Eight ways to make your voice heard at work when you are an introvert

"Meetings are designed with extraversion in mind. They are often poorly chaired, have no time for reflection, and require immediate responses and quick decision making."

Women’s leadership coach and best-selling author Carla Miller hosts the top 2% global podcast ‘Influence & Impact for Female Leaders. Here she reveals how you can have impact as an introvert.

Have you sat in meetings wishing you had more time to think before contributing? Or been put on the spot and felt really uncomfortable giving an answer without more time to think about it?

If so, you’re not alone. Between 30 and 50% of the population is introvert, and introversion often indicates a preference for reflective thinking. According to Susan Cain, author of Quiet, introverts are: “deep, reflectivethinkers. They’re careful thinkers. They come up with insights that others don’t just by sitting and thinking things through rather than verbalising ideas right away.”

That’s right, being a reflective thinker isn’t a weakness. There’s nothing wrong with your brain. In fact, reflection can be a superpower! You go deeper in your analysis than someone who can come to a conclusion on the spot and are more likely to consider the implications of a decision. You are more likely to have empathy and notice the unspoken dynamics of a discussion and its impact on the people in the room.

The challenge lies in the fact that meetings are designed with extraversion in mind. They are often poorly chaired, have no time for reflection, and require immediate responses and quick decision making. Depending on where you lie on the introvert-extrovert spectrum, you will have preferences for different ways of working and communicating. Here are some tips on how to get your voice heard as an introvert operating in an extraverted workplace.