How Introverts Can Lead, Speak Up, and Get Noticed at Work

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And previously, Tim was head of user experience and design at FinTech startups Finder, OFX, and Prospa, where he hired, established, and scaled design teams from scratch. He is best known for saying complex things simply and coining the term peopleing. He’s also a keynote speaker, a book binder. He has self-published his book, The Quiet Achiever, working remotely from his farm in Adelaide, Australia. It makes me very jealous with his partner and the fluffiest old English sheep dog ever. Tim, that is a fantastic intro and welcome to the podcast. Great. Thank you so much for having me. I’ve been looking forward to this. Likewise. And it was, we were just discussing. There is a really dear friend and colleague of mine said, when I told him I was starting this podcast, he said, you’ve got to talk to this guy, Timio, and he pointed out the book. He said, I think this book is coming out and I’m so glad that it’s finally become a reality. Yeah, you’re just talking to me about your colleague. I don’t actually know him. So it’s funny how far my book has reached all the way to Portland, Oregon. So very happy that happened. I’m certain around the world. And you’ve spoken at international conferences. And so you are first well known as a graphic design leader. Is that right? Yes. So I started my career in design about 20 years ago. I started that in Singapore in Asia. And it was only 12 years ago that I moved to Australia. And that’s really where I cut my teeth as a designer. It’s a design dinner. And it’s being quite the journey. Awesome. And can you expand on that a little bit about your leadership journey being a quiet person? I expect it didn’t come entirely naturally at first. Well, you know, when I think back where all of this started, I remember as a kid, I always enjoyed playing on my own, playing Make Believe. I’m sure you guys had this in the US, but have you guys got those little green army men that you would play as kids? You really make belief and pretend. I remember growing up and having this massive map all across the living room. And I would be placing all these little green men. And then making up stories in my head of how what they were doing, the wars that they were having, the things that they were doing. And that was my happy place. You know, this whole time people often sometimes ask me how long have you known you were quiet in nature, that you were more introverted in nature? And I suppose it’s been my whole life. It’s just the way that I’ve always been. And when it comes to leadership, I think when I think back about my childhood and the heart grew up, there was always a certain way that I saw the world, a way that I wanted to make it. And I think some of that stands from the way that I played, the way that I grew up. And wanting things to be officers and trying to make the world the way that I saw it in my head. So I suppose my leadership journey really started from there. I think where the challenge really came up was when I started work and having to work more with people. This even started back in school. When all of a sudden, you know, the world wasn’t just of my own making. I didn’t have all the skills that I needed to bring my ideas to life. All of a sudden, I had to work with other people to bring those dreams to life, bring those ideas to life. And I suppose once you have to start working with people, you start to have points of friction because everybody has a slightly different view of how they want a thing to manifest into the world. And it was really through this process of learning how to work with people that I realized that, you know, the real work, the real work behind trying to lead groups of people to bring your ideas to life really sits in learning how to work better with people, people skills. You may have the best ideas, but if you work long enough in different companies, I’ve seen in my experience. And that is that the best ideas don’t always win. It’s really about learning how to bring people on the journey, aligning mutual interests, so that you can all reach the same outcome that you really want to as a group. Yeah. Echoes, I’m sure a lot of introverts, if you’re listening along, it’s an echo of my personal journey, definitely more inward as a kid and started hitting resistance or friction in schooling and then in particular in working world where your ideas conflict. You use the term that I noticed used from one of your clips on social media skills and that that was a great point that these are skills. It’s a learnable skill and it’s not an inherent flaw in your personality. These are all situations you can learn how to manage. I think for a long time in my personal journey, when I couldn’t do public speaking well, when I was watching other leaders who make it look so easy, they could start speaking and be so charismatic and persuasive at the drop of a hat. When I started comparing myself to these people, I then started thinking, maybe it’s me, maybe it’s my personality and maybe I’m just not cut out for this. Maybe I’m just not good enough. Those two things, that skill of public speaking at my personality at the time, it was very tidy in the twine. Then I started thinking because I am who I am, I will never be as good as them. One day I realized that you know what, actually I think I can be as good as them. It’s really when I hit that point of trying to pretend to be like them but never really measuring up. I think after so many experiences of trying, I just said, you know what, there must be a different way. I think that within me, that desire to do things well, I think that really drove me to find a different path. It was around that