Can introverts get ahead? Should they try?

[Intrepidintrovert]

Do you think introverts can ever achieve highly in a team/office based role? I'm a working professional, very good at my job, but the only criticism I constantly get is that I need to 'raise my profile'. Be louder. Be more visible. Put myself forward. Go out for drinks (I don't drink - and don't want to socialise with colleagues). But I just don't think I'm that kind of person, and as I get older I'm getting less arsed about trying to fit into a mould that isn't me. I don't speak well off the top of my head but prefer thinking and writing things down, I find confrontation stressful, I find social interaction draining. I'm totally a 'fake it till you make it' person so come across as friendly and bubbly (if quiet) but in reality I sometimes have lunch in my car just to get away from everyone for a while. (WFH has been bloody brilliant for me btw.)

The problem is that a promotion has come up at work. I'm definitely far more qualified for it and able than anyone else and my boss has basically said it's mine if I want it. That he knows I have the skills to do a great job. That if they don't hire me they may not even fill the role. BUT that in order to do a more senior job, I need to... raise my profile! I need to be more ready for confrontation, take charge, be more visible. That to get the status of controlling and shaping my department, I need to have the personality to interact with (his words) 'the shark pool' of the higher ups.

So what do you think - can introverts do a more high profile role? Or have I gone as far as I can go with my, um, personality limitations? Do the 'alpha' people (as one of my colleague referred to herself, saying it must be difficult for me not to be one when there are so many in our department!) get ahead in certain roles and there's no room on the ladder for the people who are just quietly really good at their jobs?

YABU: Introverts can get ahead.
YANBU: Introverts are not suited for the top of the office career ladder.

I suggest you find out more from your boss given you don't actually have a department (who are the juniors to you as senior)

Ask your boss for examples of scenarios that might occur where he would want you to behave differently as a senior to how you would react now.

Ask for examples of new types of scenario you will face.

Ask the general open ended question of what you would need to do to be successful in the role.

Why is personality more important than skills?

It's not more important, but it's as important in many roles. I am fairly quiet and not great at talking to people socially, but for my job it's important that I can clearly explain things, defend my position, convince others to work with me.

In a meeting I need to be able to come across clearly and confidently. If I couldn't do that, it wouldn't really matter that I have all the other skills needed for my job.

I don't understand introverts being painted as unfriendly, anti-social or even hopelessly shy. Much less unable to develop skills outside their comfort zone. A lot of big actors are famously unimposing and introverted in their real personalities, in moments when they get to relax and be themselves: Jim Parsons, Keira Knightley, Alan Parsons. 6/10 on the self-pity party, OP.

I agree with @lijkk and @TorkTorkBam. The ‘Woe is me, it’s my personality‘ thing is a total red herring. Everything required for the new role is a skill that can be learned. If you want to, that is. Introverts are just as capable of leadership, good presentation/public speaking, and professional ‘visibility’.

Read 'Quiet'by Susan Cain. It shows how you can lead and be true to your own way of doing things, as an introvert.

Introversion isn’t a disease - half the population are introverts - and it does mean you can’t be more visible now and again. Most academics are introverts and they still manage to stand up in lecture theatres and talk to sometimes hundreds of students multiple times a week. All it means is that OVERALL you tend to prefer peace and quiet, but it doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy occasional ‘louder’ times. If you have social anxiety then that it something different and you can seek help for it.

6/10 on the self-pity party, OP.

There’s really no need to be unkind @lljkk

I’m not self pitying at all. I like myself and think I’m a good, kind, hardworking, loving, empathetic and highly skilled person. I am pondering whether that’s enough in a corporate world that seems to value personality, huge confidence, thick skin and highly social people.

My job isn’t customer facing or people managing and yet a job advert for a similar role recently at a different company stated ‘no wallflowers!’

Are you afraid to voice your opinion? That's what no wallflowers means.

Nobody wants to employ a person who knows what is right, says nothing when they wrong things happening and then afterwards mutter "I knew that would happen"

That's nothing to do with propensity to party.

This sounds like me.

And the going out to drinks. 🤮 Awful that it's still seen as a way to go up.

To me a wallflower is someone who isn’t the life and soul of a situation. Who maybe sits back and takes things in rather than seeks attention or the spotlight. Not that they don’t speak up when it’s important. I do get that that’s necessary and so speak and present when it’s needed - I just don’t like it.

(It also strikes me as sexist since my industry is predominantly female and I’ve never heard a man called a wallflower but that’s just an aside!)

I'm a strong introvert, and find people on a personal level exhausting and tbh confusing. However my work persona is described as an amazing, engaging public speaker to large groups (hundreds to thousands routinely), I will drive a meeting with a clear and confident voice, and am not afraid to challenge others.
For me, the biggest issue would be your anxiety about speaking in meetings - if you are anxious for days before, then you aren't faking it, you are just covering it up enough to talk, but I doubt you are able to be agile enough in the meeting to respond to things. Have you tried some CBT or NLP (I know its a bit out of fashion, but theres some good stuff) to help you move away from seeing them as a stressor and into something that you are doing positively?

these are skills I need to work on too! Could someone explain to me what professional visibility involves and how I could do it?

