Podcast Transcript
Marci: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Thriver’s Ed. Today I have with me Stacey Chazin. Stacey is a dynamic leadership development coach and proud introvert, and she is rewriting the narrative on introversion. Having grappled with societal expectations that favored extraversion, Stacey underwent a remarkable transformation. Instead of conforming to societal pressures, she embraced her introverted qualities, turning them into powerful assets that allowed her to thrive both professionally and personally. Now, as a fervent advocate for introverts, Stacey draws on her extensive corporate and nonprofit experience, a master's in organizational development and leadership and certification as a Myers Briggs type indicator practitioner, to empower introverts, guiding them towards self acceptance, fulfillment and success in the workplace and beyond Stacey. Welcome to the show.
Stacey: Thank you. I'm so happy to be here, Marci.
Marci: I'm so happy to have you. Stacey. I think that most people are generally familiar with the term introvert and extroverts, but because that's going to be the main focus of the show today, I would really love to hear in your own words, kind of what the difference is between these two.
Stacey: Yeah, great question. I love it because there are so many misconceptions out there about what being introverted or extroverted actually means. So I love to dispel some of those and set the record straight. So when we talk about being an introvert or an extrovert, and the language we technically use, in terms of the Myers Briggs type indicator or MBTI, and for any of your listeners not familiar with that, MBTI is the world's most, commonly used personality tests, and it shares preferences that we have along four different dimensions, one of which is how we get energy from the world, how we're energized, and that speaks to whether we're introverted or extroverted.
So when we talk about someone who is introverted who has a preference for introversion, that means that we tend to be energized and fueled by time alone. When we have an opportunity to go deep in our thoughts, when we do things that allow us to stimulate our brain and engage with the world, but in either by ourselves or with one or two other people only. So it could be reading a book, doing a crossword puzzle, going for a walk in nature. That's what fuels us. In contrast, people who are extroverted or have a preference for extraversion tend to be fueled by others in the outside world. So they're out among they're at a cocktail hour or a reception, at a conference with 500 people. And that is their jam. They are getting so much energy from that. And it's really setting them up to do their best work, be their best selves. Whereas introverts who are fueled in an opposite way, we're going to be doing our best work, showing up as the best, who we are inside when we have opportunities to refuel, recharge by ourselves, or again, in small groups or with just one other person.
Marci: Okay. So with that framework in mind, it’s my understanding that there's kind of a pressure from society to really highlight that extrovert. Right. We do a lot of things where we're kind of forced into group. There's a lot of activities where we're expected to, quote, unquote, perform. And so I'm really wondering your take on this. What was if you could take us back to that moment that you realized you kind of had this, this superpower in introverts. Tell me about that.
Stacey: Yeah. And I'll start by saying that this pressure that we feel to be extroverted, for me at least, and I think a lot of other people, it starts when we're toddlers or we're in preschool and our preschool teacher tells our parents she needs to be in circle time for the whole time, where she's not playing with enough kids on the playground, or how come she likes to build, play with the blocks by herself, you know, she needs to play with other kids. We hear this message from the time we can hear messages that being more social, more collaborative, more engaging with others is somehow better than the way we prefer to do things as introverts. And for me, I heard this message, as many introverts do, all through school, through high school, throughout my career for the first couple decades. And for me, the ah, aha moment I had was more about first, and foremost, realizing I needed to stop pretending that I was an extrovert.
