Overview of Making a Difference

"In every performance review, I'm told I need to speak up more. That I need to spend less time in my office with my door closed. My boss says I have to 'sell' my ideas with more enthusiasm. My co-workers say that I need to be more of a 'team player' and less of a 'report generator.' Believe me, I've tried. It seems that when I try to develop those skills, though, I'm just acting like someone else. I feel as if I have less of an impact rather than more. How can I be me and still make a difference?"

Sari sighed and shrugged her shoulders with more than a hint of frustration as she posed the question to me during a workshop I was leading at her company. I've been asked a similar question many times, and I always feel a sense of sorrow in answering. The reality is that introverts are indeed continually asked to adapt to an extrovert-centric workplace that rewards being out there and on stage. Organisational cultures support those who talk about their accomplishments, who spend more time out and about networking instead of alone deep in thought, and who make sure they are the first to get their ideas heard.

If you are an introvert, you probably feel as perplexed and under appreciated as Sari. Know that you are not alone and that there is a solution—one that not only Honor's who you are but also dramatically and immediately ramps up your ability to make a difference at work. Quiet Influence gives you that solution and shows that it resides precisely in the place where you are most comfortable: deep inside yourself.

This book is not about how introverts need to adapt to an outgoing, extroverted world. Instead, it's about learning from the Quiet Influence rs among us who are making just as much, if not more, of a difference than their extroverted colleagues.

It's just that they are going about it in such a, well… quiet way that few seem to notice them. So many books about influence miss the mark, extolling a more extroverted approach that involves winning people over by talking things up, presenting great arguments and quickly and aggressively convincing others to do what they want them to do.

Over my years of working with introverted professionals and studying the process of influence, I have become convinced that introverts can be highly effective influencers when they stop trying to act like extroverts and instead make the most of their natural, quiet strengths.

Because you've probably tried the extroverted methods, why not take a walk on the quiet side? You can become a more effective influencer when you tap into your natural strengths, and in the pages that follow I'm going to show you how. You'll recognise your strengths and learn ways to enhance and magnify them. You will deepen your understanding of how introverts like you succeed at influence. If you are open to building on your natural strengths through conscious practise, you will perfect core skills, develop heightened sensibilities, and bump up your confidence to influence all kinds of people and situations. As a result, you will greatly enhance your influencing success rate by embracing an alternative to traditionally western Type A approaches to interactions.

Perhaps you land more on the extroverted side of the line as someone energised by people and the outside world. Why not take a walk on the quiet side? Through this book, you will deepen your understanding of how introverts succeed at influence. You will find that learning from introverts offers an enlightening opportunity to balance out your own (likely louder) ways of influencing. If you are open to experimenting with a different side of yourself, you will greatly enhance your own influencing portfolio so that you can have a bigger impact in a wider variety of situations. You'll get noticed precisely because you are trying something new.