Active socially and still an introvert – may be!

I recently read two books that had little in common but for one idea… both authors chose their topic to build on how organizations should treat Thursdays for their employees. The first book "The Social Factor" was all about leveraging the Social Networking Tools to enhance collaboration in the organizations. The second one 'Quiet" was on how in the world full of non-stop talkers an introvert is still required (and sometime desired). Little in common or maybe I thought so…

In her book on using social networking tools, Maria Azua talks of using Thursdays as days to celebrate innovation. Organizations should give freedom to employees to engage in projects they desire to work. All they need is to publish the idea, have a team join in and present on different intervals. She thinks this collaboration helps motivate the work force.

On the other hand, in "Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking", Susan Cain advocates a different approach. Let Thursdays be a "Do not disturb" days where-in you cannot speak to each other. Use emails if required. No meetings can be set-up. This is the day to reflect and respond. She thinks it helps in bringing in-depth perspectives and helps solve challenges.

Both authors also developed further on helping organizations to innovate with such measures. While IBM stood for first, iWoz was quoted as core supporter of the other in Apple. While both these ideas sounded far from practical for my consulting life (sorry but I don’t think we are using Fridays as step back days that consulting fore-fathers envisioned it to be), I felt there would be a strong liking for both ideas in my client teams. Anyways, my idea of this post is not to debate which idea is better but which idea would I be more comfortable with and why?

The more I thought about this, the more I got convinced that I would rather go with the later one. I think I have always been a reflective type throughout my life. I started thinking more and more on this and then had this very interesting discussion with a friend from BCG on being introvert and extrovert. The more I read "Quiet", the more I got convinced that I have traits of that of an introvert far more visible. I deliberately stayed away from classic definitions of the terms but more on traits.

I also realized that where the level of my introvert nature was not constant in all my life, I made much stronger progress when I remained and retained things to myself. While some of my friends from my under-grad days would find this unbelievable that I am making such a claim, I am sure others from my school days or even MBA days would say "absolutely' to that. Today, I think I am taking a more in-between path but it comes with a lot of thinking, prep work and conscious efforts. For those of you already convinced with my argument, you can skip the next 13 points and can jump straight to next section. For those who don’t believe it yet; let me share some history with you:

1.      As a kid, I used to be very aloof in my class. In fact for a long time in my primary school, I went to the Teachers' staff room in lunch breaks and ate with my class teachers (yes!). I was afraid that someone in the class would hurt me or say something harsh. Funny that my mom even paid these teachers for my lunches in case my teachers decided to go out for lunch!

2.      In my second grade, when we went on a family vacation to Singapore, I would shy away from interacting from my dad's friends. I would not speak much… partially I felt language handicapped, but mostly because I had nothing to talk about for most part. My dad pretty much thought that I have some mental handicap – okay this may be going too far! My sister, on the other hand, was very much a fun kid to be around. She spoke whatever came to her mind and was an instant hit with those very same people. However, it is worth mentioning that when my mom wanted to go to a mall 2 KM from our hotel to do her shopping, I knew the way like a map in my brain! (Remember this was a 2nd grader in a different country altogether)…

3.      Later in my high school, I shied away from making too many friends. No marry band for me, I kept one or two close relations for most part and sought happiness in those. Even when I had the limelight, there was no flamboyance. I was the kid teachers would be proud of; but may be not the best of the classmate to have. To make things worse, whenever I said anything, I really went to extreme. My introvert and reflective nature knew where to hurt the most. Till date I am ashamed of some of the stuff I did or the comments I made to my fellow classmates… Not fun for a high school kid I say!

4.      It was but natural for me to develop some lonely hobbies as well (now it all makes sense). I started writing poetry in my 5th grade and by 9th grade, I became so good at it that I could fill-in for some of those make shift poets at the "Kavi Sammelans" – of course I never did that and confined to publishing anonymously in newspapers and magazines.

5.      My games were quite weird too… I would come back from school and would play with the old Auto parts in our backyard and make my own spaceships for hours... I could play competitive Tennis, Hockey, even Cricket all by myself. You may ask me how I made it competitive… I would take turns and call myself (say Australia) as I tried to hit the ball bouncing off a wall… give myself 6 balls and keep scores. Then India would bat and in mostly would win against the Australian team. It seems funny now that I almost felt a remorse if India could not win! May be my dad was right in thinking that I had some mental disorder growing up…

6.      Anyways, so what happened when I did go out to play…, don’t get me wrong I did a lot of team sports too… but I ended up picking a fight with someone or the other. Not that I wanted to but somehow I could not adjust to little things like pushing around someone on the field… not necessarily me… someone just anyone… I hated bullying and went all after that. The more I think of it now, it wasn’t the caring me that wanted to show-up there, it was more the isolated me that found it difficult to adjust to an otherwise normal life event. I went out some, and mostly came back with a swollen jaw or a swollen hand for most part!

7.      Even within my cousins, when we were far chirpier, I was more contained. The things we would do together would be more like running, swimming and painting competitions! I think it is also interesting to give a perspective here from my family culture: being talkative was not taken well for most part (compared to crows, and other stupid noisy animals). On the other hand, being silent was a sign of wisdom. You would only speak on a need basis – was the mantra I had heard so many times. It was but natural for the reflective I to embody that message for most part of my childhood and even later as a grown up.

8.      My ambitions also reflected my behavior and my intrinsic nature to a large degree. I didn’t want to become a consultant ever (even when I was 21, I didn’t know what the heck is consulting), my ideal was to be a scientist at NASA… not an astronaut mind you… most of those guys had too much personality for me, Scientist me lad!

