Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep14: Quiet people are actually smart.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Corporate Survivor Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your career confidence, build your skills and value, increase your salary, and the many lessons we learn in the corporate world. For more career support, click on over to www.mayping.com. This is Mayping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. In today's podcast, I want to talk about why quiet doesn't mean stupid. So we are now in day two of my five-day, five-part Introverts Unite series and welcome. As an introvert myself, I was a very quiet child when I was growing up. I was always observing people. I didn't really have

Starting point is 00:00:57 much to say even though I had a lot of ideas, a lot of things going on in my mind, a lot of observations, a lot of thoughts and just being curious about things, but I didn't really felt the need to share. I didn't feel the need to tell people how I felt and I was generally quite quiet. I didn't really mix around with a lot of my cousins. I didn't really have a lot of friends. And, you know, this bit we talked a little bit about in yesterday's podcast. But I want to remind everybody that quiet doesn't mean stupid, right? And I want you to ask yourself,

Starting point is 00:01:58 when was the last time you met a person who was fairly quiet? You know, they smiled and they nodded their heads, but they didn't really have much to say. What was your immediate thought of that person in terms of confidence as well as competence, right? In terms of professional development. So of course, introverts generally steer towards the quiet side, but doesn't mean all of them are like that, right? And if you have judged someone in the past in terms of their professional abilities, dependent on whether they are quiet or loud in their opinions,

Starting point is 00:02:41 this is something to really reconsider. So introverts bring a lot of value to the table, but the biggest challenge for them is that they don't always share those thoughts. So if you're an introvert, let me know if this really resonates with you. In fact, I found that a lot of introverts are people who have a lot of insights. They, because they think about things so deeply that they tend to have a, an opinion, right? A view or a perspective to share. The really biggest challenge is the i guess judgment by other people because i understand that obviously you know in the corporate world things move very quickly and we may not always have a lot of time to build deep engagements but i do think that we should try. We should engage with people at the level that they feel comfortable.

Starting point is 00:03:48 So like I always say, you know, communication is really sending your, sharing your message and expressing yourself in a way that the other person can understand. And that's where, you know, the listening skills come in, the questioning skills come in the questioning skills come in to really try to draw out from the introvert so if you have a spouse or a friend who is a highly introverted person i'm sure you can resonate with this they're constantly very quiet they don't have much to say and sometimes they'll just say yeah okay, okay, yep, all right. But you can't just get more. And if you're an extrovert, you want more, right? You're just waiting for more information, more stimulation. That's where, you know, we meet halfway. And I

Starting point is 00:04:40 would say that, you know, if you're a team leader at work right you're a manager you're a director and you have people working for you i would encourage you to really get to know them either you can do a one-on-one for coaching and mentoring and really try to find learn about their personality learn about what they think and what they have to say. Maybe sometimes, you know, they just need a better and more, I guess, more safe and quiet environment to be able to feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and that's all right. So as a manager, as a leader or a boss or a business owner, it is your responsibility to get to know your staff, right? Get to know your team, how they operate, how they behave, how they think. What you don't want to do is to quickly apply judgment, to quickly conclude that, okay,

Starting point is 00:05:41 this person is so quiet, I'm sure he or she is useless he or she can't do anything that is absolutely not true some people just need more time to articulate their thoughts and especially as an introvert because a lot is happening in their mind so like i said like it is thousands of like trains moving at the same time and that's really what it is right so for them to pull out their thoughts and really articulate it and express it in the way that you can understand it it might be quite challenging and i also coach quite a few um quite a few intro i mean highly introverted um clients and when they came to me know, they talked about how difficult it was for them to express themselves. And in most instances, they would just choose to not say anything or they'll just let somebody else speak first.

Starting point is 00:06:34 And for some of them, you know, they even have a default response, right? Because if someone asks them a question or an opinion, they're still thinking about it, they don't they can't answer so quickly so they end up saying okay okay okay or uh-huh but they don't actually mean it right so different people learn and kind of express themselves in different ways and some people take just a literally a split second but some people may might need a little bit more time so So like I said, if you're a team leader or pretty much in a management position, dealing with staff and, you know, having the need to drive your team forward, this is really something to take note of. It could be part of your own development of management skills in terms of like getting along with people dealing with people creating win-win

Starting point is 00:07:25 relationships right so that's something that i talked about in my last series the top 10 soft skills so if you missed it out do check it out i think as a as a leader we should be open and not apply judgment to the people that we work with or we collaborate with solely based on whether they open their mouth or not. So this is really something I'm very passionate about because when I really started in my career, I was quite quiet and people just assumed that I didn't know anything, which is not true. So I thought about things a lot. So I had a lot of information. It's just that I didn't really feel the need to to share unless i was asked and if you're an introvert i'm sure you resonate with this how often you actually put up your hand

Starting point is 00:08:15 and say i have the answer probably not so often just because you know we are people who you know like to stay behind the curtains, stay in the sidelines and only really volunteer when you really have to. It's not a great habit, but it's just important to recognize that that is the way you react on the default so that you can take steps to be more vocal, to be aware of how other people are perceiving you as an introvert and ask yourself is this helpful for your career or not because we all work in very different environments right and if you happen to be in a workplace whereby you're just so quiet

Starting point is 00:09:01 and you can't get along with other colleagues right other teams there might be a problem right it might have pretty negative implications in your career or even in business as well if you're an entrepreneur and you tend to want to do things on the back end just hiding behind your emails and like people are not hearing from you so that's where miscommunication tends to happen when people are not hearing we're not connecting human to human right so we're just using a bunch of emails and um yeah and like all sorts of calendar invites and whatnot so quiet doesn't mean stupid but being too quiet does hold you back in certain ways in your career or in business. It's just to what extent.

Starting point is 00:09:52 So for all you introverts out there, yes, I'm here to tell you that quiet doesn't mean stupid. Quiet doesn't mean that you have less intelligence abilities compared to someone else, right? Compared to your peers, your friends or whatnot. But do recognize that it does hold you back and it's really up to you to decide to what extent you want to open up and at a pace that you feel comfortable with. This is something that I had to learn. It was a journey for myself. And the fact that I could move up very quickly in an international bank, I've held very senior positions while only in my 20s.

Starting point is 00:10:35 It's about my willingness to step up from my comfort zone and be less quiet, right? To engage with other people. Because like I said, right, some of the really most important skills you need to learn is communication, getting along with people and creating win-win relationships, none of which you can achieve if you are just extremely quiet and you keep to yourself and you don't talk. So if you don't talk, then you don't exist. And that's not what we want. So I want you all to try.

Starting point is 00:11:09 I want you all to do absolutely amazing. So let's start with this. Let's start with deciding to be more open and really step out of your comfort zone. So that's all I have for today's podcast. And I look forward to speaking with you in my other days series and for this entire week so looking forward till next time bye

Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep14: Quiet people are actually smart.

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