time that realization that you know what, all these things, whether it’s public speaking, networking, whether it’s learning how to do small talk, all these things are skills that separate from my identity. And as soon as I, as soon as I clicked within my head, then I realized that you know what, skills can be practiced. And maybe I have to work harder and practice harder to get better because these might be things that come naturally to other people. That’s okay. I can practice it my own time. And it was ready through this practice and of the time putting my hand up for experiences that I wouldn’t have before because I didn’t do those things well. It’s really through these experiences that go better and better and better at these things. It’s a great insight that you had that you were able to separate that because the world is giving you a lot of, you know, as a quieter person, some negative feedback and perhaps telling you that it is your personality, why aren’t you speaking up more, they don’t consider you for these speaking opportunities, that sort of thing. And so it must have taken some persistence to continue to work on that and to put yourself out there in those situations. I think I was lucky because where I grew up in Asia and I hear this kind of story so all the time, being a quiet kid was okay. I remember growing up when other kids were playing in the playground, I might be sitting down and reading a book or playing on my own. And I’ve heard similar stories where people who were not in Asia, maybe they were in a more western country, for example. And if I was there and I was growing up and I was a kid in the playground, they sat in the corner on my own, whereas every other kid was in the playground playing with other kids. Parents might be looking at a child like me and think, what’s wrong with him? Why is he not interacting with other kids? And I think depending on the culture that you grow in, the context and environment, the kind of parents that you are, looking at the same kind of behavior could mean completely different things. So I never felt, I never grew up feeling as if there was something wrong with me. I think that first experience really only came up when I started working with people in the workplace. So in some ways, I think I’m fortunate that my formative years were pretty okay. You didn’t have that experience of your beginning early childhood in the western culture where my god, he’s playing alone in the corner, what are we going to do? That’s nice, but you relocated to a western, more western culture. And so then you’ve found that you had to adapt and change in these ways. So you’ve captured them all in a book. So could you tell us a little bit about that journey? How did you decide to write that? Yes, of course. But before I go into that, I’ll share a funny story. One of the strangest things when I first got here to Australia. I’m not a Sydney Australian, 2012, I’ve never been here before. And at the time, one of my first brushes with a change of culture was really around small talk, like everybody around when I went into a restaurant or the food, they’d be asking, how are you? And to be honest, like in parts of Asia, you’ll probably find people just say, hi, they wouldn’t be asking you how are you. And in the beginning, I took it at face value to asking me how I was and I actually told them. And I quickly realized that, you know what, they’re not really asking me how I am. They’re really just saying hi. And then that was my first brush with really how people greeted people differently in different cultures. And also then making small talk as a way to open up a conversation before the real talk. All these things, again, were skills that learned that I didn’t need to when I was living back home in Asia. But with the quiet achiever, it really started back in 2021. A lot of the things that I’ve written in the book, they were actually part of the talk that I was giving in conferences up until that point. But then every single time I gave these talks at conferences, it took a lot on me. It took a lot of energy to prepare, to stand in front of large rooms and delivering that talk. But I kept doing it because every single time that I gave that talk, people will come up to me up and say, thank you so much. I’ve never heard anyone speak about these things. They are so important and I’d love to know more. But then in 2021, I thought I was the only weird person that was still reading books. I thought everyone else is on TikTok, is on Instagram, they’re on YouTube. Nobody’s going to read the book except me. And I was glad I didn’t write the book at the time because at the time, I didn’t know what the book was going to be. So I pivoted and started doing online courses on quiet leadership, on how to make small talk, how to network, how to do public speaking well. And it wasn’t until 2023 that I decided, you know what, I’m going to try and write the book now. I know what the book needs to be. And that took three months to get to the first draft and then eight painful months of self editing. The editing process was really tough for me. I must have read and reread and rewritten a book like I’m not kidding, maybe even a hundred times. But I’m glad I went through those edits because I think the book is so much better for it. And then I launched, I self published a book on the 9th of August, which is also the National Day of Singapore. And I think it’s been pretty well received. I’m very glad I wrote that book because I work in tech. And I think that book came out at the time when I industry was facing a lot of layoffs, a lot of uncertainty. People needed help, but maybe they couldn’t afford an online course. And the book is a lot cheaper. So that’s really the journey of how I