What does it mean for your career if you are an introvert or an extrovert?

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In today’s video, we explain introverts vs extroverts, and the relationships between these two classifications of people. Thanks to the rest of the TopThink team who worked on this video, including Tristan Reed (writing) and Nilesh Upadhyay (animation).

Extroverts are outgoing and introverts are shy, right? Not exactly. Truly understanding each personality type–and which one you are–can help you manage a vast range of experiences.

Are You An Introvert Or An Extrovert? What It Means For Your Career

Here is something that hit me recently: For a long time, I had a certain idea about what makes an introvert or an extrovert. I had always thought that it works something like this:

Extroversion relates to how outgoing someone is.
Introversion is the same as being shy.

That was kind of my general perception. Doing just a little bit of reading made it clear very quickly that my thinking was way off! (by Bell Beth Cooper )

Recently I dug into some of the full-on research about introverts versus extroverts, and I think I’m much closer to understanding what the terms introvert and extrovert actually mean. When we briefly discussed this topic a lot of people got very excited. So I hope what I’ve learned might be helpful to you, as well.

Where It All Started–And Why I Had It All Wrong

If we go a bit farther back, we find that the terms introvert and extrovert (originally spelled extravert) were popularized by Carl Jung in the early 20th century. Unfortunately, their meanings got confused between then and now, and we started thinking that everyone belongs to one camp or the other. But actually, Carl’s point was that these are the very extremes of a scale. Which means that most of us fall somewhere in the middle.

There is no such thing as a pure introvert or extrovert. Such a person would be in the lunatic asylum. –Carl G. Jung

So really, if we looked at how most of us operated, we would never be on either spectrum of the scale. It’d be much more likely that we are somewhere in the middle like this:

There are a few theories about the differences between introverts and extroverts, and some recent research has even shown that our genetic makeup has a lot to do with which tendencies are strongest in each of us. And unlike my theory about how outgoing or shy we are, introversion and extroversion actually relate to where we get our energy from.

So in this article you’ll find more information and may better understand where you are closer. I’d like to provide here 2 tables from this article that clear things even better.

12 Quick Tips To Better Care For An Introvert

To make it a bit easier to see which things would be most helpful to focus on when dealing with someone closer to introversion, I came across this fantastic graphic to illustrate better.

What Makes Someone Closer To An Extrovert?

On the opposite side of the coin, people who are extroverted are energized by people (introverts are energized by being alone, from their thoughts). They usually enjoy spending time with others, as this is how they recharge from time spent alone focusing or working hard.

I like how this extrovert explains the way he/she gains energy from being around other people:

When I am among people, I make eye contact, smile, maybe chat if there’s an opportunity (like being stuck in a long grocery store line). As an extrovert, that’s a small ‘ping’ of energy, a little positive moment in the day.

10 Quick Tips To Better Care For An Extrovert

To give us some pointers on how to best care for someone who is an extrovert, this graphic has some great ideas, I found.

Don’t forget that most of us are Ambiverts on this scale between Extroverts and Introverts. Since introverts and extroverts are the extremes of the scale, the rest of us fall somewhere in the middle. Many of us lean one way or the other, but there are some who are quite balanced between the two tendencies. These people are called ambiverts.

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