>> CINDY SOBIERAJ: Today's webinar is titled an Introvert's Journey to Leadership.
Our presenter today is alumnus Ben Woelk, program manager for the information security office
at RIT, where he's developed a leading information security awareness program.
Ben is a member and former co-chair of the EDUCAUSE/Internet2 Security Awareness and
Training Working Group of the Higher Education Information Security Council.
He is also a former Director and Community Affairs Committee Chair for the Society for
Technical Communication and is the current Scholarship Committee Chair.
Ben is a certified information systems security professional, a professional technical communicator,
and accredited trainer.
Ben holds degrees from the University of Florida, Trinity International University, and the
University of Rochester and an advanced certificate in technical information design from RIT.
Ben is an adjunct faculty member at RIT, teaching classroom and online courses and computing
security fundamentals and technical communications.
He provided technical communications and change management consulting to a number of area
Fortune 500 companies.
His current interests include working with other security awareness programs to develop
effective security awareness programs and providing mentoring and coaching to new aspiring
leaders and hosting workshops creating security awareness programs and technical communication.
Ben, we're thrilled to have you with us.
Let's get going.
>> BEN WOELK: Thanks, Cindy, for the introduction.
My apologies for such a daunting bio to read with faulty acronyms.
That's one of the dangers in being in information security.
We're not going to talk about security today.
We're going to talk about introversion and my personal journey.
It's interesting.
I found this presentation, talking deeply about a subject you know a lot about, it's
very difficult to talk about yourself.
So that's something I've had to learn to do as part of this presentation.
So this is a picture of me doing karoke at an international conference with somebody
who was very much an extrovert.
Despite that fact, yes, I really am an introvert.
What I've found is, as I've learned about introversion and about the strengths and gets
of honestly being an introvert, that's helped me understand if I could even be a leader,
which is something I questioned many times early in my career.
I really believe this self understanding and leveraging these skills around learning where
my strengths and weaknesses are has made me a better leader.
I think we have a poll question now.
The initial poll questions: Are you an introvert or extrovert?
We're going to ask this now, and we're going to ask it in a few minutes, as we get farther
into the presentation, to see if things have shifted a bit.
If you're not sure, you can choose not sure if you're not sure either way.
Now, what's interesting is the groups I normally associate with, our technical communicators
and information security people, those are pretty much a lot of introverted people.
So we usually see a much larger attendance on the introversion side than the extrovert
side.
I will refrain from comments on that.
>> CINDY SOBIERAJ: Results are coming up shortly, Ben.
>> BEN WOELK: Okay.
So what we're seeing is the introverts were very excited to tune into this presentation,
but we have quite a few people who might not be sure either way.
And here are our results.
>> CINDY SOBIERAJ: There we go.
We have some introverts on the webinar.
>> BEN WOELK: We'll talk about what is an introvert and what distinguishes an introvert
from an extrovert.
More importantly, for the purposes of this presentation, how those apply to leadership,
my personal part and how it worked for me.
We'll discuss things you can do to discover your hidden abilities, introvert strengths,
and what strategies you can use to develop those as well.
So I've got a set of pictures up here around extroverts.
These are all kind of designed to give us a feel for what life is like as an extrovert.
Granted, some of the pictures can be taken either way.
I know several introverts who actually skydive, but for extroverts, most of the interest is
really around the outer world of people and things, not so much the inner-thought life,
which we'll talk about when we talk about introverts.
Extroverts tend to be very active.
They tend to have a variety of interests.
I'm speaking in generalities.
My family, everybody besides, me is an extrovert.
For them, it's very much, Let's get out and go, go, go.
For me, I would prefer to sit at home after being at work.
My son is what Myers-Briggs -- which we're not going to go into in any depth at all.
He comes in as a champion in Myers-Briggs.
As an extrovert, he has to experience things to understand them.
I think it's a truism we hear as parents that we really can't seem to tell our kids things.
A lot of times, they have to experience it.
For him, that's very much the case.
Everything has to kind of be full board as he jumps into things.
If there's a mountain, he has to climb it.
If there's a pier, he has to go to the end of it, or the trip is just not complete.
For him, this actually experiencing things and then understanding them is how he functions.
They sometimes seem to be reward seekers.
They may pursue fame.
This may not be the case all the time, but in terms of reward seekers, in terms of gambling
even, this idea that I can win big.