got to the book and how it came out. That’s great. That’s a tremendous amount of work to write a book and really impressive that you self published. I did other people read it as well. Yeah, I mean, I went into it not knowing what it takes to actually publish a book, learning how to do it was a journey in and of itself. I found one of the most important things in helping to develop a book was really getting opinions from a small trustee group of people whose opinions are really, really method to me. And getting their feedback early was key in shaping the book into its final form. Yeah, it’s helpful. We’re out here talking about introversion. There’s a lot of myths. And so what are some common myths that you like to dispel? Well, I think the first and the biggest one is a lot of people think that being quiet is the same as being shy. And they’re not the same thing. Being quiet does not mean that you are shy all of the time. For me, shy, the definition of being shy is really a fear of social judgment. For me, introversion and extraversion, they exist on the spectrum. It’s really about where we actually find our energy. Some people use this litmus test on the Saturday night and there’s nothing else to do. What would you rather do? Would you rather be at home watching Netflix? Maybe you’re quiet in nature. If your tendency is to be the second one without their meeting, people you never met for the first time. Maybe you’re much more extraverted in nature. It’s really about what happens to you when you have stimulation. Whether it is meeting people for the first time, or if you’re not sure, you’re not sure. You’re not sure. You’re not sure. You’re not sure. You’re not sure. You’re not sure. You’re not sure. You’re not sure. Meeting people for the first time, maybe it’s loud and noisy environments, maybe it’s working in an open plan office. It’s really how you respond to stimulation that actually tells whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert. And it’s about how you feel about that most of the time. So for somebody like myself, my happy place, the place that gives me energy is really in quieter environments with less stimulation. This is probably the first misconception on this field. They’re being quiet. It’s not the same as being shy. There are times when I actually am both quiet and I am shy. But that’s not, doesn’t mean that’s me all of the time. Also being an introvert or extrovert, it’s not cast its tone. It’s not an absolute. When I’m within a small group of friends and we haven’t seen each other for a long time, I could be the biggest loudest extrovert in the group because I feel safe. These are people I haven’t seen for a long time. But in that same group, if you suddenly bring one person that I’ve never met, that I have no idea who that person is, all of a sudden I’ll go quiet because that’s just me. That’s how I am. So who you are, whether you’re an introvert or an extrovert, it depends on the context and the people that are around you at the time. It’s not an absolute. I think that maybe there’s only one, maybe there’s only one final misconception and I see this a lot at work. Just because we are quiet, it doesn’t mean that we have nothing to say. I think a lot of times people assume that people like myself when we are quiet in meetings or in group settings. They see that out of persona and they see that as maybe they might be thinking that I’m disengaged, maybe they think that I’m not interested. But really what’s happening is I’m processing the information differently, I’m thinking, I’m thinking before I speak. So it’s a very dangerous assumption, especially in my work in teams that are quieter in nature. For somebody to look at that behavior and think that this person is not interested, this person is disengaged. Instead might not be true. You can’t read other people’s minds yet. Just because I’m quiet doesn’t mean that nothing to say. Yeah, absolutely. I do want to ask you because you work in tech. I do to spend my experience where I might be one of the louder people in the tech, as engineers and product, some technical folks. But then you get into bringing marketing and sales and other people from different departments around the company. It’s a different scale. So I’m just wondering what was your experience in that and different departments within a company? Yeah. I struggled, especially in groups at things. But then one day I asked myself, why does it always have to be a group? I always knew that I built relationships and I enjoyed conversations more when I could have them one-on-one. When this was a person that could speak to in great depth, I also found that when you speak to people one-on-one, they are more likely to tell you if they don’t know something because nobody else is watching. They are also more likely to tell you what they really think. So why is it that the default is always to have these conversations in a big group setting when everybody is present? When everybody is talking at the same time, I don’t know if that’s the most productive way of doing things all of the time. Sure, some of the time, yes. But I found my own way to have relationships to build deeper bonds and to be understanding with my peers. And whether it’s marketing, whether it’s accounting, whether it’s engineering, yes, it sounds like it’s going to be a lot more work. But you know what? It works for me. And I found that if I could build consensus, if kind of line, interesting, understand where people are coming from beforehand, then when it comes to actually making a high stakes decision later on and we’re in that room with everybody else sitting around that table, I already kind of know where each person is coming from and what their interests are. So then it becomes so much