So I had. This was my ah, aha moment. It was quite embarrassing, but I think I needed. I needed this kind of slap across the face that I gave myself afterward. And here's what happened. I was at a big conference with about 500 people or so, and one of the conference organizers who I knew and was friendly with, asked if I'd be willing to be a part of a flash mob that was gonna go up on stage and start dancing when everyone came back from lunch, as a way to get people recentered and energized for the afternoon session. Now, I am not a good dancer. I don't enjoy dancing. I certainly don't enjoy having all these eyes on me. And the idea of being up on the stage in that way made Menna throw up. But despite all my introvert alarm bells going off, I felt all this pressure. That's what a leader would do. That's what someone who supports this group would do. And if I go up there, it'll really showcase what a team player I am. Long and short of it is, it was so uncomfortable and I don't wanna say traumatizing, but really I was so uncomfortable and briefly traumatized that when it was over, I had to spend an hour in the ladies room recovering because I was so uncomfortable with all these eyes on me doing something I hated to do that I knew I wasn't good at. And I'm sure they weren't all on me. Maybe one person was looking at me. It was. So much of it was in my head, but it was, I was in the ladies room hiding out after and I looked in the mirror and I said, what are you doing? That was such a counterproductive, silly, dumb thing to do. It didn't show that I was a leader. It showed that I was a pretender and I wasn't being true to who I was.
And it was the start of my wake up call. Or I really started thinking about, okay, if I'm not that person, what person am I? And who am I when I'm at my best? And I started going down a path of studying leadership theory, I ultimately decided to go back to school and get a master's in organizational development and leadership. And the biggest learning for me from that experience was the absolute importance of leading from a place of self awareness. And what that means for me as an introvert and for me in all the other ways I'm wired as well, is being true to who I am. Recognizing that the way that I'm wired as an introvert is fine, just as it is and is better than fine. And that all of us need to stop pretending to be something we're not if we really wanna be successful and happy. And for those of us in the professional world, we feel that pressure to be more extroverted because professional spaces are designed with extroverts in mind.
Marci: Wow, that story is my nightmare. I would, I would hate to be asked to be in front of everybody and dancing. I'm also not a fantastic dancer, so I can understand that that would, that would really put the pressure on and I can see why that would be so eye opening for you to be like, this is not the path I want to go down. So if that's the case, then what is the path that you want it to go down? If you're, if you're no longer pretending to be that extrovert who's, you know, the up for anything girl who's going to go dance on the stage, what did that instead look like for you when you started to really lean into who you are?
Stacey: What it looked like was I started, first of all, considering when someone asked me to do something, if I had an opportunity, whether it was a task, a role, a new client, I sat down and I thought about who, am I as an introvert? And is this opportunity, this ask, gonna be aligned with that and the framework I used for doing that, And I use this with the clients I coach who are all introverted professionals. I use a framework called appreciative coaching. And it's basically centered around the idea of identifying the best of who you are as a human, including your introversion. And that best of who you are is something called your positive core.
So what that means is your positive core is all the things that make you great. To simplify it, whether you're a great writer, you're empathetic, you're analytic, you're thoughtful. These are all traits that are typically associated with introverts, as well as every other way you're wired, maybe you're a great decision maker, and maybe you're a great planner, all these things. And the idea is to reflect back on your life, especially your professional life, and identify peak experiences. What this means are experiences you've had where you've felt the best about what you're doing. You felt like you were making a difference. You felt like you had the opportunity to apply your gifts, what you were working on aligned with, your values, any of these things.
And when you look across your peak experiences, you'll begin to see some patterns. What were the things you were doing? So it could be that I had an opportunity to write, or I had an opportunity to spend a lot of time working by myself with some collaboration sprinkled in. And you begin to, you identify what are the common threads across these experiences, how you showed up, how you contributed, and that helps to inform your positive core. Once you know what your positive core is, you can begin to say, okay, what are some opportunities I can have to apply my positive core? I call those introvert powered leadership opportunities or professional opportunities. And you can look for these opportunities in your current job. You can look for it if you want to change your job or change your career to try to find roles and tasks and organizations where you're gonna have the greatest likelihood, the greatest chance to put your positive core to work. and what that does is it increases the likelihood you're gonna be successful and feel good about what you're doing is you're working from a place of strength.
And it's also increasing the likelihood that the people you're working for are going toa see you as a leader, are going toa see you as a high performer. Because everything aligned is aligned with the best of who you are. Not with some deficit, not with something you're trying to improve or someone you're pretending to be.