I want that kind of experience.
Many introverts tend to be more conservative than that.
They also re-energize by solar panels.
What this means is -- and this is really going to be a key differentiators.
To re-energize by solar panels, it means for an extrovert, they get their energy from being
around people and drawing from groups of people.
So if you go to a party, and there are extroverts -- There's going to be extroverts or there
wouldn't be a party.
The extroverts are usually in the center of the room.
That's where the loud conversation is going on.
If it's a long party, they come back more energized than before they went to it.
Now, for introverts, it's a little bit different.
Introverts are much more focused on their inner world of ideas and impressions.
One of the things that took a while for me to learn as I was married was that when my
spouse was talking to me and wanting reflections on things, she really wanted me to respond
out loud.
I would sit there, and I have all these thoughts in my head, but they would stay within my
head.
I would really be quite active thinking about things, but for somebody outside, they frankly
couldn't even see if I was thinking at all.
So introverts are, again, much more interested in this inner world of ideas and impressions.
They tend to have a depth of interests.
When you think of scientists, researchers who go very deep into a subject, that's the
kind of person you would see as an introvert.
For me, this is even carried into hobbies and things like that.
I do model railroading.
Now, for many people, that would mean you have a circle track around your Christmas
tree.
For me, as an introvert, no.
I'm modeling 1957 in Chicago around Dearborn stations, and I want to have the traffic patterns.
It's not like, Hey, I like trains, so I'm going to do this.
They're interested in thoughts and concepts and big ideas and what that could mean for
things, even the future.
We tend to be inwardly reflective.
We have conversations going on in our heads, but we may not say that out loud, and people
do not know that.
As introverts, we energize by recharging.
Now, with extroverts, we talked about the need to be around large groups of people or
groups of people and drawing energy for that.
For an introvert, being at a party around a large group of noisy people can be absolutely
draining.
We don't gain energy.
We lose energy from that.
For us to re-energize, as an introvert, we need that time alone.
Maybe we're binging through Netflix or at home reading a novel or in a quiet place where
we can kind of regather our thoughts.
Probably one of the key differentiators is probably: How do you re-energize?
We often have people where people will identify themselves as an ambivert.
The question I have for them is: How do you re-energize?
What do you do?
Do you need to go to a secluded place?
If they do that, they're probably really introverts.
So I'm going to ask the question again.
Now that we've gone through my description of what an introvert and extrovert is, has
your answer changed?
Do you consider yourself to be an introvert or extrovert?
We'll take a little bit of time for the poll questions to finish up here.
So I think our numbers are looking very, very similar.
We have a couple of seconds to submit responses.
We'll see if anything different comes in.
Most of you seem pretty sure of whether you're an introvert or extrovert.
Of course, I don't remember what the exact numbers were on the first poll questions,
but it does look about the same.
Or maybe we've shifted one more into the not-so-sure column.
Let's talk about introverted strengths.
Now, we have three characters displayed on the screen here.
One of them is Albert Einstein, obviously.
The other one is -- I'm going to mess up the spelling.
Wozniak.
And the third picture is Sherlock Holmes.
He's not a true character, but created by Arthur Conan Doyle.
Einstein, he's an absolute genius.
He's ready to go after the root of the problems and come up with brand new ideas entirely.
Wozniak, not Steve Jobs, not the public face of the company, but without him, Apple wouldn't
have gotten anywhere.
He was kind of the brilliant person behind actually designing how things worked.
And, of course, with Sherlock Holmes, you have the idea of somebody who's able to be
very perceptive but also to dig into things and figure out what these little different
variations are and how that could lead to solving a crime.
So these are strengths, again, for an introvert.
Now, one of the big questions that comes up is: Are we born introverts, or do we become
introverts or extroverts through nurture?
It's an open question in many ways, but one of the -- so the first picture I have on here
has to be confusing to everybody because meerkats.
How could they be introverted on extroverts?
A lot of what I'm sharing is developed by Susan Cain.
She has a section where she interviewed somebody who studied animal habits and what they do.
What they found is when they look at groups of animals, they can kind of identify introverts
and extroverts in the group.
I know it's a bit of a stretch because they're not taking a test to figure that out.
I have meerkats up here because I like meerkats, and I think they demonstrate these exhibits.
You have them standing up, looking around, trying to see what's going on.
With the studies that Cain cited, they looked at animals around a watering hole.
