020 - How Introverts Can Flourish Without Pretending With Joanna Rawbone

Joanna Rawbone talks about how she enables introverts to flourish without pretending because for too many decades, she had been pretending to be something she was not in order to fit in and get on and it took her into burnout. So she is on a mission to shift the extraversion bias in business and education because it's in their everyday practices and processes. 

 

She found she was an introvert by having completed a Myers Briggs profile and she explains this in detail within this episode. Joanna shares how 20 years ago she was working as an Associate Trainer, she already knew she was an introvert, but she didn't know what to do with that difference. In the training field so many of her colleagues had huge personalities, huge extroverts, and she felt that this was what she thought she needed to be to fit in and to be recognised in her field.

 

But on holiday in France and all of a sudden, she turned to my husband and said, I can't do this anymore, she couldn’t keep pretending in her work, she couldn’t be something she immediately made moves to leave the organisation and she goes on to tell us her story of introvert burnout and how she rebooted her life. She shares how she replenishes her energy and how she boosts her battery as she calls it.  Joanna is now being labeled as a corporate disrupter, due to her challenging yet supporting them on their Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies in respect of this aspect of neurodiversity.

KEY LEARNS 

“My reboot was getting connected again, with somebody who valued what I did in the way I did it. They valued me for who I was, not for who I'd been pretending to be, not for who I could be if I bent myself out of shape. So that taught me a huge lesson. My reboot for me meant coming back to myself, reconnecting with who I really am in order to go on and do bigger and better work going forward.”

 8:45  

“Whilst that was so great for understanding myself, what it didn't do was tell me how to really play to my strengths with that profile, what it did was highlight how I was different. So it gave me some tools to how to be more extroverted, how to be more like other people, and it took me a couple of more decades to realise actually, that the real knack here is to know my strengths as an introvert to claim them and then play to them without apology. And many people, many of the clients I'm working with now aren't finding out that they're an introvert until their 40s and 50s. And that moment of absolute joy, when they realise that there's nothing wrong with them is just phenomenal to observe because many of us have spent years if not decades, being told to be different, be more this be more that, in other words, be more extroverted, push yourself forward, speak up more, you know, you've got to be more like this, you've got to do more of that. And that leaves most of us feeling that we’re not enough being ourselves, because it's only by being something else that we're valued”.

 10:49  

“Introverts tend to have this- think say think communication process. So if you ask an introvert a question, typically, what they will do is they will literally kind of go up into their heads, and we spend a lot of time in our heads and really think about what our answer is to this particular question. And that takes time. And quite often, we don't get to the say, part of our process, because in our fast-paced business world, the conversation has moved on. So the perception people have about an introvert is that we're too quiet, that we don't have an opinion, that we don't have anything to say that, you know, sometimes worse than that, that we're stuck up or arrogant or you know, just loners. But actually, it's about understanding that our communication process is different.”

“What needs to happen is you need to understand the communication process of introverts better because as an extrovert, their communication tends to be, say things say, so you ask them a question, you get an immediate answer. It may not be what they actually mean. Often, it's like a stream of consciousness and they'll make sense of it as they go. And often speaking it out helps them understand what they're thinking. So exactly the opposite from the introvert.”

“Introverts need time to recharge. So if we go back to Young's original definition, introverts are already overstimulated mentally and introvert means we let you know we literally look inwards for our energy, whereas extrovert means they look outwards for their energy. So we're already overstimulated and don't need additional stimulation. Extroverts require external stimulation in order to recharge their batteries. So they need social interaction, active experiences and change, whereas they're the very things that can drain me, drain my mental batteries really quickly.”

14:58  

“Many introverts, not all because there are six different types of introverts to start with. And you know, so none of us is the same anyway. So six pure types and many combinations. Many introverts have more of a reflector theorist learning style. So I do a lot of work with professional services. And it's not unusual when we do the, you know, learning styles questionnaire, for instance, for most of them to come out strongest on reflector, theorist, whereas extroverts tend to be more pragmatist, activists. So there is, you know, there is a kind of parallel there, and it's not an absolute match. But again, if people prefer to sit back and observe before they have a go with that reflective learning style, chances are again, it's worth just thinking about whether they are more, you know, identify as an introvert.”

 

16:14  

“The biggest strength is our listening skills. So introverts are curious. And because we're not looking to contribute the whole time, what we're very good at is listening and listening with our eyes as well as our ears. So we notice what's not being said, we notice the little kind of changes in body language. You know, for the poker players, we noticed the tails that give people away when what they're saying doesn't quite match with their body language. And because we are so good at listening, that means that we're fantastic at assimilating ideas at summarising at bringing forward something that was touched on, and then almost dismissed just to make sure that the, the meeting or whatever, doesn't want to reconsider that. And, you know, gosh, the world needs more of that listening. If we go back and think about maybe Freud, or even Newton who said, you know, man's failure to communicate is often down to his failure to listen. And, you know, we really do need to think about, how would our team be,  how would our businesses be, how would our relationships benefit, if we listened better if we listened more. So listening, for me is typically the number one”

 

 19:43  

“What that enables me to do is to use either one of my quick brilliant battery boosters, which can be something as simple as a quick meditation, I might be using acupressure points like on my third eye or the one just above my top lip, I may use essential oils like lemon which is very helps with focus or lavender, which helps relax movement is really good. So if I'm in the office, then just going up and down the stairs will help if I'm on my own or a quick dance break will help and getting out in nature. You know, all of those things are really important in order to recharge batteries.”