9.      As I grew up, I tried to change my natural self a lot. I almost gave upon me when I stayed for one full year in the confines of my study room to prepare for the engineering entrance examinations. I hated myself…. Oh BTW, a fair audit on all those 12th graders that have fun solving those Irodov's physics problems, you are being tagged by me right now!... anyways so I changed and changed dramatically – I was full of drama, excitement as I stepped in to the wonderful world of IIT Delhi. There was a lot to do as well – sports, cultural activities, festivals, politics, drinks, … and I wanted to do it all. Just for the first time in my life, I was not reflecting back and I lost my goal and purpose in entirety… I forgot it is a college and my prime objective there was to study. However, even after having done it all and to a greater degree having successfully done it all, I sometime confided myself to my room and wrote Poetry and Drama. I sat on the last seat of the classrooms and didn’t interact much with my other classmates from Electrical Engineering. Most of them would not even know me had it not been my other self trying to prove that I can do things outside of academia. Aptly, I was given the "Absentee of the year" award at the end of our 4 years and even more apt was the fact that I didn’t go to that farewell function.

10.  It was also the time that I started developing some of my rash behavior. "I am going to try it out and not ponder over it a lot" was my motto and gosh I went rash. It is no wonder that Chitra till date thinks I am intrinsically fabricated like that as I met her then… I hope she would find a different me equally interesting now!

11.  Life moved on, I was in the corporate world where for most part I was working long hours … managing teams and was expected to form relations. For most part, I preferred to work late in the nights (until 4AM for most part) in the empty office and formed a few friendships. However, this time I made a conscious effort to balance out the other side of my nature… more of this later in the post but first let me cover the 2 more phases of my life where being an extrovert was almost a given.

12.  Business school – the Mecca of extroverts. You spend as much or even more time on teaming and networking inside, outside, left, right, center, upward, downward … pretty much in all directions you can THAN you ever spend in reading through the latest case study for the next day's class. My defense mechanism was most prominent here – I did something stupid in my undergrad and I am not going to repeat that! If there was a prize for attending minimum numbers of Tailgates, Happy hours and Parties; I would be one of the top contenders for that. Networking for job was a necessity and I hated those events. If it were not for my enterprising roommates, I would not have known most of my class.

13.  At BCG, I got my first feedback related to this nature on my first case itself. "… look to form a more than just transactional relationship with his contacts" (gosh our feedback system works!!!). I was indeed lucky to be on travel cases, having an excuse to travel to Michigan to meet with Chitra over weekends for I really found it tough to mingle with my outgoing colleagues. The fact that everyone (even nerds like me) finds a fit in BCG was really coming out to be true. Unlike most of my friends at work, I struggled with multi-tasking, didn’t like the change with every new projects and worst of all felt the need to speak only on need basis. True I didn’t struggle with most of my teams, but then we had a lot of content to talk about. What I was avoiding was the office dinners, Friday happy hours, and even more important from the organization perspective opening up myself to my cohort, seniors and juniors in the office. I didn’t know anyone's birthday let alone their marital status, how many kids and their names, pets and their names… and many more connection points. All this would have been fine, if I was scoring the highest marks in my Physics and Statistics exams so that people would take note of me, unfortunately there wasn’t one. The case feedback sort of filled some gaps, but then there was almost a MBA like non-disclosure unless you harp about it – and I being I, was not suited to do so…

So what if I am an introvert? For the believers or now turned believers, I want to bring something that my communication coach mentioned to me. It seemed to her that I am selectively introvert – How it that the same introvert person enjoys being on stage for a play, stand for leadership positions, manage big client groups, and have a good number of friends to talk to… I didn’t think so but in answering to that question the secret dawned upon me.

That answer was preparation– a lot of that. I have over the years tuned my brain to think so much so that I can almost see myself on the stage without even being there, I can run through with all the scenarios, anticipate the reactions and prepare myself for the counter-actions. Rehearsing the script 30 times before the show helped as well. Same logic goes for the client meetings or even elections. I didn’t mind reaching out to people if I could anticipate reactions and prepare for the consequences. Anticipating that I may not know something or not knowing what to say also was in fact part of those scenarios and it worked.

When I first heard that some of my friends in business school had an excel file with names of each student of the class and would go back to that to set lunch meetings, I was shocked. This stuff was for sales reps to keep. But then, I was biased and missed the point on preparing yourself to have some meaningful discussion and dialog with people. It makes you think of the content you want to talk about – may be something is interesting in their background that excites you… or even the recent case in the class. It does not have to be about the weather always and it can be a way to build some depth in the conversation, enrich your perspective rather than a mere chit-chat. I don’t have an excel yet, but I am using the birthday reminders a lot these days. I follow the LinkedIn updates to see how people are moving through their careers. Every once in a while, I also update people about me so that they feel it's mutual. In fact if you are reading this now, I am connecting with you!

The process is making me a dreamer now. I am traveling to places without ever being there and still form a picture of what would it like to be there. My brain has even started forming some memories around those experiences… While I am still not the one to arrange happy hours, annual dinners, I don’t hate them as much. I am making efforts to engage myself the same way, building talking points, sharing my perspectives of fun with others and seek tips. I prepare to seek people I want to meet, things I want to talk about, and at the same time be ready to face new faces. I am and will remain an introvert, but it is helping to be socially active than being socially awkward!