What they found was you would have years of drought, year where there were plenty of water.
You could kind of divide the antelopes into two groups.
You had the extroverted group that were just going up to the water hole, period, drink
the water.
And then you have the cautious group in the background who they would call the introverted
group.
Sometimes the extroverted antelopes would go up there and get attacked and killed by
lions.
The introverted ones were in the background and saw what was going on and may have tried
to warn the herd, but they didn't necessarily get to the water supply.
So what they found was in this group dynamic, they needed introverts and extroverts.
The extroverts were the risk-takers.
They were willing to go up and get the water.
And the introverts stayed back and they would warn the herd, telling them there was danger
and reacting appropriately.
There's not a lot of nurture going on.
With babies, there was studies and the results were almost counterintuitive.
They did a longitudinal study where they did a long-term study over 20, 25 years.
They studied a group of babies and, as they were 20, 25 or so, where did they come out
when they took these standard personality-type tests.
So what they did with the babies is they put them in a different environments.
They found a group of babies, when they were exposed to high stimulation, lots of sound,
some of the babies were having absolutely no problem with it.
They were fine.
They went along with it.
No big issues.
Other babies reacted really, really strongly.
Now, what was interesting about this is when I read about this, my assumption is the babies
that were quiet and just went along with it were the ones that turned out to be introverts.
What they found was babies who reacted very, very strongly to the outside stimulation were
the ones that were later tracked as being introverts.
Part of what the idea around here is, as they develop these coping skills where they can
kind of exclude what's going on in the environment around them and kind of, again, if they don't
exclude it, they're overreacting to it.
So it was just interesting because, to me, it was very counterintuitive.
And the next picture we have is somebody who is a library lover.
Classic idea of introverts, people who are maybe bookish and sit and read a lot and don't
get out and interact with people.
There's probably some truth to that.
But, again, the idea around this comes up.
Was this a nurture thing?
Were these children born as people who loved books?
Or was it something that they were exposed to books growing up, and they really loved
being able to immerse themselves in a story, and that story could become real to them,
as they were doing it.
I think we have a poll question?
>> CINDY SOBIERAJ: Before we do the polls, we actually have a question for a participant.
Can a person change to become an extrovert?
>> BEN WOELK: It's an interesting question.
Mainly because we see introvert and extrovert as two polls.
Everybody is clustered around one or the other.
I think it's more of a continuum, or a scale.
When you look at the personality tests available online, or temperament tests, I've got some
of those links later on, you will find it will give you a percentage of introversion
or extroversion.
I score very highly on the introverted side.
I know that has slid more and more to the extrovert side as I've interacted with people
more and more.
So I would say, yes, it can change.
I think fundamentally it's still going to come down to what you need to do to recharge.
I know plenty of introverts who you would never guess they were introverts, and I have
people at conferences who know I identify as an introvert, and they say there's absolutely
no way you're an introvert because you're so outgoing at the conference.
But the way that works for me is I feel like I'm among my tribe.
I know a lot of people at the conference.
We have a lot of the same thoughts and things we're working on, so I have a comfort level
with them, so I tend to be more extroverted.
Probably to the point that my wife has told me she would be happier if I acted like conference
Ben at home.
She's with me at the conferences sometimes.
Yeah, let's go, go, go.
Let's go do this event.
When I am at home, I'm like, let's stay home.
It's a long-winded answer, but, yes, I think over time.
What best suits your personality?
Nature or nurture?
We'll give just a little bit longer on the poll.
Right now it looks like it's evenly divided.
Let's see if we can sway it one way or the other.
It doesn't look like it.
So the purpose of this in general is the jury is out.
Is it nature or nurture?
It's actually probably both.
We all recognize impacts.
The next slide may refer to this a little bit, but I basically grew up in the middle
of an orange grove -- in a house in the middle of an orange grove in Florida, but I didn't
have any neighbors within half a mile or so.
The ones that were that close, a guy got married at 16 sort of thing, not necessarily the people
I would want to hang out with.
So I spent a lot of time reading.
I still read quite a bit.
Not as much then but by the time I was in second grade, I read through most of the books
in the house that seemed suitable.
I think my mom, out of exasperation gave me the Odyssey to read through.
I read it in about three or four days.
Now, I didn't have any of the pronunciations correct.