easier to understand people’s perspectives and what they care about when it comes to trying to make one decision as a company and as a group. And I think that’s that’s really how I navigate the workplace and problems and that’s how I navigate the working teams and it’s really finding a different way. It reminds me there’s a movie about Abraham Lincoln with Daniel Day Lewis and he was famously an introverted president and there’s a scene in the movie he says, I never go into a meeting I don’t already know the outcome of. He had gone, his practice was to go to all the key decision makers in the room, have the conversation beforehand. And so he knew he’d established those, you know, the rapport and gotten to where they needed to go. So by the time it came to the meeting room was more of a formality. That might be extreme for every company. But I think it’s a similar approach that works really well for introverts because we are much more comfortable in one-on-one conversations. I’ll share this other story if you, it’s a story in tech. You must have heard of this story. I don’t know if it’s true. Let’s go back fine after this. But the story is around how Amazon in the meetings that they do in the workplace, they might write a two-page memo summarizing the argument, the decision that they want to make. And the story that I heard, finally enough, I think it was on the podcast with Susan Kane when she was talking about how she did meet Jeff Bezos one day and asked him, oh, why did you come up with this practice? Why did you come up with this practice of everyone in the room reading through that two-page memo for the first half hour of the meeting? Is it because he was quieter in nature? Is it because you wanted people to have a chance to process before they have a conversation? And she said that no, he’s a flaming extrovert, like extrovert on that end of the scale, but he’s realized through his career that a lot of the people in the room, they’re also much more extroverted in nature as well. They can show up and they can perform and they can speak. But when making these decisions, he wanted these decisions to be informed. He didn’t want people to speak just because this is something that they did well, maybe winning arguments or something they did well at the moment. He wanted those decisions to be truly informed. And if you’re a person that is used to speaking and persuading people, even though you may not have all the information, that’s great. But then when you’re trying to make the best decision that you can, then having all the information beforehand is actually a good thing. And that’s why he instilled this process because people get good at these skills of speaking and persuading people even though they may not have all the information. And that’s why he started their practice. Turns out he’s a smart and insightful man at Jeff Bezos, at least with that. Now he’s certainly an effective leader. Speaking of which, what is your personal leadership philosophy? I like to think that leaders have followers. It’s a pretty simple definition, which is if you’re leading and everybody is only following you because you sit, so because it’s your role, it’s your title, do what I say. I don’t really think that kind of a person is a leader. For me, leadership is about having a group of people who follow you and follow your direction the way that you want to go willingly. For me, that’s the definition of what leader is like. And also leadership is a role. Just because you see yourself as a leader at work doesn’t mean that in the home kitchen where you’re not the cook that you are leaders, well, you’re not, you’re the follower. If my partner in the kitchen tells me Dyson Anian, I asked her how small because I’m not a leader in the kitchen. So leadership is a role. It’s not you, it’s not all the time. It’s just in this context with this group of people, you’re the person helping to direct where people should go. And I think that’s very important, which is that people are following your direction willingly. Yeah, like that. One of the things I noticed looking at your work, some of your work online, one of the things you teach is Jennifer Conwiler’s leadership framework. So this was one of the early people I came across that you mentioned Susan Cain, that was a work that really changed my life, changed my perspective on so many things and really brought me to more acceptance or just understanding about my personality and a lot of light bulbs. Whole box of light bulbs went off. They miss me. From that work. Yeah. And then Jennifer Conwiler’s another one who’s come up with at least one. And I think there are multiple books about leadership for introverts. So tell me a little bit about this framework, how you use it and anything else related to that. Yeah, of course. I love Jennifer’s book. Her book Introverted Leader is actually sitting over here. I love that book. Very practical, very easy to apply. I was writing my own book. I wanted my book to be like hers very much. So funny story. She’s I think in the book she’s self-proclaimed that she’s an extrovert herself of merit to an introvert. And yet she’s somehow built a huge career around trying to help introverts. Which I think is really cool. But within the book she talked about the four piece framework, which I really like. And the four piece are these. They are prepare, practice, push, and presence. So four piece. And how she uses those four pieces in all the skills, all the things, all the habits that she’s helping people learn. You can categorize them into one of these four piece. You have prepare which are the habits that you can and things that you can do beforehand. In my experience, working with introverts and quiet achievers, we are amazing rappers. So