Get Personable or Get Purged

November 8, 2005 —

I recently saw a new study that confirmed what I saw in real life: shy people don't get hired as often as outgoing people, and when hired, they get laid off and passed over for promotion more often. Add in folks with "limited" social skills, and an entire subculture of IT people (mostly men) get treated unnecessarily poorly. Women, even full-fledged and proud Geek Girls, almost always develop more social skills than their Geek Brothers, and usually avoid paying the "shy" penalty. (Generalizations based on statistical empirical evidence, not stereotypes).

Too often, managers don't promote people who do good work, they promote people they like. This compromises company effectiveness because managers like people who suck up to them and don't argue, meaning managers don't get proper feedback, but it happens all the time.

You can beat the shy or socially awkward penalty without turning into a marketing blabbermouth. Just reconsider your communication protocol with extroverted people and management personnel.

Cisco routers use a different vocabulary than Windows servers, right? Self-absorbed narcissists, er, excuse me, extroverted managers, use a different vocabulary than technical people. Rethink your communication style.

Avoid acronyms. Don't assume they understand anything more technical than the coffee machine. Don't say "as everyone knows." Look them in the eye every ten seconds or so. Don't get frustrated and impatient, because you have nothing more important than that conversation (make yourself believe that).

Critical: involve them personally in the problem and solution you're discussing. "Our routing tables may get scrambled if we don't upgrade" means nothing, but "you won't get your e-mail" means everything to managers. They only recognize a problem when it affects them, so make sure you describe the grief it will cause them personally. When it causes your extroverted manager a problem, he or she will give you the authority to fix the issue so they aren't inconvenienced.

When in doubt in a general conversation, ask the extroverted manager questions about themselves. They love to talk, and if you can fake being interested, you jump from the Purged subset to the Personable subset without saying a word. In fact, you may not be able to get a word in edgewise once the outgoing person starts spewing, so stay interested (or fake it well) and stay employed.

ITworld.com, Enterprise Networking