Who knows what I was doing with the other names in there, but I do think that the environment
I grew up in had a lot to do in terms of my introversion versus extroversion.
So, again, we're really split on this.
>> CINDY SOBIERAJ: Pretty closely split, yeah.
>> BEN WOELK: So let's talk about western society.
Now, I would argue that it's an extroverted world.
I suspect that most of you would argue the same.
Now, it's interesting because our society did not always used to be that way.
Back in the 19th century, we were still pretty much an agrarian society.
They worked around the same people for their entire lives.
There are interesting things about it because there are books on how to succeed.
Kind of what do you need to do?
They were all books about moral fortitude and the idea of having strong characters and
having depth of thought.
As our society changed and more and more people moved to the cities, people found they were
working around strangers.
They had not known these people growing up.
All of a sudden you get into this idea of how do I interact with people that I don't
know that I'm not comfortable with?
Around this time is when Dale Carnegie came out with How To Win Friends and Influence
People.
That book has been out for a long time.
It changed to how people could become popular?
How could they win friends?
How could they influence people?
The self-help books that come out around this time are all around this type of thing, even
the advertising.
I don't have a picture of it, but it talks about how using luxe soap can make you more
popular around these people.
I guess it's all sparkling and things like that too.
Our society, we were living in a different way than we had lived for centuries before.
Now, the other pictures up here, the one on the right is a picture of Tony Robbins.
He's like a 6'7" motivational speaker.
He has these enormous rallies.
You sit in the first row and pay tens of thousands of dollars to be able to do that.
It's the kind of thing that if I went to that as an introvert, I would probably run screaming
from the arena or tent as we got into it at all.
One other interesting thing, maybe it worked this way, maybe it didn't.
But the picture of the bull on Wall Street, some of the studies on the stock market crash,
take a look at the personalities of the traders involved, what kind of risks they were taking.
We have been in a situation that for many years, pretty much every risk a trader took
paid off.
And for the conservative traders, they were not seeing the same return on investment or
the same growth as the extrovert -- that the other traders were seeing.
And part of the thought around here is that what happened is that as the traders who were
doing the more risky trades or what we would consider to be extroverted, became more popular,
they gained more and more influence.
And the conservative traders, because they weren't doing so well, may have lost influence
or even lost their jobs.
So the study around this, I'm kind of mixed about whether it's totally valid or not, but
part of the study is you had a culture where risk-taking was rewarded and expected.
As that happened, greater and greater risks were taken, and things obviously became more
risky because of what happened back in 2008.
So it's an interesting way to look at it, but, in general, western society, I would
argue strongly, is an extroverted world.
We see leaders as these charismatic individuals who are out in front of their companies and
who are basically rock stars.
They're the people that everybody follows, everybody has a lot of claim about.
Now, the sign I put up now is really about what makes a good leader.
For years for me, it was that assumption that it had to be this charismatic individual who
was very quick to think on their feet, who could rally the troops, who could lead the
charge of things, be very hard-nosed, as needed.
Just be that flamboyant, charismatic individual.
When you start looking at leadership, it gets deeper than this.
Gandhi, very much an introvert.
He made huge changes to society through the path of resistance in British Colonialism.
He wasn't stirring up angst and anger against Britain.
Abraham Lincoln, a very strategic thinker.
He was not necessarily what we would expect in terms of being presidential in that sense.
As an introvert, he was a very strategic thinker and basically held the country together during
the civil war.
The civil rights movement, you had Martin Luther King, Jesse Jackson, the public faces
in the civil rights movement.
Then you had Rosa Parks.
She was not the person out there stirring up and being very public and leading.
Because of the fact she was willing to sit on that bus and refused to get off of that
bus and the fact that she was not a loud vocal leader helped make what she did be even that
more important because it was unexpected.
It was a passive type of resistance, but it was also not this extrovert out there talking
to everybody about what they should be doing.
I think I have a poll question.
I hope.
So based on this little bit of discussion, I'm just curious about whether you consider
yourselves to be leaders or not.
We've got the D answer, I'm not interested in being a leader, which is absolutely fine.
But I'm interested in seeing what do you all think?
Do you consider yourselves to be leaders?
So just a few more second left.
We'll see where the results come in.
I think we had at least one brave soul who said, I'm not interested in being a leader.
Good for you.
>> CINDY SOBIERAJ: Not everybody can be, right?
>> BEN WOELK: As we roll up the questions, let's see where we came out on this.