Marci: Fantastic. So we are kind of leaning into those things that really shape us, the things that we really get to highlight our strengths and focusing on those instead of trying to fit some mold of what we expect kind of a leader to be. And I just wanted to drill down this a bit more because you had mentioned, our workplaces aren't necessarily set up for that introvert leader. They're expected. It's going to be that introvert person. So how, how do these skills of an introvert really support leadership?
Stacey: Great question. So, and this comes down to this notion that society has, the majority of society has about what makes a leader. Right. So the traditional notion of a leader is someone who is strong and powerful, all knowing someone who can have conversations with anybody, be motivational, who can bring out the best in other people. and some of these are true. I especially like that last one. I think that one is very true. But the other ones just tell half the story because there are so many traits that introverts have that are just not recognized as being aligned with leadership. and so I'll give you some examples. Introverts tend to be very good at listening deep. So we have the patience and the wherewithal to sit and take it all in, to listen to people, to observe a room, to pick up on the dynamics that are going on around us. We're really good at reading between the lines, reading body language. That's something that's very important for a leader.
Another thing we are really good at is, we tend to be highly empathetic and highly emotionally intelligent. So this means that we're able to see what other people need, what they need to be successful. It's critical when you're talking about how do you bring out the leadership in other people and build their leadership capacity very much Tied to empathy. Another thing that we tend to have a calm demeanor, which means that if there is some kind of conflict, you're dealing with turbulent times in your organization. It's very good to be able to come in and not immediately jump out there with a solution, but to calm people down and say, reframe the issues that you're seeing in a way that's non confrontational. And this can not only help to diffuse whatever conflict is underway, but it gets people to trust you because they see that you're a calming presence that can help the group or the organization work toward consensus or work towards some better situation than we're in now.
And then the last one I'll mention is we tend to be really good writers and writing as a leader, whether it's an email to the company, a memo, engaging with other people on a one on one basis, so important to be able to write effectively and in ways that inspire people, that make clear how you support them, make clear what your shared vision is really critical for leaders to do. And we tend to excel in that area.
Marci: You know, as you're mentioning this, I was kind of thinking this is a great reframing of a leader. But actually, as I'm saying this, you're not really reframing leader. We're diving into what it actually means.
Stacey: Right.
Marci: Leader isn't just someone who's forcing people to follow in their direction. It is to lead. Right, is to bring out the best of people. And we do that through listening, through empathy, through building trust and therefore commitment, you know, to our vision or the bigger organization or whatever that is. So I love the qualities that you've pulled out, I think have really distilled what exactly a leader is, not just that figure head of something. It's really bringing out the best of the people in the organization.
Stacey: Yeah, Marci. And if I could add just one more that I didn't mention that I think is really important. People think often that having a brilliant idea or some answer, some solution right on the spot, the quicker you can come up with the answer or some idea that means you must be smarter, you must be a better leader, you must be more innovative. Fill in the blank there. And that trait of speaking quickly, right? So extroverts like to think out loud. We say they're more likely to do that, but the ideas they're coming up with are not more likely to be better because they're doing it so quickly. Whereas introverts, we like to take the time to process, give it some thought, look for some data to support what we're coming up with. And there's a misconception that if you need a little longer to come up with that big idea or to come up with a recommendation, it means that you're not cut out to lead in the same way. So that's a big myth I like to dispel.
Marci: Yeah, that's a good one. Because in leadership roles, there are some times where you really have to make that quick decision where you don't have time to sit there and do that deep thinking. And I can understand where the myth might lie, that you're, you're maybe just not clever enough. You're taking too long to come up with that answer. But we're not trying to find the fast answer. We're trying to find the right answer. Sometimes, you know, we may have to put our foot forward and just jump on that first idea if it's a critical, you know, emergency. But, for a lot of the times, these things aren't urgent. Right. I would rather have a well thought out plan than just something throwing spaghetti at the wall and then trying again later. So, Stacey, Tell me, how can introverts advocate for themselves in the workplace? If we said it's really set up for that extroverted person, how can we start to advocate for ourselves and help other people see those skills that we have as an introvert?
