. People relate and they relate, Matt, not just from a work standpoint. You know, when things hit us from a personal standpoint, when we think about that, that child or that parent or that sibling that we’ve had a hard time connecting with or we felt like we were the other, you know, in our families, it gives us another context to consider this and to learn. So companies are doing that. They’re, you know, sharing, sharing this knowledge. That’s the first step is really understanding what it is. They’re also. I came across one company sort of at the end of my writing of the book. I was connected with this person who, who was actually doing a lot in his company to start employee resource groups around introversion. And they were having a lot of success. They were doing panels, you know, giving people a chance to understand more about it and to see even to the point of view of having a tool which I really love this and I include that in the book. It’s a company called 8451 in introvert friendly workplaces where they actually have a flip the script tool, Matt, where they say if you’re seeing somebody and they’re not participating, don’t make this assumption and do this. They’re giving you actually a job aid on how to actually communicate with introverts when you’re making perhaps wrong assumptions with them. Like don’t say something for instance, like what’s wrong? Right. Which is nothing’s wrong. But extroverts in particular have a hard time with, with seeing people that aren’t showing a lot of expression the way they like to do it. You know, they project their own way of being on introverts. So they go, what’s wrong? What’s wrong? A penny for your thoughts. Which I used to do by the way, before I knew about this with my husband. So thank God I learned about introversion early on in my relationship.
Matt Alder [00:14:27]:
I just want to talk about the maybe long term impact of the pandemic and the changes that we’ve seen to working life and talent management and performance management and communication and everything that’s. That sort of happened in 2020. So you mentioned that for some introverts, you know, working, working at home by themselves and having that space to think and be reflective is actually a really powerful thing. But I would imagine from a communication perspective where companies are still working out, what are the best ways to commun remotely and people having sort of all day back to back zoom calls and things like that. What would your advice be to companies in terms of being as inclusive as possible with that communication to take introverts into account?
Jennifer Kahnweiler [00:15:15]:
Well, you know Matt, I think one of the opportunities that we’ve had during this time, as you say, is to really step back and observe what’s working and where we have opportunities to learn. And so when we reenter in whatever form that is, we are going to be better for this experience. And I hope that, you know, everybody’s looking at it that way from an individual standpoint. You know, what have I Learned about how I work best or what can I take from this type of a setting, let’s say it remote, that I could, I can bring back into my, into my life. So I think that, you know, first of all is very important that we, we don’t just say, oh, this was a bad time and I’m, it’s a bad dream, right, And I’m going back into, going back into the office. So I think the learning is very important. I think one of the other things to think about going forward and actually now still during COVID is to as team members and as leaders, we do need to connect with people. And you kind of referred to that about, you know, we’re getting a little tired. I think of all of the back to back. I just don’t think that works very well. So you know, looking at options, like if you’re having a zoom call, do we need to keep our cameras on the whole time? You know, let’s just make some new ground rules about that. Do we need to have a meeting? You know, and that was a question actually Matt, right before COVID I mean there are a lot of times that we meet that we really don’t need to be meeting in larger groups. Maybe we have a one on one phone call. Many introverts told, told us that they really prefer email or they prefer connecting through a program like Slack or whatever their company’s using rather than constantly having, you know, these meetings that, that can really be the, the really draining part of the workday. So I think again looking at options and then the third thing is to ask people, introverts and extroverts, what is the best way for me to communicate with you? And with, if you don’t have that conversation, it’s like the elephant in the room. You know, you’re kind of just figuring out, well, what’s the best way? Or you know, you wonder why somebody’s not engaged when you call them just off the cuff, you know, and you don’t let them know you’re calling. And if they’re an introvert, for instance, they, they might like a heads up, they probably will so they can at least spend a few moments preparing right for that phone call. So you surprise them, but you, then you’re not understanding why they’re not willing to take your call or not engage. So understanding what each person needs and each person’s going to be different. It’s not just even about introvert extrovert. You know, what do I need? What’s going on in my life? You know that’s going to affect, I think we’ve all learned that too, that the boundaries have become more blurry. We see the senior leaders, messy kitchen, everybody becomes a little more real to each other. Well, we need to not forget that that is important to consider our lives outside of work. And so even though introverts really do like privacy and like having those boundaries set many times, they’ve also learned to be more flexible.