we will put in the work beforehand. We will overthink it, overthink it times two. We will do all the prep. So I don’t think quiet people have a problem with preparation. But preparation is one of the things you can do to be ready. The second one is practice. Practice is really doing it in real life. For example, when it comes to public speaking, rehearsing the talk in your head, it’s not practice. It’s saying it out loud in real life and practicing it for real. That’s practice. The third piece is push. Because if any kind of growth, you have to push yourself a little. You have to find out where the boundaries of your comfort zone are. Because in order to grow, you have to first stretch yourself. And yes, it might feel a little bit uncomfortable, but you’re not going to the point where you pray. You’re trying to push against the boundaries a little bit. And that’s important if you want to grow. Others you always stay the same size. And then the last one is presence. The reason why you prepare, the reason why you push, the reason why you practice beforehand is because in that moment itself, you want to be 100% present. You don’t want to be in a meeting, thinking about the next thing that you want to say. And not really staying present and listening to the conversation that’s happening. So I really like these four pieces very much because it really encapsulates the different kinds of things that you can do in order to get better at a skill, like public speaking. Out of these four pieces, I have to say the most important piece for me, if you forget about the other three, the most important piece for me is practice. Practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice all the time. It could be a talk. It could be coming up with small talk topics. It could be any other things that you find challenging as a quieter person. If you practice and you do none of the other three things, you’re going to get better at the skill. And when I say practice again, it’s really practicing for real. Like for example, if you’re giving a speech, you’re preparing to give a talk at a meeting at presentation, say it out loud in private. Excellent. And for me, the preparation comes naturally to practice doing it for real allowed. But if you’re in a more unpredictable situation, like a meeting or potentially a confrontation, you may not be able to fully prepare or practice your way to that. And that’s where the ability to stay present in that becomes really key. Yeah, super key. How many times have I spoken to introverts when they are put on a spot? And for those who listening who don’t know it, this is why it feels like when you’re put on the spot, all of a sudden, all of the eyes in the room turn around and they’re looking at you. And I think scientifically that triggers like a flight of flight response where all of a sudden the blood just drains from your face and you start feeling cold. You might even feel the cold, be the sweat coming down your brow. And then all of a sudden that grip brilliant idea that you had in your head is gone. Because now you’re just staring at all these other eyes that are looking right back at you and you don’t know what to say. It happens more common than you would think. The only difference these days is that I know this feeling is going to come for me. It’s not, it’s not there is disappear completely. I just know there is going to come. And the fact that I know that it’s going to come, I can better manage it. And there also, once you can do that, once you can get yourself to this much more balanced emotional state, then everything comes back to skills again of how you can help you think on the spot, how things that you can buy you a little bit more time to process your thinking. The shift gear is a little bit starting off the bat from the beginning. We have to introduce ourselves to people. And so you have a framework for that coming in a couple different approaches. Can you tell us a bit about that? When it comes to introducing yourself, what I found is that introductions for me come in three sizes. To keep it simple is called them small, medium and large. Small introduction is you introducing yourself in one breath in twenty words or less. And while you need a small introduction, you can use this in situations where you’re networking in your meeting somebody for the first time. In my past, when I was networking and meeting somebody for the first time, and I was introducing myself, I’ll be going on, hi, my name is Tim, I’m a product designer, I work in tech for the last twenty years. And for a while, you start to see people glaze over because in some ways you’re telling them more than they are interested in that moment. And I find that with a small introduction, if you can say in one breath in twenty words or less, it’s almost like a movie trailer. You know, it’s meant to peak people’s interest. It’s meant to tell people a little bit about who you are. And then it allows them to ask interesting follow-up questions after. So I might say hi, I’m Tim and I walk dogs in groups of three or less and I return them home tired and happy. I’m Tim. I’m a small business owner and I build websites for small businesses without spending crazy money. You know, it’s enough to tell people what you do and what you do for a living. And it lets them ask interesting questions after if they want to. And that’s what a small introduction will be good for. The second introduction might be a large introduction. This is where you can go into a lot more detail. You might be using a large introduction at an interview. What are the first four words that you hear most often in an interview when it starts? It’s tell me about yourself. This is the best place to use a large intro because you’re going to