So I guess what I would say is if you regard yourself as a leader or not, you can still
be an influence, whether you're in a formal leader position or not.
Some of you may be in jobs or places where you don't have that opportunity, and you may
need to seek out other Avenues.
I talk about that.
>> CINDY SOBIERAJ: We do have a question and a comment.
You just talked about jobs and leadership.
The comment that was made, which I think is very relevant -- John wrote, I'm extremely
introverted, and I worked in advertisement for years.
He said he learned how to be extroverted when he gave presentations or taught classes.
And Thomas is curious about do religious backgrounds determine introvert or extrovert tendencies?
>> BEN WOELK: Thomas, that's a hard question.
I'm not sure how nuanced the question is.
I would say that the religious traditions that I'm familiar with, which are primarily
on the Christian side, there's certainly denominations where there is much more of a focus on what's
happening internally with you.
In that sense, it could be more introvert directed, especially if you're talking about
meditation and contemplation and things like that.
But there are other Christian religious organizations or sects or denominations where the emphasis
is much more on extroversion.
Even if you're going in the evangelicalism, in terms of sharing your faith and having
this vocal outreach to people.
So I think it can make a difference.
Obviously it ties back to this nature versus nurture, but you can argue that people of
a certain nature are attracted to certain things as well; but I do think you see the
characteristics.
Broadening that a little bit -- and I don't have the info in the slide -- there was a
Japanese artist who grew up in Japan.
She put together a set of infographics of east versus west, taking it up to that cultural
level, in terms of entire countries.
What happens is when she did the info graphics showing the difference in terms of the countries,
in terms of problem solving, in Germany, it was a head-on, as I would describe it straight-through-the-wall
approach, until you either are bloodied or break the wall.
Then you could get around the wall and get to the results you needed.
So even on a larger country, ethnic group basis, I think you will see tendencies toward
introversion and extroversion.
I think the argument is Asian cultures, eastern cultures, are more introverted focused than
western countries are -- So my leadership journey, not sure what slides
I've left in here because I had enough pictures of myself growing up.
It got embarrassing, so I pulled most of them.
This is the house I grew up in.
Middle of an orange grove in Florida.
At this time, it's actually become a museum.
One of the few vernacular houses built in Florida from the late 19th century that still
survived.
As you can see, there's no neighborhood here.
There are no sidewalks, basketball hoops, no groups of kids that I hung around with.
So I very much, as I mentioned earlier, grew up in this kind of isolated circumstance.
My sister and I are both voracious readers.
We're both pretty introverted.
Our mom was extroverted.
We didn't want to go into the store and ask questions.
We would outwait her until she would go into the store and do it.
I, for many, many years assumed, as an introvert, to be a leader.
To me I would say it was not right.
It was always about that charismatic leader who was out in front of everybody.
I knew that's not who I was.
So part of my leadership journey, I had good ideas.
I knew that.
I was interested in leading in various areas, but I never felt confident in that.
In some ways I find it embarrassing, but part of what helped me in terms of leadership journey.
And we'll talk about some other pieces of it, but I didn't really realize that I could
be a leader until I took one of these temperament tests.
Oh, you're an INTJ -- I won't go into what that means in this presentation, but INTJ,
you can be a good leader.
So reading and understanding that these temperament pieces for me and the personality type and
the strengths and weaknesses helped me understand what I needed to do.
Now, I work at RIT.
I have not had a lot of opportunities to engage in leadership of any kind at RIT because my
position is more of a -- it's not a technical position, but it's not a management position.
What I did was get involved with a non-profit organization.
And the non-profit organization I'm involved with is the Society for Technical Communication.
It's an international organization that has local geographic chapters, and there's a chapter
in Rochester.
Now, I didn't volunteer to do anything, but I had somebody ask, Can you be the program
manager?
Can you set up learning events for us?
You're at RIT.
You must be able to find speakers for us.
So I agreed to do that.
I did that for a couple of years.
Then they were going through the nomination slate.
They were asking me, What do you want to do?
I said, I'm willing to do anything except be president or vice president.
I'm not interested in those areas.
I think they said, Fine.
When the ballot came out, I was listed as a vice president candidate.
I didn't volunteer for it, but I didn't back out when they put me on the ballot for that.
I ran for it.
We had co-vice presidents, so that made it easier.