Matt Alder [00:18:20]:
Just want to zoom in a little bit around hiring and recruiting. We’re going for a time where companies have to rework their recruiting processes and think about everything that they do. What would your advice be to companies when it, when it comes to hiring?
Jennifer Kahnweiler [00:18:32]:
Well, Matt, I think it’s. We’ve been saying this a long time. You and I have been around this field for a while and I think it’s just even more important than ever, particularly within the lens of this personality. Introvert, extrovert. We don’t want introversion to be a knockout factor. So I think when we are deciding what qualities, competency, skills, knowledge, experience, education, capacity for complexity is a term that I learned from Susan Schmidt, who’s very committed to diversity in her hiring. She was the former Rockwell head and she works at, at, she was at Rockwell Automation, now works at Applied Materials. And I, I’ve spent quite a bit of time interviewing Susan, who developed a very cool sustainability model, suitability model that we included in the book. And one of the things she, she talked about and I think other, really people like Patty McCord and other progressive HR people is to not include, not divorce diversity from hiring. And so we really need to look at is this personality that you’re seeing in this person emerge? Is it really going to be a knockout factor in the job or can they do the job beautifully? How important is it that they be very enthusiastic and very loud and expressive and rah rah. That may not have anything to do with how incredible a leader they can be. So I just think we need to look at that in context and when we bring that awareness into the interview process, into the, you know, even decide, as I said, who we’re going to be recruiting. And looking at how we structure that interviewing day, that was another thing that came up quite a bit in my discussions. You know, in actually the process of that, that’s, it’s really key. Do we make it a burnout day for people and just, you know, leverage the whole time we have with them so by the end of the day, they’re really not the same person we saw at the beginning. You’re going to exhaust introverts and not get the best out of who you’re potentially hiring. So again, just put this lens, you know, it’s like a pair of glasses. Like look through these glasses as you’re looking at hiring and retaining employees and it’s going to do you well in all aspects.
Matt Alder [00:20:51]:
I guess that it really is. A lot of it is down to bias. It’s using criteria around was this person full of energy and engaged and speaking up and doing all that kind of stuff and using that as a lens to kind of really introduce bias into the process because how does that actually reflect on how well they’re going to do the job?
Jennifer Kahnweiler [00:21:09]:
Right, right. And who are we losing, Matt to? You know, who’s the company, what new ideas, creativity, innovation are we losing? So if we have people who we know have been spoken up for, they’re advocates for that individual in the room when they’re making the decision about hiring or promotion, we can all be advocates, we can all say, let’s question that. You’re saying this person isn’t suitable, but please tell me the behaviors you think they’re demonstrated that are going to not allow them to do the job. So we have to, we can all be change agents, Matt. And that’s my belief very strongly that we can really advocate for people and not make, as you say, not make it a biased decision because we just, they just don’t have that. What is it? Je ne sais quoi? I just don’t know. You know, we have to really understand what the job needs and if that person has those skills and competencies that I, I mentioned and they can, they can develop the people skills if they need them in the job. And everybody of course needs them. But don’t let their introversion be a source for you to reject them.
Matt Alder [00:22:21]:
Final question. Where can people find and connect with you and where can they find the book?
Jennifer Kahnweiler [00:22:26]:
Well, thank you. Yeah, the book is available everywhere. All my books are the Introverted Leader and Quiet Influence and I wrote one called Genius Opposites, this new one, they all are available on your favorite bookseller. I’d love people if they can go to my website. That’s really the best way. We’re launching a new website this week which has a lot of resources on it and actually a quiz that you can take to understand in very short amount of time. It takes less than five minutes how introvert friendly your organization is and it’s right there on the homepage. So I appreciate you asking that.
Matt Alder [00:22:57]:
Jennifer, thank you very much for talking to me.
Jennifer Kahnweiler [00:22:59]:
It’s been my pleasure. Thank you for your interest.
Matt Alder [00:23:02]:
My thanks to Jennifer Kahnweiler. You can subscribe to this podcast in Apple Podcasts on Spotify or via your podcasting app of choice. Please also follow us on Instagram. You can find the show by searching for Recruiting Future. You can search through all the past episodes@www.recruitingfuture.com on that site. You can also subscribe to the mailing list to get the inside track about everything that’s coming up on the show. Thanks very much for listening. I’ll be back next time and I hope you’ll join me.
