We are all ambiverts now

We’ve interviewed Karl Moore regarding the importance of adaptive management styles to suit the different behavioural traits of team members, but also how an adaptive approach is not without its costs.

A Forbes contributor, Karl is Professor in the Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University and has been an Associate Fellow at Green Templeton College, Oxford University for over 20 years. He has also taught on executive education and MBA programs at Stanford, Harvard Business School, IMD, LBS, INSEAD, Oxford, McGill, USC, Duke, Darden, and Cambridge.

Susan Cain’s bestseller Quiet (2012) recognised the qualities of introverts as leaders in an environment where, owing to their energy and big personalities, extroverts were seen as the natural leadership type.

Modern management often requires you to adjust your behaviour to your staff’s personalities to perform at your best. Though in addition, we, as adults, are who we are and should be comfortable in ourselves about that, whether introvert, ambivert, or extrovert. Changing our behaviour, whilst it can help us work more effectively, can be tiring so breaks are needed from these behaviours to recharge.  

The word ambivert means to act introverted at times and extroverted at others. Coined by American psychologist Edmund Smith Conklin, it resonated in interviews with numerous C Suite executives, so much so that my book in progress is titled ‘We Are All Ambiverts Now’. Whilst roughly 20 per cent of people are genuine ambiverts, senior leaders feel they should act like an ambivert. They act introverted to take on board staff feedback (from experience, being quiet can prove challenging), and can then be extrovert, stirring the troops to be enthusiastic about the way ahead.

Flexibility for managers is key. Introverts managing extroverts realise that extroverts often think aloud and find it helpful to bounce new ideas off people. As an extrovert, I come up with ten ideas. Eight may be bad, but I care about the one or two excellent ideas and I am simply not embarrassed by the eight bad ones. An introvert has bad ideas, but they reject them internally and do not share them. Given time to research and think, they will come to you with that one gold idea, it just might take a couple of days.

As an extrovert, I love having introverts on my team, but appropriate management is essential. In meetings I avoid calling on introverts unless they raise their hands, but periodically I will look them in the eye, effectively asking them if they are ready to comment. If they respond negatively, I do not call on them, but if they nod their head yes, then I do, knowing they will have well thought ideas to share.

Whilst managers need to adapt their behaviour, they need to recognise, as mentioned earlier, that this is tiring and that introvert/extrovert breaks are needed. By these, I mean breaks suited to these personalities: for an introvert, being with people is great but can take its toll, so time alone is the ideal recharge; for extroverts, time alone is fine (I have plenty of alone time writing in my office) but being with people is their preferred state (research suggests it releases dopamine in the brain), so the ideal break is to take time out to chat with people. These breaks are crucial for managers to maintain this flexibility.

So nowadays we must adjust our management styles to recognize introvert, ambivert or extrovert behaviour, to work with them in a way that better suits the considerable strengths and occasional weaknesses of these personalities.