Introverts, extroverts and their influence I am an introvert, and like many other introverts, I tend to stay quietly in the corner of the classroom, the meeting room, and most situations. And as an introvert, during Organizational Behavior class, most of the time I stayed at my corner, listening to and observing the whole class. I noticed the difference between introverts and extroverts, how much influence they exert and the way they gain influence. To get started, I would like to illustrate the concept of introverts and extroverts, and how this concept developed. Definition What differentiate an introvert and an extrovert is where that person gain his/her energy from, inside or outside. “Extroverts gravitate toward groups and constant action, …show more content…
They will take the initiative to speak at the beginning. On the contrary, introverts leave room for others to talk and speak when they feel necessary, such as when they are asked or when they want to correct some mistakes with their expertise. And when there is silence during the meeting, an extrovert would want to fill the gap by talking, on the other hand, an introvert would spend the quiet time thinking about the discussion before. It’s the case in our class, when the professor asked questions during class, most of the time the same outgoing classmates answered. And it’s more obvious during the simulation process in the last week. In a simulated decision process with various meetings, I noticed that a few extroverts spoke first and led our attention to the issues related to their department. As a consequence, in the end of the simulation, most of the decisions are brought up by the extrovert. In this case, we could say that extroverts have more influence than introverts. This simulation ran during a shorter-than-should-be time, so it was an extreme situation which rarely occurs in real life. Still, the result gave us something to think …show more content…
But two people with the same knowledge, at the same corporation hierarchy, willingness to speak out is an important factor of influence. As Francesca Gino said in Introverts, Extroverts, and the Complexities of Team Dynamics: “Yet introverts’ strengths are often locked up because of the way work is structured. Take meetings. In a culture where the typical meeting resembles a competition for loudest and most talkative, where the workspace is open and desks are practically touching, and where high levels of confidence, charisma, and sociability are the gold standard, introverts often feel they have to adjust who they are to ‘pass.’” (Gino, 2015) In today’s working environment, many times extroverts do have an advantage over