Working from home (wfh) is increasingly common, despite fears that people won’t do as much and can’t be controlled as effectively as when they’re in the office.
You’ve probably taken actions to prevent these productivity losses, such as better processes, better delegation and more communication between you and your team.
One rarely considered issue is introversion, unless your company’s home working practices consider introversion, you’ll be losing out from the 30% of your team who are introverts.
The introvert productivity gap
My research shows a third of businesspeople are not fully productive, even when working in the office. The most common cause is communication styles and company culture reducing the effectiveness of introverts.
The good news is that introverts tend to focus on the little things, are less likely to let things drift and tend to be meticulous about completing their tasks, which is ideal when working from home. The downside is they’re already disengaged by company communications and you’re planning more coordination and more communication, it’s even easier to disengage your introverts.
What do you mean by introverts?
Two points about introverts help explain the issues, keeping these in mind will help you improve productivity.
- The way people think. Introverts think about something before answering (internal processing). Most extroverts think by talking (external processing). This means meetings can be dominated by extroverts talking. In virtual meetings introverts are even less likely to make their point unless you make space for them and they’ve had the chance to think it through.
- Energy: Extroverts gain energy by being with others, for introverts it’s the opposite. Energy starved extroverts working remotely gain energy from the team meetings and may be more dominant than normal. Introverts tend to only add to conversations where they believe others are going to listen (and it will add value), you may find remote meetings get less comments than normal from introverts.
6 tips to improve things
- It’s easier for people to feel disengaged working from home, especially those less likely to phone and talk to colleagues. Answer: Run more sessions to engage the whole team, allowing everybody to contribute to the sessions and know what’s going on.
- Positive feedback: We all like positive feedback, it can increase confidence and improve productivity. Remote working makes it easier to overlook. Extroverts tend to want external validation (told they’re doing well) and seek it out. It’s easier to overlook introverts who gain confidence through internal validation (work out they’re doing well), although they still need feedback. Answer: Ensure they know what the elements of a good job are and what good is for those elements, then give feedback against them, rather than general comments.
- Communication preferences. Introverts tend to get stuck into tasks and struggle with interruptions. In the office you can see when people are concentrating deeply, busy, or just chatting, so it’s easy to interrupt at the right moment. You can’t do that when working from home. Answer: Agree in advance when you’ll ring/ text, agree the preferred medium and let them know the subject in advance.
- Give the gift of time: Internal processing means introverts are less likely to engage in meetings where questions are given, and immediate answers expected. Sharing data and immediately wanting people’s ideas tends to only get input from extroverts. This is more acute in remote meetings, where it’s harder to interrupt, harder to analyse data and there are other distractions. Answer: Get meeting agendas, issues, and data sent a week before meetings. It allows for internal processing, then introverts will engage more readily.
- Team meetings: Team meetings are more important when working from home, to coordinate, keep everybody aware of issues and what everybody is doing. But overtalking and random chat are common in remote meetings, which disengages introverts. Answer: Remote meetings need stronger facilitation, stick closely to the agenda and mute people who aren’t talking.
- Focussed conversations: Introverts thrive in small meetings with where there is a clear purpose and they can add to that purpose. These discussions happen naturally in the office, remotely they’re less likely. Answer: Set up small group discussions on a regular basis to solve problems.
These six points will help you get more productivity where your team are working from home. Which will you do first to close your hidden ‘wfh’ productivity gap?
By Jon Baker
Jon Baker specialises in helping leaders improve productivity through a better understanding of introversion, his website is https://introvertinbusiness.co.uk
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