 23:45

“Ambiverts technically do exist and they are people who are equally recharged by the quiet solo things and by the busy, clubbing and being within a big in a busy mall and you know, with a crowd of friends, all that sort of stuff. But more often than not what we have are people who are extroverted introverts or introverted extroverts. And I'm an extroverted introvert.”

 31:18  

With up to 47% of people in the UK identifying as an introvert, that's a massive amount potentially, of our employees, of our workforce, who are not being able to be themselves. So going home at the end of every day completely wrung out, and probably not being the best person at home, then for those that they live with and love, ready to come back and do it all again the next day just in order to fit whatever society or whatever the business has deemed is best. And, you know, my big question is, who is it that decided that introversion was neurodiverse?”

 

32:32  

“We only have to look at some of the biggest leaders in the world and in business, who are, you know, male introverts, Warren Buffett, you know, one of the most successful investors and business leaders, introvert Bill Gates, Steve Jobs was Barack Obama all identify as introverts. And, you know, if you just think about that calm presence that he had, you know, no bionics, no drama, but just his real solid calmness, you knew exactly what you were getting. And, and so it's not that there's a lack of, you know, leadership role models for introverts out there. But somehow there's this, I don't know that there's this strange thing that happens in organisations that says, but you have to be pushy, you have to be aggressive. You have to be this, you have to be that. No, you don't, not at all, I think some of the best qualities of leaders are things like humility, you know, when a leader can actually say, I got it wrong, or to use Amy Edmondson phrase, you know, that situation or humility, where I don't have all the answers. And you know, nobody says I should. And, you know, I think it's much easier for introverts to fall into that camp than perhaps it is for extroverts.”

35:46  

“Purpose plus passion Trumps fear. So some of the introverts I work with will use their introversion as an excuse, they'll almost hide inside and say, Oh, I can't do that, because I'm an introvert. And actually, you know, that's, that's poppycock, really, because I can do anything I put my mind to, provided I've got enough charge in my mental batteries. So all I need to do is really kind of access my purpose and my passion. And then I am unstoppable, I can do anything I put my mind to. So that's the thing I remind myself of pretty much every day, because these days, pretty much every day, I'm doing things that even two years ago would have been outside my comfort zone. And as introverts, one of the things I encourage us to do is always to work at the outer edge, it doesn't work to say you have to get out of your comfort zone. Again, I think that's a very extroverted thing to say and do. So you know, there are people who say the only learning that happens outside your comfort zone. Actually, I know that not to be true. But what we encourage my clients to do is to work at that outer edge of their comfort zone. Because by doing that, we enlarge our comfort zone the whole time. And all of a sudden, we can do the things that a week ago, a month ago, a year ago, we thought were impossible to do. And that's the kind of fear that I'm talking about- access your passion, access your purpose, and then we become unstoppable.”

43:56  

“People say you can't put me in a box. It's just a label. It's actually a useful categorisation that helps us with self-awareness. So let's not tie ourselves up in knots about it. Let's just use it for self-awareness.”

 

RECOMMENDATIONS

Flourishing introverts podcast  - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-flourishing-introvert-talks/id1499272094

Watch Joanna’s TEDx talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD7GXMeH4yI

Susan Caine's TED Talk - https://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts?language=en.

Quiet by Susan Caine https://amzn.to/3kGpy4y  

ABOUT JOANNA

Joanna Rawbone (MSc) founded Flourishing Introverts to shift this extraversion bias in business using a simple but robust approach and to enable individuals to recognise their natural strengths so they can fulfill their potential without pretending to be something they are not. This starts with enabling introverts to identify and own their strengths, something Joanna does in her group coaching programs and 1:1 with clients. 

With her clear purpose and unshakable passion, she works with companies and organisations to help them recognise and encourage the contribution introverts can make to their business. This is Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in action.  

 

CONNECT WITH JOANNA

www.flourishingintroverts.com

www.linkedin.com/in/joannarawbone

https://www.facebook.com/groups/Introvertscorner

 

ABOUT THE HOST

Emma Last is a qualified Mental Health and Wellbeing Trainer and Coach. She has co-written both the First Aid Industry body’s accredited First Aid for Mental Health and Wellbeing training for Adults in the workplace and those working with children.  

Emma also has over 20-years, experience in leading teams and developing strategies for change. She worked in senior leadership for a large corporate until early 2018, when she came to a turning point in her career due to being on the brink of burnout and wanted to gain more of a balance in her life. She then rebooted her life and founded her company Progressive Minds. 

Emma also works with workplaces and schools on their Mental Health and Wellbeing strategies and provides training and coaching to support employees through challenging and changing times. Emma also works with individuals to help them to perform at their best by working on their mental fitness, which incorporates stress/burnout prevention and resilience and agility development through her Human Reboot Movement Coaching Programme. Her clients say they have become more mentally fit, happier and gain the results they want in their lives. 

Her Human Reboot podcast achieved number 22 in the Mental Health category in Mental Health Awareness week. She is a #1 best selling author on Amazon

CONNECT WITH EMMA LAST

https://thehumanrebootmovement.com

https://linktr.ee/EmmaLast

If would like to find out how you can improve your wellbeing and results in your business or personally book a call https://schedulingEmmaLast.as.me/30min

DISCLAIMER

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed in this podcast belong solely to the host and guest speakers. Please conduct your own due diligence. 

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