Extroverts, You're Basically Hogging All The Pizza

7 Tips For How to Take Your Fair Share

Photo by Ivan Torres on Unsplash

Everything I’m about to say comes from my efforts to stop letting my massive extroversion tread upon the voices of others. Sometimes I fail. But sometimes I succeed. And every time I succeed, I feel really good. Which is why I want to be part of YOUR growth journey. Fellow extroverts: I’m here for you.

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The Situation

Conversations tend to reveal and reinforce hierarchies of power. For example, I recently gave a small talk to a group of twenty people, where nineteen were female and one was male. When I was done, I asked for questions. The lone dude shot his hand in the air before anyone else did. I thought to myself Do you even see what’s happening?

Extroverts have an uncanny ability to be that person. But like the lone dude with an idea or question he just had to put out there, we extroverts often don’t realize we’re being that person. That’s because we LOVE thinking aloud, sharing, opining, contributing, suggesting, clarifying, contradicting, declaring, arguing, you get the point. It’s who we are. And we love being that way. In fact, we may be largely unaware that we even are that way, in that it just feels “normal” to us.

However.

Take a group of eight friends who just ordered an extra large pizza that was cut into eight slices. Picture the people, the pizza, and your favorite toppings. Everyone wants some. Some folks might even want more than one slice. But no one (we hope) is going to be that asshole who takes a second or third slice when there’s clearly only one slice per person.

As with a pizza, conversation is mean to be shared. And with conversation, sharing means not taking air time away from introverts.

For some reason we often inaccurately refer to introverts as “shy.” Shy behavior is like that of a small child who (literally) shies away from conversation and buries their head in their parent’s thigh; they don’t want to speak up, may feel they don’t even know how, and also could have social anxiety. While yes, some introverts may indeed be shy, most introverts are not. Most introverts do have things to say and do want to contribute. In fact, some of our most profound thinkers are introverted.

What’s more, introverts are actually listening to each speaker (instead of formulating their response, which is how many of us extroverts behave in a conversation). And when a speaker concludes, introverts need some seconds of quiet in order to synthesize what was said and formulate their thoughts. A decent amount of silence is the doorway that allows introverts to come through.

Yet we extroverts are uncomfortable with silence – perhaps deeply uncomfortable – because to us, silence means something is wrong or the conversation is failing, as if conversation is like continually bumping a ball up into the air with your fist, or a game of hacky sack where you must keep the object (the conversation) from falling to the ground.

Also, we extroverts tend to be quite enamored with our own thoughts and we like the sound of our own voice. So it’s not hard for us to decide that our voice is yet again needed in order to keep the conversation going. As an act of service almost, we jump into the quiet space to rescue all of us from the discomfort of silence. Our intentions are typically good (unless we’re an outright narcissist who has an unreasonably high sense of our own importance.)

Yet, in effect, we’ve just barged into the space that introverts need to be kept quiet for up to eight or ten seconds, in order for them to feel ready to speak. Think of it like this: When we extroverts act too much like US, introverts are unable to be THEM. Or, to return to the pizza metaphor, we’ve reached in and taken their slice because it was just sitting there so we assumed they didn’t want it.

Y’all. Conversation isn’t meant to be a grab for a precious resource like an extra slice of pizza. Everyone wants the opportunity to participate if they so choose.

The Advice

So extroverts, if you’re self-aware (and you know you are, because you decided to click this link and now you’ve read this far), and if you think you might be ready to work on this, then I have some tips for you which I offer entirely with love.

1. Make it Safe For Others to Cross. Think about traffic for a moment – picture how humans discern when it’s safe to cross the street. To introverts, we extroverts are the cars dashing back and forth on a street, and they can’t find a place to break through. Open up space for them by doing the steps below.

2. Do the Math. Say you’re in a group conversation, whether business or social. If there are twelve people, each deserves 1/12 of the air time and that includes you. (If there are two people, you get half the time.) You can win at the math by not jumping into every silence, and when you do talk, see if you can wrap up your comment in half the time you usually take by focusing on being concise and not repeating yourself. (Sometimes you can justify taking more than your equal share of the conversation, but don’t you dare double your fraction!)

3. Take the Pledge: “I Shall Not Go First.” Taking a pledge is easy but understanding why this may be hard for you is the real work. I encourage you to be curious about why you think your voice should always be the one that people hear first. (Yes, sometimes you can go first, but not most of the time, and certainly not always, okay?)

4. Prepare to Sometimes Say NOTHING. Not every thread of the conversation needs your opinion or perspective added to it. Maybe this line of thought is one you can let go, trusting that others can carry the conversation for awhile. BONUS WHEN YOU ACHIEVE THIS: Your opinion is more likely to be heard and respected. (Yes, sadly, people may actually be tuning you out(!) because you speak too often and for too long.)

5. Spend Ten Seconds in Silence. (For this one you’ll need to practice alone with a stopwatch at first, so you can get super clear on how long ten seconds actually is, and yes, it’ll feel excruciating to you at first.) Pull out your stopwatch right now to practice. Pretend you are in a group conversation setting and someone has just finished talking. Instead of jumping in, be silent and start the stopwatch. Three seconds in, gently look to the left and smile. At the six second mark, gently look right, smile, and raise your eyebrows. At nine seconds, look left again, and smile, and now it’s okay to talk. You’ve given the introverts sufficient time to enter the conversation, and your body language (smiles, glances around the group, raied eyebrow) has been welcoming.

6. Validate and Regulate Your Feelings. As your body and mind squirm with the desire to speak, take a few nice long breaths, then tell yourself: “You are okay. You are valued. You are just making room for others right now and that is a good thing. I’m proud of you.” You may need to look down or off into the distance as you do this.

7. PRO TIP: The more senior or important you are in the group, the less you should speak. Reason being, if you open with your ideas and continue to say what you think, you’ve made it really hard for the junior and less powerful people to offer a different point of view. (They are likely to simply agree with you, or stay silent, and you are therefore missing out on the wisdom they possess.) It’s better to frame the issue you’d like to hear folks converse on, and then sit back and offer those ten seconds of silence outlined above, and in so doing give your folks permission to jump in. Your job is to listen well. If after a suitable discussion the team has not managed to say what you would have said about the issue, praise them for the ideas they’ve shared and say, “I’ll just add XYZ.”

You think I’m reducing your power, but it’s actually the opposite. Your mind, your voice, and your ability to articulate ideas is a powerful sword. I’m helping you gain control of it. I’m helping you sharpen your tools for greater impact. And I’m helping you to become easier for others to be around as you wield your tremendous power. You also have a lot to learn from the introverts, and they will appreciate your implicit gestures to call them into the space by quieting your own voice a bit. You will be more liked, not only for your fantastic speaking ability, but for your ability to create and hold space for others.

The Resources

• Susan Cain’s book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain. Buy it here.

• Susan Cain’s TED Talk (viewed more than 33 million times!). Watch it here.

• Harvard Business Review piece: Extroverts, Your Colleagues Wish You Would Just Shut Up and Listen. Read it here.

In Extroverted Solidarity,

xo

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