What I found through my involvement with this non-profit organization, I started building
on small successes.
More importantly, I saw where I could make a difference.
And we'll talk about that.
So, again, my leadership was going up through that non-profit to the point I was elected
as a director at the international level and may very well be on the ballot for the president
this year.
So May 2017, I was at our international summit conference, and lo and behold, I received
a president's award from the society.
I was absolutely stunned, which is the picture of me as I'm finding out that I'm getting
this award.
I didn't think that I had done anything or done anything big.
I had been involved in a lot of small things, but they had gone well.
As an introvert, not seeking the spotlight, the big thing was, Oh, my God.
I can't believe they're talking about me.
That's when I blanked out in a sentence or two, once I figured out they were talking
about me.
My main thought was don't fall as I'm going up on the stage.
Don't trip.
The message here is not that I've reached this pinnacle of anything.
But even as an introvert, you can do a bunch of small things to make a difference.
You may or may not receive recognition for it, but it was a pretty cool thing for me.
So let's talk about what drives me.
Again, this gets into the "about me" piece of it.
So I'm very good at seeing gaps.
Now, that can be frustrating for people when they come up with ideas of things to do, and
I can see all of the problems with it and why things won't work, but I'm really good
at seeing gaps.
And I'm good at figuring out how to address the gaps.
The other thing that drives me is I really want to make a difference.
Whatever I'm engaged in, to be meaningful.
If I can make a difference, I will step into that gap to try to make that difference.
Now, that can be problematic in some ways because it can really take your time; but
if I see something, I think I can make a difference, then I really want to be involved in it.
I also believe strongly in practicing servant leadership.
What that means for me is that I honestly don't care about the accolades or the recognition
or being known as the leader of an organization, but it's very important to me that as I enroll
people in a vision and have an idea of where we need to go, I want the people that are
on the team to be successful.
I will do everything I can to help all the other people on the team, and if they get
the credit, that's absolutely fine.
I just want to help get to that goal and do as much as they want to do.
It's also important for me to pursue excellence.
I don't want to do a crappy job at anything.
If I'm going to be involved in something, I want to do the best job I can.
And I'm competitive.
If there's a competition or something else, I really, really want to win, whether it's
me or as the group.
I'm not sure that's a good thing, but that's one of the things that drives me.
So what has helped me in terms of understanding how to be a leader as an introvert is I've
had these small successes.
I didn't start out with a big project or a big leadership opportunity.
I started with small things.
As I had successes, I built on those successes.
Understanding introversion, understanding my specific personality type made an enormous
difference.
Again, it bothers me that I almost have to read somewhere else that I can be a leader
to understand that I can be a leader, but I have the same problem when I feel like I
need a certification to prove that I can do something, regardless of whether other people
think I need it or not.
Another interesting part of that is I sometimes feel I identify more with the scarecrow in
the Wizard of Oz.
He was brilliant.
He needed that piece of paper and the diploma to believe in himself that he could do it.
To me, this comes with understanding introversion and what that means.
Also understanding how I communicate best.
I am not at my best if I have to answer questions spur of the moment in a meeting, think-on-my-feet
sort of thing.
I'm better at it now because I've had to do it a number of times, but understanding for
me, in terms of if my manager or somebody who wants the best possible idea I have to
offer, I need time to sit back and reflect on that and come up with that strategy.
I also communicate -- at least I feel I communicate better in writing than I do verbally.
So understanding that's the case, I want to make sure I get things in a nice email or
memo.
Again, I took the Myers-Briggs temperament inventory assessment to get an idea of where
I came out.
Again, that was beyond the scope of this program, but I'm happy to chat with anybody about that
in the future.
>> CINDY SOBIERAJ: Before you move on to the next section, we do have two folks that have
written in.
They have a similar situations, although they're very different individuals, based on what
they do.
One is an engineer and one is an artist.
The engineer writes that there's a love there for developing concepts and ideas, but there's
a difficulty conveying ideas and selling them into the company the engineer works for.
The artist believes that her art reflects her introvert nature, but, like the engineer,
she's got difficulty meeting the public and trying to sell her work.
So what have you found that's been helpful to you to kind of overcome those really inherent
obstacles?
>> BEN WOELK: These are different situations.
I think for the engineering question and the selling things to the company and getting
them to buy into what your vision is, I think part of it is finding out how you can best
articulate that vision and communicate it.
