Do introverted leaders burn out more quickly than extroverted leaders?

Episode Transcript

Hello!

Welcome to the Daring to Succeed podcast.

My name is Julianna Yau Yorgan and I’m a career coach who helps introverts succeed in the workplace by unleashing their introvert superpowers.

This week I’m featuring a question to Ask-A-Coach. This is something I offer occasionally where you can submit a coaching question for me to answer. They’re kind of like mini coaching sessions for free, and I share the response here or on my blog so that others can benefit from it too.

Today’s question comes from someone who is earning her PhD in Organizational Leadership, and is conducting a pilot project on leaders who do not have Strengths Finder influencing strengths or the Enterprising holland occupational type. She find that the leaders without these strengths or interest type are often introverts.

Her ask a coach question is: since leadership is often defined as influencing, do you find that introverted leaders tend to burn out more easily than extroverts since many skills used to influence may not be innate strengths for an introvert?

I chose this question because there’s so much to unpack and I am just fascinated by it.

Let’s start with the themes that Gallup’s StrengthsFinder considers are needed for influence:
Activator
Command
Communication
Competition
Maximizer
Self-Assurance
Significance
And what they call “woo”

Could these all help with influence? Sure.

Are those the only strengths that will ever help you influence? I would argue “no”.

This is because how you influence depends on who you need to influence and why.

For example, I even find Gallup’s explanation of why influence is needed is a bit vague:

“High-performing teams rely on people with strong Influencing themes because they take charge, speak up and make sure others are heard.”
“When your team needs to sell its ideas and persuade others, look to people with the following Influencing themes. They can help your team reach a much broader audience and convince others to aid in accomplishing your goals.”

When I work with coaching clients on their influencing skills, we pinpoint what, who and why they are trying to influence, and design a specific strategy for those needs and that also work with their strengths and values.

This sounds impressive, but can fall short in real world situations.

For example, I was coaching a team lead who was frustrated because he created an efficient process for his team, but was unable to get buy-in from his peers to adopt the same process.

Although he didn’t articulate it in Gallup terms, he was trying to influence the other teams leads with presentations, persuasion and “woo” to win them over.

And it didn’t work.

The problem was the other team leads didn’t respond to the approach at all, not that he wasn’t executing on the approach well.

When we delved into his situation, he realized that what was blocking him was the other team leads didn’t want to do the work to either explain or implement the change on their own teams.

That meant that no amount of “convincing” would unblock his situation—he would need to either show that the work was worth the improvements from the new process, or even take on the work himself to explain and implement the change on the other teams.

Like with many of my most successful clients, this came down to a decision he needed to make on what was more important. In this case, it was whether he actually changed the minds of his peers (which most categorize as influence) or was able to change and improve the process for his team and the other teams.

Now let’s look at the Enterprising Holland type. This is also interesting because it self-references leadership as a preference, strength and value.

This becomes a circular reference, with people self-identifying interest in leadership. And whether they prefer and value leadership then depends on what they perceive as leadership.

In practice, what makes a good leader varies greatly, depending on the values of the individual leader, those they are leading and, in this context, the company they’re performing the leadership role for.

Depending on the company culture and values, other Holland personality types such as Conventional (focusing on numbers, order and success in business) or Social (focusing on helping people, teaching and solving social problems) could be more specifically valued in a leader.

I’ve also worked with many people, whether already in leadership or simply considering leadership, who believe they don’t have innate leadership skills because they think they must have some combination of these strengths and preferences.

It then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that introverts have difficulty with leadership roles because they and others expect them to have and use a specific set of skills for that role.

It’s like the saying: when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

So going back to the Ask-A-Coach question, yes, introverted leaders can be burn out more quickly than introverts — but generally when they try to lead like an extrovert instead of like an introvert.

Introverts in leadership can have more impact with less chance of burnout when they are in roles that require or can benefit from their introversion.

This can be leading high performing teams whose skills and experience need to be brought out, rather than them being told to work in a particular way.

It can also be in situations where difficult decisions need to be made, where careful consideration to the options and their ramifications need to be assessed before action is taken.

It can even be leading other leaders, where you need to give those individuals the space to think and act on their own, rather than commanding them in a specific direction.

So as much as introversion and extroversion is more of a range, the strengths and preferences for a type of work can vary with the person and the environment.

Okay, that’s it for now. If you have any thoughts on this, I would love to hear from you! Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn—I’ll be sure to put the link to my profile in the show notes.

I’ll see you next time!