Stacey: Yep. So my answer to that is it's going to be rooted. Just like the other advice I've shared. Everything is rooted in how can you tap into your innate strengths as an introvert, how can you use those things? So your innate strength, for example, is not going to be that you like to shout from the front of the conference room table and tell everyone, brag about what you've done. So you want to tap into how your wired as an introvert, for example, we tend to be very good at preparation. So let's say, and I'll use the example of let's say you're gearing up for, you want to make an ask at the end of the year for a promotion or a raise. It might not surprise you that thinking about that the day before your performance review is not the way to go. The way to go, particularly for introverts, is over the course of the year, you want to keep a log of contributions and performance wins that you've had, and not just things that you've done, but to track what correlation that win or contribution had with the team or organization's goals. So it's not just Hey, I wrote this great issue brief or I launched a new product. How did what you did contribute to the organization's growth and development or some other win for the organization? You want to keep that over the course of the year, and you can do that on an Excel spreadsheet. You can do it pen and paper, however you like to do that kind of stuff. And as well, create a separate folder in your inbox where you move any emails you get that say you're great. When someone thanks you for doing a great job or acknowledges a skill or a contribution, move that message. After saying thank you, move that message right into the folder. So come your end, you have it handy and you're not scrambling to find evidence to build your case. So that's one thing.
The other thing you can do, as I mentioned, we're very good writers. what I recommend is meeting with your manager or whoever the decision maker is on a quarterly basis to check in, let them know this is what you want to be working toward by the end of the year and ask them, what do you need to see from me to achieve that? And following each meeting, recap what you talked about. Send it to them in an email so they know you've heard what they said. It's an opportunity to clear up any, misunderstandings, and it shows them that you're taking the whole process seriously, that you're not just expecting to get this raise or promotion because you've been there enough years or whatnot. So that's another thing.
And then the third thing I'll say is, and this also goes back to being a good writer, but also our deep subject matter expertise is look for ways to showcase your expertise in, in either written or small group places. So that could be curating a blog. It could be writing a blog post and submitting it for someone else to include in their publication. It could be writing an email to a small group of team members talking about some accomplishment that you've all contributed to highlighting, including your role as well. So you're doing these things where you're elevating your voice, but not in ways that are, I guess, cringy, as the teens like to say. It's aligned with who you are and how you're comfortable with communicating with the world.
Marci: It's awesome. just to touch on that first point that you brought up there, I do this myself. I call mine my badass list. But just when we make list of the wins, it's really great. Also just for our, you know, of course, to present ourselves well, in the workplace and show the benefits that we're able to contribute, but also just for our own confidence and motivation.
And I think it can be really great to have a partner in crime in this because it's hard to recognize our own wins sometimes. So I'm fantastic with my husband. Every time something comes off, I'm like, put it on the list, put on the list. And he does it to me as well because it's easy to discount the things that we do. And when you start to see it pile up, like for my emails, I actually print them and I'm putting them on my list so I can see it and really have that tangible aspect of, you know, I actually am contributing. These are the wins that I'm bringing. So I absolutely love that.
Stacey: I love that, your badass list. I like it.
Marci: Yes.
Stacey: Yeah, we need to do that. Right. And we tend to be our own biggest critics and we're also the last people to give ourselves a pat on the back. So I love that. Yes.
Marci: So if you can partner up with somebody to help point out when you share those wins, to acknowledge. Yes. Actually did that thing.
Stacey: Yep. Fabulous.
Marci: I wanted to touch on the subject of burnout a little bit. Can you tell me what are some of the. What are some of the challenges for introverts when it comes to avoiding burnout and how can they overcome this?
Stacey: Right. So as I mentioned earlier, our workplaces and our work days are really designed with extroverts in mind. Meaning if you're working on site, there are a lot of open office layouts where people are in cubicles. You might have some dividers, but you can hear other people. You're certainly not alone. There's the hustle and bustle of that. There's also, when I talk about our workday, a lot of organizations, depending on your role, depending on the organization, we have back to back to back meetings, they could be in person or they could be on zoom. But we're typically not getting the downtime. We need to recharge between those meetings. And then there's also a lot of pressure for collaborating. Most organizations are not going to be thinking about, okay, are we giving our workers, our employees, our team members enough time to be working in solitude, versus collaborating with others. And for introverts, that's especially important.
