Power Of “Quiet” People At Work
Quiet or introverted people can often be overlooked for opportunities and leadership positions. However, quiet or introverted people can hugely impact the success of their companies when given the chance. In this week’s newsletter, our Founder & CEO, Jessica Chen, chats with Mental Health Advocate and Founder of Creatively Quiet, Linda Le. Learn about the unique strengths quiet people bring to the workplace.
Below is a small snippet of the entire conversation between held on our Soulcast Media | LIVE show. If you’d like to watch or listen to the entire interview, click below. The transcript has been slightly edited for reading ease.
📺 Watch the full live event here
🎙️ Listen to the Podcast episode here
On Feeling Excluded For Being Quiet
Linda – For me, I thought going to work was just, hey, as long as I get my work done, that’s okay. When I worked in an environment that was full-time in an office, I remember I would hide in the back rooms because the team environment was throwing footballs around, blasting music, and talking about their weekends playing TV on the projector.
And I couldn’t focus because there were 30 people talking at the same time. And as a recruiter, I’m on calls all day long. So I would hide in the office. And I remember one of my teammates came to find me, and they said, so I was told to come get you because you’re not being inclusive to the workplace, and you need to go and sit and be around the team, and I never forgot that. And I felt insecure and embarrassed.
I remember I had an interview to be promoted, and they just said you need to work on being louder if you can’t be loud, who’s going to listen to you like we can’t trust you to lead, and it was funny to me because I was the top of the leaderboard every single week.
I met all my metrics So obviously, I was doing something right even though I was quiet.
How Managers Can Be More Inclusive
Linda – I was invited to a team event, and I was just very transparent. I said I’m very introverted. It makes me really scared to be in social settings that have hundreds of people. And they said, Oh, we respect you completely. You can just review it after and stay home. But they still made me feel inclusive and part of the team. And my current manager is very introverted.
My manager always asks me for feedback because she knows I have ideas, but I don’t like talking because it’s scary. I think those conversations are so important because we can’t really blame our manager if they don’t know how we feel.
It’s important to have a conversation and make them aware. If you have that conversation, it also shows you what kind of manager you have.
📺 Watch the full live event here
🎙️ Listen to the Podcast episode here
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