Diagnosing and Assigning Introverts and
Extroverts
Volume 12, Number 21
Issue 569
I started my first company when I was 11 years old. My Dad promptly made me file a tax return and made me pay Federal tax because I was self-employed and owed the self-employment tax. “Welcome to the real world, Dave,“ he said.
Yep, I was the geeky kid who for some reason got started early on pursuing capitalism. I guess in those formative years I was forced by sheer lack of anybody that liked me to be an introvert. At the same time I was learning to work alone, I was learning to be an entrepreneur. I think I learned well because I still use today--in my accounting firm--a lot of the things I learned then about mailing lists, flyers and target marketing.
I stayed very geeky for a long time with my little businesses where I learned by trial and error the strategies for buying and selling and marketing things. At about 17, a pretty red-haired girl motivated me to be a successful entrepreneur because I quickly learned that we could have a better romantic life if we had, well, er, money. Except on the projects that we did together as an entrepreneurial couple, I worked alone. I enjoyed being an introverted entrepreneur (that drew my strength from within the soul), rather than being like an extroverted entrepreneur (who draws their strength from being around people).
I never had the desire to be a part of a big company. Even though after graduating from college I spent five years with the international accounting firm of Deloitte Touche, I wanted to have a very small company. Being around my Dad--the sole proprietor insurance agent--as a really little boy and then being a teenage entrepreneur who wanted to make as much as possible to keep my love relationship funded, I learned that one of the secrets to entrepreneurial success is staying small and resisting the temptation to perceive value in growing a large organization with a lot of employees.
I often try to classify people into either being extroverts (strength and success drawn from being around people) or introverts (strength and success drawn from within the soul). Extroverts are the people that you want to have as receptionists and as frontline people in your organization. Introverts are the people that you want to assign complex and difficult tasks that take tremendous concentration. Extroverts want to be around people. They go crazy when they are left alone. They draw their energy from being around people.
I think that the best businesses are run by introverts--those of us who are minimalists. The goal is to do the most with the least and not build monuments of extroverted bureaucracy by having an overstaffed company. Introverts love to hire extroverts to be the receptionists and the actual service-delivery people. Extroverts hate the stressful “loner” details and want the big-picture contact by dealing with the public.
If I take an introverted staff member (and, remember, introverts draw their strength from within and not necessarily from being around people) and place them at my receptionist desk to handle 50 phone messages and 20 walk-ins per day, they will be terrorized and unhappy. It would be equally disastrous for me to put an extrovert into a room with no windows and assign a 100 hour project.
However, if I put the introvert into a room with no windows and assign a very complex and detailed project that is very important, that introverted staff member may reap great personal success and pride for completing the project and have a great time doing it. Furthermore, the best extroverts get happier and happier the busier they get with phone calls and walk-ins.
Extroverts and introverts get along perfectly when paired-up with the right job duties for them (extroverted duties for extroverts and introverted duties for introverts) and with complementary co-workers within an organization. A “yin-yang” kind of thing can exist between co-workers. With co-workers, introverts and extroverts can be complementary to each other. If an organization properly staffs itself by assigning duties to those best suited, it will be optimally staffed. By properly pairing introverts and extroverts within an organization, you can be very successful in maximizing efficiency and labor costs.
By starting out as a teenage entrepreneur, I learned to do everything. Since a business is normally only as good as the weakest member of top management, only the best should be at the top and there should be as few possible at the top. By limiting the number of “departments” and simply matching-up job duties with “introverts” and “extroverts,” there is more of a team approach rather than a competitive approach. When “departments” become involved, there is overlap and when there is overlap, there is inefficiency.
If introverts and extroverts are misclassified or if there are too many people in an organization in general, you will have tremendous confusion, lots of “mis-stepping” and a lot of overlap. This creates inefficiency. You are doing less with more, which is very expensive, when you could easily be doing more with less.
Doing more with fewer happier people has always been my goal. The fewer people you have in an organization, the more you will have a family approach where each person knows each other’s complimentary strengths and weaknesses. A unified team approach exists to work. Common goals become better understood and everybody works together. Extroverts are happy doing extroverted things and introverts are happy doing introverted things.
If you create an organization that is staffed by a very few people with few people at the top that is staffed by matching introverts and extroverts with complementary job assignments, you will create a cohesive organization that acts like a single family rather than departments within a business.
Oh, yeah, by the way, if you find an introvert’s “perfect job” that let’s them be the best introvert in the world, you’ll have them forever at a bargain price. The only thing better is when an extrovert gets their “perfect people person job” that they’ll want to stay in as long as you’re around.
David B. Robinson, CPA
Index of Previous Issues of Tax Fax