Introverts can have huge confidence and very thick skins. So you're probably half way there already to gaining the few skills you still wish to have but perceive yourself to lack.

I think you are getting a hard time op. I completely get you. I think introverts can do really well - there are lots in senior positions where I work, but it does depend on your self-confidence. I’m like you - I get really anxious ahead of big presentations or large meetings where I’m leading. This has meant that I’ve decided not to progress my career any further as it will push me more and more into those type of situations. Being happy is more important than career progression and I’m at peace with that decision.

Why is personality more important than skills? I'm not saying you're wrong - I think you're depressingly right - but why??

That completely depends on your role. Part of mine is being able to get people to do things on time - quite often just asking or a reminder email doesn't get the required results. Being able to get people onside and forming good relationships with my team is a skill.

That's obviously not true of all roles, but the more senior you are, the more prominent you are within a company.

Being an introvert and being shy and/or anxious about presenting/speaking up are two different things. I am the first and I suffer from the latter.

I am in a very senior position at work and I’ll admit I struggled with the visibility, presenting and putting myself forward in the first year I was in this role. The two are linked though and my introversion definitely played a part in this struggle. There are a lot of extroverts in my company and there is a culture of meetings and committees for every little thing (I am sure at least 50% of these meetings could be emails). Often meetings will take place one after the other all day from, say 9-4pm and I observed that my colleagues were drawing more energy from escalating discussions and performing better and better before going back their offices and whizzing through all the emails, report analysis and anything else which had come up in the course of the day. As an introvert, I couldn’t do this – each subsequent stacked meeting was leaving me more and more drained where my colleagues were becoming energised and when I eventually got back to my desk and the mountain of work waiting for me, I just couldn’t face it. What eventually helped was having the confidence to say no to meeting requests with just a simple “that doesn’t work for me” and giving myself decompression time in between these events. It doesn’t work all the time. Sometimes I have to just steel myself for a day of increasingly loud debate in my face but then ensure that I get proper downtime in the evening or negotiate a wfh day later in the week so I can catch=up on my own terms. Susan McCain’s book really helped me understand myself and gave me so much confidence in the workplace. It’s fine for me to not be “as good” as colleagues at the relentless meeting culture because I can identify other areas in which I have the edge over these colleagues (analysing data, report writing, forward planning). Very few people are great at everything and I’m a great believer in playing to my skills while striving to be the best I can in other areas. Quiet confidence is a real thing and it can be beneficial to individuals and organisations but the key is confidence. It doesn’t matter how quiet or loud you are, if you don’t have confidence in what you are doing then you will not be able to get ahead.

As far as being able to give presentations and/or speak up in meetings goes – this is a skill which tends to be required for many senior level positions in most industries. One great tip I was given is to always try to be the first to ask a question or speak up in any meeting. If you can’t think of a good question to ask then something vague like “can you just clarify the timescale for this”, or even just a comment like “thanks, Jane – really informative presentation”. Anything to get yourself over the hurdle of speaking. Once your voice has been heard in the room, I find it’s much easier to relax and it feels like you are involved in a conversation rather than breaking into other people’s discussion. With presenting, I always try to remember that folk have accepted the meeting invitation because they want to hear what I have to say. It’s not like giving presentations at school/university where you’ve got an audience smirking, fidgeting or trying to put you off while the teacher or tutor is actually marking and penalising you on your technique and whether you are giving correct information. In a workplace, the audience just want to hear the facts and you are the only person who knows those facts therefore everything you are saying is automatically correct.

You mentioned that you like to prepare and write things down in advance. I identify with this and I try to do so whenever possible, especially if it is going to be a difficult conversation. Nobody says you can’t do this anymore in a senior position. You need to do what is right to get the job done as well as you can BUT be aware that there will be situations where you do have to respond on the hoof. It’s also fine though to respond to people that you don’t know an answer just now, you need to look into it more or take further advice before getting back to them. So long as you convey this in a confident way.

A lot of the fear of presentations and speaking is practice - it sounds really trite but it is true. It's not a whole personality change or being the life and soul of the party - its a gentle push to visibly engage more in defining your team culture and strategy and demonstrating to other people that you're doing that.

I am an introvert, I understand this to mean that being around people drains me and I need some alone time to recharge. Extroverts being the other way around. I have no problem with confrontation or taking charge, I don’t like to be the centre of attention though so perhaps my visibility was not always at the level it should be.

I am not working at the moment but I have done pretty well in my career. I am a professional working for various multinational financial services. I know well the Group CEO of one of the most recent companies I worked for, they are definitely an introvert but managed to rise through the ranks to get that position, so it is definitely possible.

I do think that there is some truth that in the west, we seem to expect extroversion rather than introversion.