So what you want to do, I talk about recognizing some of the signs and symptoms. I mean, you could feel physically sick from it. It could really. It could be emotional, it could be physical, it could be psychological, that you're really it's this sustained feeling of stress and lack of energy that is not good for your health and it certainly doesn't set you up to do your best work. So I think that for introverts, and this is true actually for introvert or extrovert, it's so important that you let the people you work with know what you need to succeed. And one example I, give one piece of advice is the first time a team comes together or a group comes together to work on a new project, what I recommend is at, your first meeting, going around the table and having each person share with the group what do you want the group to know about what you need to be successful on this team or on this project. And that's a great opportunity as an introvert to say something like, I need to have, a balance of solo work and group work. Or it's really important for me to get a meeting agenda ahead of time so I can prepare my talking points and come prepared with anything I need and that's how you're gonna get the most out of me.
And then for extroverts as well, they'll share what it is they need to be most successful and then hopefully the other members of the team, and especially the manager, will know what each person needs so that they can set them up for success. So it's advocating for yourself, not being embarrassed by it. you don't even have to use the word introvert if you don't want to, but just letting people know, hey, these are the circumstances, the support, the structures that are going to set me up to be most successful and help us as a group accordingly be most successful.
Marci: You know, it's such a simple question, but so few people do this, right? Instead, it's kind of human nature to treat people the way we would want to be treated. And so we expect everybody's going to want that in turn. And just a simple question of, you know, how can we make you most successful? I do something similar in my coaching intake forms, right? To say, you know, how can I. What would lead to the greatest transformation for you? Or how should I not act or how should I act in order to get the business results from you? It's just, I don't know the exact wording of it. It's not coming out very smoothly now. But again, the idea being how do I bring out the best in you? because people know themselves a lot better than you think you know them, right? So, Stacey, I wanted to. We talked a little bit about Some of the myths about introversion that you know, like, that they are. They're not great. They may not be great leaders because they're not fast to come to these decisions. Are there any other myths that you wanted to dispel on, you know, the introvert qualities or being an introvert?
Stacey: Yeah. So one of the biggest ones is that we don't like people. Right? People think. They think we're shy, and shy is not synonymous with introversion. They think we don't like people. They think that we. Well, that's the biggest one, that we don't like people. you know, I. Growing up and earlier in my career, I know that I was perceived by a lot of people as not being friendly or they thought I was shy or aloof. And I knew that was part of, like, the beginning of my awakening because I knew that wasn't who I was, and I wondered, why am I coming off that way? And it was. It was my introversion that I knew, even though I wasn't articulating it, that I needed to be alone more and I needed to dive deep by myself, to be happy, to be productive, to be effective, all those things. So it's not that we're unfriendly or don't like you. And the overarching one is that introverts are not cut out to lead. And for all the reasons I shared that, it is just not true. And it's so much about redefining how we as a society think about leadership and what that means and understanding that it's not the loudest voice or the most social person, but recognizing those innate gifts and introverts that lend themselves so beautifully to leadership and can be so inspiring and effective that we miss out on some pretty phenomenal leaders by overlooking them in that way. I truly believe that.
Marci: Can I ask you, I want to dig on that shy part. Is there anything that you did specifically to change people viewing you from maybe shy to introvert?
Stacey: Oh, that's a hard one. So for me, I know that, and I think this was in my MBTI report. It takes me a while to warm up and trust people, and once I do, I'm all in. I'm very loyal, but I think my radar is up initially that I'm looking for, I'm looking for proof that I can trust someone before. And so what I've done is being conscious of that. I've tried to consciously let my guard down in that way. So. Ah. And I think that comes back to what I said earlier. About leading from a place of self awareness. So just having that knowledge that that's how I show up and that it's not that I'm not a nice person or I don't want to be with people, but it's because the way I'm wired, it just takes me a little longer to trust people professionally. So I will, I'm aware of that. And I try to catch myself if I'm not being as engaging with someone as I probably should be earlier on in the working relationship.
