Venture CaféWe welcome this perspective from one of our most active community members, Matthew Glidden, on being an introvert in what some may think of as an extrovert’s hang-out.
-Carrie
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The 21st century handed us a vibrant world, ever filling with more information, stuff, and people. (7 billion served, as of 2010!) In many countries, folks rub shoulders with hundreds of others just to do their day-to-day business. About a quarter of these closely packed souls shared a common “secret.” Behind closed doors, they’re actually your stereotypical crowd-avoiders and party wallflowers, a.k.a. social introverts. That’s almost 2 billion folks who need a little help with self-promotion and chit-chat. (We’re everywhere, if statistically more prevalent across island nations and coastal areas.)
According to WikiLeaks Wikipedia, introverts differ from extroverts not in negative ways (by hating parties or chasing kids off their lawn), but positive. Instead of running around the park with friends or wearing flashy clothes, they build and refine an internal world full of plans and ideas. Old schooler Carl Jung theorized “psychic energies” passed from outgoing folks to their inward-focused counterparts like tributaries flow to a river and yin balances yang.
Since psychic energy sounds way too quaint, let’s translate this give-and-take to the business world and networking. Extroverted folks, for example, tend to think out loud. They work best around water coolers or bar tops, throwing questions and ideas around like a basketball. “What you’d do last week?” “Who’d you talk to?” “Where’s the money these days?” And so on.
Each good “pass” in the networking game connects people of like minds. Their ideas gain shape, heft, and credibility. Good conversations can produce an elevator pitch, working relationship, or even financial sponsorship. Not a big deal for introverts so far, since anyone working alone can hone a pitch or send introduction emails.
The real value of things said aloud comes in finding weaknesses, where gaps between a proposal and its market reality get stripped bare for all to see. (Of course, business ideas that involve stripping anything bare get attention for lots of reasons.)
This chance for the friendly exchange and examination of ideas provides a real business opportunity that introverts should grab early and often. Most avoid playing “proposal-ball” with ideas, since they probably sculpted each one privately for hours, days, or years. If your worst critic is you—so the thinking goes—other people can’t cut any deeper. Why tire yourself out talking about it, right? Actually, no. To be frank, how do you know the proposal’s any good until other people look at it?
Introverts can reframe networking as an efficient learning tool that uncovers the true value of their ideas. Being your own “worst critic” also means that you’re bad at evaluating concepts only you understand. Even the extremely perceptive or technically adept will get hung up on the wrong questions. Picture Pets.com execs buying cavernous warehouses without a profit plan or an aspiring Amazon and eBay competitor that’ll “corner the market” on online baby clothes. (Every parent will need them! But will probably just use Amazon or eBay!)
“Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.” – Howard H. Aiken
When another networker asks about your business, explain the idea, and then recognize their awkward questions as a huge time savings for you. For every buried nugget of gold, someone else’s blank stare tells you where to keep digging and polishing. Bless these generous folks, who offer business counseling for only the cost of drinks! Try not to feel like a bandit afterwards, even when you make out like one.
After you’ve finished a networking session and pitched some bad ideas, keep it up! Bring your improvements to the next session and refine things further. Eventually—surprise!—you’ll be offering suggestions and repaying withdrawals from this karmic bank. In time, people become the best part of networking, as extroverted as that sounds. What started as a learning experience becomes a regular meeting with friends, business or otherwise.
Further reading on networking for introverts:
- “How to Network: For Introverts” (BusinessPundit.com)
- “Networking for Introverts” (TheGlassHammer.com)
- The Introvert Advantage, by Marti Laney (no personal connection, just found it a decent read)
Matthew, this sentence stood out for me, “In time, people become the best part of networking…” I’m an INTJ in business for more years than I care to say. When first starting out I approached business networking as my extrovert managers encouraged me to do. I didn’t even know back than that apparently I was hindered for success as an introvert. But it must not have been true as I soon became a number one salesperson and then sales manager. And the reason why any introvert can do this if they want to is for what you stated here: “What started as a learning experience becomes a regular meeting with friends, business or otherwise.” It IS these regular meetings that allow us to have those deeper conversations where introverts excel. So you are spot on with the title and this is exactly why introverts need to be networking.
Thank you for the perspective.
Thanks for your note, Patricia! Glad to hear about your success, too. It sounds like we’ve learned a lot of the same things from getting out there and being face-to-face.
Thanks for touching on this topic. I too am an INTJ and networking is one of the hardest things for me to do. I struggle with it so much that I will do almost anything to avoid it. I think some of it is do to being an only child, but I also never embraced the social aspect of life growing up. In high school I never went to parties, and that carried on into college. I have done well in my career, but I think it has been much harder for me due the lack of social interaction.
I hear you, Rob. There’s nothing like meeting people in a business-like (but unstructured) environment to press an introvert’s stress buttons.
From your career experience, any introvert-oriented books or articles you’d add to the brief list above as a good resource?
(You and Patricia both mentioned INTJ, which has its own LinkedIn networking group at http://www.linkedin.com/groups?home=&gid=67152.)