have a monologue for about four to five minutes. You want to be able to tell people the broadest picture of who you are, the broadest picture of the work that you’ve done. So that later on for the rest of the 55 minutes in the one hour interview, people can dig deeper because now you’re given them this broad picture of everything you’ve done in your career, your notable achievements. And then you’ve got the rest of the 55 minutes to talk about everything else. So that’s where you can use a large intro. And then somewhere in between is what I call a medium intro. A medium intro might be about a minute or two long. Maybe you’re joining the company on your first day and they are introducing different people around the room or new as well. You’re not the main attraction. You’re just one of the new people. Whether it’s a small medium or whether it’s a large introduction, the key thing is this. This is a part of the conversation that usually happens at the start. So that means a few things. If you start well, you’re more likely to end well. Number two, first impressions last in my opinion. If you introduce yourself, well, people with a style of conversation already have a good opinion of you. So it pays to actually practice. And the third thing I’ll say is this introduction that you do for yourself out of the whole conversation. This is one part of a conversation that you are most in control of. You are the most in control because other people are not introducing you. You are introducing yourself. And so it pays to actually practice because it’s going to be a monologue. You’re going to tell people about who you are. So being able to practice this will actually be a really good thing for you because you’re going to do this all of the time when you meet new people. And I think psychologically, when you get off on the right foot and you tell something humorous or interesting about yourself, people respond, then you’re more comfortable. And it puts the whole conversation in a positive trajectory for yourself. Yeah, definitely. You know, another thing that is a really common set of questions I get asked about are meetings. And it’s, I spend a large portion of my day in meetings. So what advice do you have for quieter folks about meetings? My gosh. If you are an organizer of a meeting, the number one thing that you can do, they’ll make everyone’s life better. It’s a mixture that you send in agenda. How many meetings have I been to in my career? The meeting barely even has a title. It’s kind of like, we’re going to meet at this time. See you then by. It’s not good. Not just for quiet people. It’s bad for everyone because people don’t often know what you’re going to talk about, what you’re going to discuss. And if you don’t know, then your only option is to show up. You can bring all the data. You can do your thinking beforehand. Who says that the best thinking is only done on the spot? People think in different ways. Quieter people I’ve seen like to prepare. So why not give people a chance to do that beforehand? Why put them on the spot and force and squeeze the best ideas for them only in that moment? Is there anything that you can do to make everyone’s life better? Make sure they use and in the agenda. Doesn’t have to be too detailed. At least tell people what you want to talk about in the time that you have. And then people like myself or other quieter people who like to prepare again. And once they prepare, then they can be present just like in Jennifer Conwayless framework. When they prepare beforehand, they can come to that meeting. They can be 100% present to actually listen to the conversation and actually participate. So if you’re wondering why people are quiet in your meetings and they’re not jumping in with what they think, it might be because you didn’t give them time beforehand to prepare what to talk about. I find that if you do give them that chance to tell them what you want to talk about beforehand, then people are more likely to open up because they have something to contribute. And then when they’re there, they’re more likely to be this thing rather than thinking about what they want to talk about. Do you have any advice for standing meetings and maybe the same advice that applies in topic-specific meetings? Sometimes it’s easier to come up with the agenda. But for team meetings, having an agenda in advance still could be something that you do to the team puts together a few days before and then can show up prepared. Yeah, of course. I mean, whether it’s a standing agenda, whether it’s a brainstorming workshop, giving people some inkling of what’s going to be discussed, how they can actually contribute to that meeting. It’s always a good thing. Having some kind of script that actually let people say, don’t go all script. This is a team meeting. We’re supposed to be sharing updates. These are the key things that you want to nail. Everything else we can discuss after. Having some kind of script that people can follow is always a good thing. Also that synchronous time, a meeting is synchronous. It is a time that is best used to discuss things. It is not meant to be a time where you have a monologue. If you’re going to have a monologue, then it’s probably, you know, that might be an email. That might have been an asynchronous conversation that happens on Slack or chat beforehand. You know, if you’re having a monologue in the meeting and you’re the only one speaking, maybe there are other mediums for you to be choosing to communicate. Because the time that you have together in a synchronous meeting, especially if you’re working across time zones, it’s going to be too early or too late for somebody on the call. You want to treat that time that you are together very preciously so that you