Marci: Yeah, that was probably an unfair question because it's going back to like, how do you change who you are in order to change other people's opinions? Right. Like it's going back to that very beginning where you were trying to fit that external expectation of what a leader is and instead just acknowledging your own qualities there. But I love that you're, you know, showing that awareness, that self awareness of this is how people might perceive me and how can I kind of adjust so that they are getting the true version of who Stacey is not necessarily the, the shy person, but really. Yeah, there's the kind of double faceted there, I think.
Stacey: Yeah. And if I can add to that or a caveat to that is I'm also a big believer in not being so tied to what other people think of you. Right. Because typically what other people think of you or the way they react to you in many ways has to do more with them than it has to do with you. But in this case, if I'm acting in a way or coming across in a way that's going to be counterproductive to the work, to the relationship in the long run, that's where I see the value. And then if they're still not feeling it, then that's all about them.
Marci: All right, so we have dove into our superpower of being introverts. I'm throwing myself in this mix because I would consider myself an introvert as well. And so I want to move into kind of our Thrive in Five segment. And how now do we elevate this superpower? How do we go out there and really lean into who it is that we are? So I'd love to hear you Thrive in five.
Stacey: Yep. So here's what I'm going to give your listeners. it's kind of an abbreviated exercise of recognizing their positive core because that's the foundation of it all. Knowing how you rock, knowing kind of your badass list of the way that you're wired. So what I'm going to Recommend is over the next week, unless the next week is a holiday, depending on when this episode comes out. But take the next week that you have a full work week. Take notes. Write down anytime you're feeling really good about something you've done. it could be something small, like solving a small problem. It could be getting a new client. It could be, helping to diffuse, a heated conversation. Keep a list of these accomplishments, these things you've achieved, and then reflect on, like that's in one column and then in the next column, reflect on what, what introverted strengths did you use in those situations? Was it your demeanor? Was it you put something in writing? Did you feel like your empathetic gift really kicked in? And look across those experiences at the end of the week. You could take two weeks if you feel like you haven't had enough opportunity to identify things in one. But look across that week or two, look at that second column and see what the commonalities are. How are you showing up during these quote unquote peak experiences that you've had over the course of that week or two?
And keep a list. Pull that out and that's going to be the beginning of your positive core. That'll be the foundation and start to pay attention to that if you want to keep going beyond the two weeks. But I think what your listeners will begin to find when they're introverted is that they're seeing those introverted gifts. Certain ones are gonna pop up a lot. and that can form the foundation for how can you then look for opportunities that are going to let you shine, that are going to let you contribute in the biggest way and really eventually help to catapult your career, move you into positions of leadership, get you recognized for your strengths, all that great stuff.
Marci: Well, this has been a lot of fun Stacey. Where can people connect with you if they want to learn more about you or get any of your support? Where should I send them?
Stacey: The, best place to go is my website, which is ifactorleadership.com my organization is called iFactor Leadership. The iFactor, of course, being introverted, they can get information there when they go to the website. They'll also find a free download. I have a guide there for daily productivity hacks for introverts. So ways essentially that you can, help to prevent and manage the burnout that we talked about earlier. How can you get more done without feeling that stress and burnout? People can find me on LinkedIn at iFactor Leadership. And I can give you a link for your show notes for a guide I have that helps people to negotiate and ask for what they want, whether it's a promotion or raise or something else. So a free download that I'd love your listeners to check out.
Marci: That's fantastic. Thank you so much, guys. I'm going to make sure that all of that is put in the show notes here so you have all of the links to the productivity hacks and the negotiation guide and everything else that you need to connect with. Stacey. Stacey, thank you so much for joining me. It's been a pleasure.
Stacey: Thanks for having me. Marci.