I’m an introvert. And so are many of my friends… and that’s despite the fact that our jobs are (basically) about being with people, talking to people, and working with people. No wonder I’m knackered by the end of the day.
It’s something I’m often asked about, particularly by people trying to get with grips with MBTI for the first time:
You can’t be an introvert – all you ever do is work with groups of strangers!
That’s a misunderstanding of the meaning of ‘introvert’ in the Jungian sense – in the sense that MBTI uses it. I can act like an extravert – it’s just that it drains me to do so, whereas I know trainers who’re extraverts who come out of a day’s training absolutely buzzing with energy. After all, they’ve made 12 new friends in the day! 🙂
And I can tell you, speaking as an introvert, that being one is something of a liability because of that – but in another sense it’s an advantage. The advantage is that I’m less ‘bothered’ by the audience/groups responses as I work with them, explaining things and exploring things.
It’s not that I don’t care about them – it’s just that I’m less instinctively ‘swingy’ about things. As an introvert I’m more likely to ‘stick to my guns’. If a things are going well with lots of interaction I don’t so easily get carried away and if they’re not going so well I don’t so easily get brought down.
It makes being an introvert a pretty handy tool for working with people.
(PS: the advantages of being an extravert coming later! 🙂 )
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