Maybe you can write it up.
Depending on how you feel about your communication abilities and writing skills, you may want
to have a colleague look at it first and make sure you're communicating what you think you're
communicating.
I work with technical people all the time.
There are many times they really believe they're very clear about what they want communicated
and what they want somebody to do, but they make assumptions as to what other people are
going to read into what they're saying.
Sometimes you need to be more explicit.
In terms of the artist question, there's a couple of things that strike me with that.
One, you have a passion for doing the art or you wouldn't be doing the art.
So part of what I think makes the work attractive, make you attractive, is finding out how can
you communicate that passion.
Maybe you write up things describing the artwork that really share your vision with it.
The marketing piece, I would suggest finding somebody who is comfortable doing the marketing,
but you've also got the option of marketing online where you have time to figure out what
it is you want to say, and you can make sure you've got that message very clear.
The one thing the Internet has done for us, introverts especially, it has given us new
modes of communication where we don't have to be in that position where we're standing
in front of somebody or even on the phone with them when we're really, really nervous
about things.
So it's a very surface response.
Those are my initial ideas around it.
>> CINDY SOBIERAJ: Thank you.
>> BEN WOELK: So one more slide.
So where I'm still weak.
I do not like conflict.
I will do almost everything to avoid conflict.
That can be problematic in the workplace because there's some times that you really cannot
avoid conflict.
One of the things I've done is taken crucial conversations, and I have more of an understanding
in how to come at things objectively, but that's an area where I'm definitely still
weak.
I'm often reticent when I should stand up.
I was working on the doctorate at the University of Rochester.
I don't think I opened my mouth the entire semester.
I still passed it somehow.
There are oftentimes where I'll think of something, and maybe it's not an opportune time to say
it, but I've learned more about sometimes you need to speak up.
There are ways to do it.
You can pull the speaker aside, that sort of thing.
I tend to overanalyze before starting moving in a direction.
Now, I'm far better than I used to be.
I've become very much of the mindset that my car needs to be moving.
I can steer all I want, but if the car is parked, it's not going anywhere.
So one of the things I've learned about my personality type is I'm very good at contingency
planning.
I could be moving in plan A. If A doesn't work, I will shift to B.
If B doesn't work, I shift to C. That's a weakness.
I tend to overanalyze.
And I'm competitive.
It drives me, but it can be a weakness because not everything is about competition.
There are things that should be win-wins for people.
Turn to day-to-day strategies you can apply.
You need the network.
Don't avoid events.
My colleague mentioned years ago, when he first started talking about introversion,
going to a networking event is not about collecting as many business cards and meeting as many
people as you can and having surface-level conversations.
They're really painful for most introverts.
But if you think connecting with one or two people and maybe you can connect -- I know
this idea of approaching people is not really comfortable either, but if you go to a networking
event, and you have people in the center of the room and it's loud, that's not a place
we're comfortable.
If you check the sides of the room, you're going to find out who the other introverts
are.
They will be the ones off to the side.
There may be conversations with two or three people.
You may find you build one or two really good connections and have deep conversations with
them.
Look at networking as an opportunity to build those connections around shared goals rather
than a cattle call type of thing where you're trying to meet everybody.
Understand how you work best.
Understand that you need to maybe pull back and think about things before you provide
a solution.
I do a workshop around this.
One of my workshop participants contacted me afterwards.
He said what he had done is his manager had basically said that his meeting behavior -- or
his preparation for the meeting was just not where it should be.
There was area for improvement.
He talks with the manager and meets with the manager before the meetings to get a preview
of what the meetings are going to be about.
That gives him time to think through things, and he's able to participate more coherently,
I think, in the meeting.
Let others know how you process.
Let people know you're an introvert.
They probably know already.
If they want a quick answer, that's fine.
Anybody can give a quick answer, but that doesn't mean it's going to be the right answer.
If they want a right answer, you may need time to process it.
Leverage social media.
We can communicate in depth about anything because we have time to think about what we
post.
Now, granted, looking at Facebook over the last couple of years, it's a question if people
think about anything they post, but this gives us time to really consider things and make
sure we have things worded the way we want to.
And learn to communicate in multiple formats, whichever ways work for you.
Most importantly, make sure you take the time to recharge.
So where do you go from here?
Get to know yourself.
Take a personality assessment.
You may take DISC, the Myers-Briggs.
