Teamwork Tips for Introverts, Extroverts and Everyone Between
Anyone who’s ever worked on a team knows that team dynamics can have major impact on output. At Talk Up Radio, my team is both my production crew - working to create great content week after week, and my community - benefiting from the creating and the creation. We work for ourselves, teaching ourselves, exercising our voice and growing civically in the same way we aim to create these experiences for others. So it’s safe to say my team is very very important to me, therefore, when it comes to team dynamics, I spend a lot of time trying to manage energies and personality types to ensure that everyone is being served by our collaboration and feels comfortable; and I love doing that. It’s not easy, and I’m still learning, but after four years, I think We've got some of the basics down pat when it comes to helping differently tuned people with disparate, maybe even oppositional energies, to create beautiful music together. Have a read and take what you need. :)
1.START WITH YOURSELF
Alright, this might be hard to hear but I say it with love. Sometimes, the interpersonal challenges we have with others, are only manifestations of our internal problems. I know, because I’ve experienced it. So many times in my life, I’ve had a visceral response to something someone said or did and when I took a moment to interrogate my feelings without reacting or responding, I’ve found that the stress isn’t from the person’s actions but rather from past trauma that the action brought up. In essence, it triggered painful memories. If I had responded or reacted in the moment, I would have brought all that baggage into the current situation which would be uncalled for.
So I always start with myself. Doesn’t matter who I’m working with, there will be disagreements, I just make sure I’m disagreeing about the situation in front of me and not other issues including my personal baggage as well as residual feelings from previous disagreements. And I encourage my team members to keep this in mind when dealing with each other. When someone’s reacting strongly, they may be experiencing something bigger so try not to match them, stay calm and have some empathy. And on the other side, if you feel the urge to react strongly, take a moment and think about where that’s coming from.
2.SPEAK YOUR MIND
Oh man. So here’s what used to happen to me. I don’t want to make people angry. I don’t want to hurt their feelings. I want them to have a good time and to feel good and I want them to feel comfortable in the workplace. So, when I disagree with something, if it’s not like a major threat, I hold my tongue. And another thing happens and I hold my tongue again, and again and again until I’m so fed up and frustrated that I have to walk away or else I’ll explode. I become resentful and unmotivated. My bad mood lasts for ages and my energy just permeates the room throwing everyone off kilter. Eventually I realized that it was just not working.
So starting with myself, I figured out that like so many people I have approval addiction. I want to be liked so intensely that I warp myself and cause emotional damage to myself to keep others liking me. Not only is it unproductive (people still dislike me), it’s dishonest. How can people get to know you if you aren’t even there? My team deserves better. So starting from there I try to be authentic in every moment and very importantly, I say what I need to say and I try to create an atmosphere where my team members know they can say what they need to say.
3.LEARN THE STRENGTHS OF OTHER APPROACHES
My Co-Producer is the biggest extrovert in this world. When we started producing our radio show we were in our very early twenties and it took us ages to figure out how to work together. I mean, things were never bad but we didn’t hit our stride until maybe a year in when we fully understood each others’ strengths and decided to let each other play to them. There are some things she’s just great at. She is the life of our team parties, the smoothest person on a phone call, not to mention the best at meeting people for the first time - crucial for a radio show Producer. She also really understands people and what motivates them. I’ve learned to lean on her strengths to make our team better and that’s helped me to do the same thing for our team and even our guests!
4.LEARN THE WEAKNESSES OF OTHER APPROACHES
In the same way learning the strengths of the extroverts on my team has helped me create fulfilling and rewarding opportunities for them and to improve our team, learning their weaknesses is also an opportunity, not to, like a mean girl film antagonist - use it against them, but rather to make good decisions. This also doesn’t mean we only do the things we like/are good at, but knowing my team members’ weaknesses helps me to support them through potentially difficult moments. I don’t believe in coercing people to do things they’re not comfortable with. I sometimes challenge my team to try but because I’ve been so supportive, they trust me to put their needs first and to listen to them.
5.RESIST THE URGE TO COMPETE
Hold both ideas in your head simultaneously. We’re all good at some things and bad at others. This isn’t always something we need to fix. Every now and then I go into this negative thought pattern where recognizing and relying on someone else’s strengths makes me want to become better at this thing. It would be okay if it came from a good place but it’s usually rooted in delusions of insignificance where I feel insecure. And it usually leads to frustration because I don’t actually want to change for me, I just want to appear better so I don’t have the motivation required to see it through. It’s honestly just downright unhelpful and reeks of jealousy.
So instead of doing this I feel this feeling and let it go while making a conscious effort to appreciate team members’ strengths and rely on them where I can. When I truly think I could benefit from learning something from a team member, I ask them for advice and they’re usually so excited to help. But sometimes you don’t have to be good at a thing you know? You’re okay.
6.BUT DON’T BE AFRAID TO CHANGE
Let me tell you, I am an introvert. My prime habitat is my bedroom or a secluded beach or a mountain cabin. My default setting is solitary hygge. But over the years I have learned that sometimes a little extroversion just makes life easier lol and a lot of that came from seeing how my Co-Producer just cuts through situations that give me anxiety. I listed many of her strengths above but just watching her and other people in my life handle different situations has really helped me in moments when I couldn’t just do what I wanted to do, for example in my Chevening interview or when trying to network at conferences. Now I’m not saying there aren’t outgoing, social butterfly introverts in the world for whom a lot of the things that I find stressful are non-issues, but adding some extrovert sparkle to my toolkit has actually helped me to grow, which is ultimately the point. Sometimes we cling to personality types and constrain our behaviour to the indicators, being myself regardless of whatever type that matches up to and allowing myself to grow and change.
7.BE KIND TO EACH OTHER
Even knowing all of the above, sometimes I just have a bad attitude. Or sometimes my Co-Producer just does something that grinds my gears. Or sometimes I do things that annoy her. Or a team member does something to annoy us and vice versa. It happens. We’re very different people with different ideas and experience. Naturally we disagree from time to time. But somewhere over the four years of us working together we just learned that things work better when we’re on the same side. It’s not a competition and even when we disagree it’s not about who’s right, we’re trying to make the best decision for the team and for the work we’re doing. I want them to win in the same way I want to win and I want the team to win. Being kind and considerate, having each others’ backs just works.
So yeah. We’re not perfect, we don’t have it all figured out but we’re a bunch of kids trying to do something positive and to be good to each other. Every now and then we meet a problem we can’t solve with the softer approaches above and we have to take strong and decisive action, for example, asking someone to leave the team. But even that we try to do with compassion and no hard feelings. We still set standards and enforce them, we have difficult conversations where we have to hold each other to account but we do it without some of the entirely unhelpful and downright mean tactics I’ve experienced and witnessed from managers over the years. I’m happy to find that the workplace doesn’t have to be toxic. Sometimes people just refuse to spend the extra energy treating others kindly and how they’d like to be treated. But empathy and kindness, peacemaking and warmth are some of my strengths and I’m playing to them and it seems to be working for us. Hopefully they work for you too.
Thanks for reading!
Songs that played while I wrote this:
The All American Rejects - Move Along
Green Day - Give Me Novacaine
Paramore - Misery Business
Bowling for Soup - 1985
Mayday Parade - Miserable At Best