...And I Realized That You Are an Extrovert

I usually do not blog about work, but something happened today that needs to be shared. You need a little background first. I've been working on this very exciting project for several months now. I'll spare you the detials, but the project is a study where we have to compare/evaluate/prioritize a large list of unrelated items. We also have a large amount of people that are the boss in this case, so there are lots of meetings and lots of presentations. The project manager and I get along great, but I've noticed that we have not been connecting on several occasions. At times it is as if we are speaking different languages.

We are nearly at the end of the project, and we had some extra time this morning to chat because of a power outage in the office. During our conversation, she shared that she had recently listened to a speech where the speaker was discussing the various traits of introverts and extroverts. She is an introvert and related to the speaker's perspective, but during the speech she had an epiphany that she shared with me. To quote, "...and I realized that you are an extrovert, and you have so many of the qualities that he used to describe extroverts like working collaboratively."

In that moment I realized that I was not alone in sensing the awkwardness or misunderstandings that occurred and that we most likely are speaking different languages more or less. I might have to do some research about "what extroverts can do to annoy introverts less" or "what to do when your boss is an introvert." I forget sometimes that I work in a field of introverts, so it's probably worthwhile research. It also never occurred to me to actually present that personality trait to project managers at the beginning of a project, but that might not be a bad idea either.

So to all you introverts out there, I'm sorry if I don't get it the first time. I just have a different set of operating criteria than you do. Good thing is that as an extrovert, you can just collaborate with me on how to improve our communications.