As much as possible, control your environment.
Many of you are in open offices probably at this point, which is difficult for everybody
but really, really difficult for introverts.
If they will allow you to use a noise-dampening headset, do so.
Potted plants, something to mark off your space, that could help in terms of controlling
your environment.
Learn to communicate your value.
This is really, really hard for me and for introverts in general.
I've always assumed that good work is going to be noticed.
That isn't necessarily always the case.
I think there are studies that show that extroverts are more likely to be promoted easily than
introverts.
It's because we don't communicate our value.
One friend of mine actually does a two-week summary on everything he's been working on
and gives it to his manager so he has a record and knows he's actually working on things
because he's not verbal about the things he does.
Again, leverage your introversion.
In terms of resources, Susan Cain's Quiet book.
Read that.
There's a kindle book, The Introvert's Guide to Success.
David Keirsey, Please Understand Me II.
I found that to be the most insightful interpretation that's helped me the most.
Look for young typology tests.
It will give you an idea of strengths and weaknesses and what works best for you.
In terms of the things I have written, three of these are easily accessible.
I've written a book about this presentation, An Introvert's Journey to Leadership.
There's a content podcast where I talk for an hour and 20 minutes about being an introverted
leader, which shocked me and the host.
That's available.
There's this Thought Leader Thursday web series where I was a guest speaker and was interviewed
a summer ago.
All of these resources are available from my website, www.BenWoelk.com.
This magazine is behind a pay wall.
When I first did this presentation in Anaheim back in May of 2016, I came out of the conference
realizing what a difference this had made for so many people and asked the editor could
I do an article on introverted leadership.
She said, Would you be willing to do an entire issue?
We were able to do an entire issue on technical communication, which was great.
There are things I'm doing in addition to my day job.
I have an introverted leadership Slack community.
You are welcome to join me in that.
Drop me a note in that contact information.
If you go to www.BenWoelk.com.
We've had people sign up on this, and we talk about things that are interesting to us.
It offers virtual coaching and mentoring services.
I have a couple of clients I'm working with.
I have Revive and Thrive: Temperament Based Strategies for the Workplace.
I'm happy to come to the company and do that.
I developed a project with Hannah Morgan who's presenting this fall for meRIT.
We do this together.
She talks about the branding piece of it.
I talk about the Internet safety piece of it in terms of making sure your careers are
okay.
I'm happy to do keynote presentations.
All of my information is at www.BenWoelk.com.
Here is my connection information.
>> CINDY SOBIERAJ: We have a couple.
We're quickly out of time.
Let's sneak these in.
Neal wants to know if there are any suggestions on being at a job interview and answers are
expected quickly?
>> BEN WOELK: Going into the interview, make sure you've done a lot of research on the
company and the position and think ahead about what questions may come up and what things
you want to talk about.
The key about being an introvert and going into a conversation is feeling competent in
knowing enough information to talk about.
I would research as much as you can and find out as much as you can about the interview.
It's still going to be uncomfortable because it's an on-the-spot question.
>> CINDY SOBIERAJ: Here is an interesting one.
I think it comes from Thomas.
Should we be designing our foreign policy based on our impression of a society or country
as being introverted or extroverted in nature?
That's a big one.
>> BEN WOELK: That's a big question.
I suspect it's too general in terms of making policy decisions, but I do think -- you know,
it makes a difference.
Business is conducted very differently in some countries than other countries.
I think in terms of understanding cultural mindset, yeah, I think it absolutely makes
a difference, in terms of how determined it is, that's another question entirely.
Knowing that in Asian culture, there's deference given to leaders and such.
In western culture, it's all proven that you deserve this leadership opportunity.
I guess the easy answer is it should inform our policy decisions, which doesn't give you
any real answer at all, but I think it's important.
>> CINDY SOBIERAJ: All right.
It's just after the hour, so if there are any more questions, please, you can email
them directly to Ben or email them to RIT.
I apologize that we've gone a little over.
We'll get to your questions offline if you do get them to us.
Thanks to you for joining.
Many thanks to Ben for being our wonderful presenter today.
Ben will be back in February, but that's a few months off.
We'll send you an email, what to expect then from Ben.
Join us next week, actually, for five steps to getting your food product on store shelves
in five simple steps with Chef AJ Richards.
Same time, same WebEx channel.
Thanks for joining us.
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Thanks again, folks.
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