actually use that time to maybe brainstorm, to actually talk about ideas, talk about things that maybe you’re not seeing on your own. Always treasure that time. If you actually treat that time as if it’s a treasure, I think you will find that you might run those meetings differently, that you would use that meeting time for truly important things. Everything else can find some of the way of communicating that’s not during that time. That’s a really good insight. I’d really like to ask you more about public speaking because you’ve done this on pretty big stages. I know that can seem really daunting for a lot of people. It’s always enough to get my heart pounding when I stand up in a big stage, though I’ve done it quite a few times. What is the best approach for introverts? Maybe we’ll start, start out with small meetings and work our way up to the big stage. For people who are listening and you’re listening to this now and tomorrow you want to go into a meeting and you want to all of a sudden do public speaking better. Sounds impossible, but if you want to do just one thing that will help you become a better public speaker tomorrow, it is simply to just speak slower. Just speak slower. Don’t change what you want to say. Don’t change how you say it. Just like I’m doing right now. Just simply speak slower. I think what you find that when you actually speak slower, then the thoughts that are in your head, they actually have time to exit your mouth. It’s not that your brain is on accelerator mode. Your mouth is just not catching up with the speed that the words are coming out. It’s not as fast as you would like it. That does a few things. Number one, it gives you time to actually think about the words that you want to say and how you want to say it. Let’s you pause. It lets you create emphasis. Because when you’re speaking, the other thing that you can do is to vary your speaking speed like I’m doing right now. I’m speaking faster. Then when it comes to a very important point that you want to land, that you want people to really focus on and listen to. Again, that can be a point where you slow down. That can be a point where you pause. And simply by doing these two things, by speaking slower. And then also varying your speaking speed. Sometimes you’re speaking fast and then sometimes you are speaking slower. I think what you find is that it creates interest. You pull people in to the way that you speak. You’re not changing the things that you’re saying. You’re still saying the very same things. But just by speaking slower and varying your speaking speed. I think just by doing these two things, you will naturally pull people in more. You become a better public speaker already. And then everything else is really about practice. Another thing you can do in meetings, which I don’t see a lot of people doing, is show and tell. Why is it that so many meetings are verbal only? You could be in person. You could be on a Zoom call. You could be on a Google Meet’s call. Why are so many meetings just using verbal communication? You could share your screen. You can show a slide deck. You can show a design or piece of code that you have written, a product that you’ve made. Why on people showing and telling more? I found that when you use different sensors, not just verbal, but also visual, the more sensors that you use, the better communicator you are. So the more you can show and tell, the better. And when it comes to meetings specifically, it might seem counterintuitive. But if you’re quieter in nature, you are also a very good listener, at least I’ve seen from quieter people. They’re great at listening. They might not think this is true, but some of the best facilitators that I know are the best listeners. If you’re actually leading a group, you’re facilitating a workshop, you’re facilitating a meeting. I see that role as the driver of the bus and everybody else in that meeting is a passenger. And your job is you have one job and one job only, which is to get to the destination on time and on agenda. And quite people are really good at this because they are listening to the conversation. They are guiding how people actually, what they should be talking about and focusing on in their right moment. You don’t have to have all of the answers they do. So if you want to be in a position in a meeting and you’re quieter in nature, but you also want to participate and to lead and to help these people get to that one destination. Then they might seem counterintuitive at first, but being that facilitator, the person that drives that meeting can be a very good way for you to help everyone get to the outcome that they want. That’s a really good insight. And something that I’ve seen, there are certain roles or even jobs that you could take, program management is one that comes to mind. You can start earlier in your career and get experience facilitating meetings and you’re all the while developing leadership skills. I probably take strange enjoyment in facilitating meetings because there’s something I just love about synthesizing what’s happening in a discussion, just summarizing, like maybe recapping, like I might be doing. And then you come in with another question that moves the group forward and that’s leadership that is bringing the group along and moving them forward and driving the bus in your analogy. And you wouldn’t be able to do that if you weren’t listening. You wouldn’t be able to do that if all you’re doing is talking at people. And I think most people don’t recognize it as a really important trait. Being able to listen being quieter in nature is a superpower because not everyone can do it. Yeah, good stuff. We’re working our way up to speaking now in a conference. You’re gearing up. You’re pushing yourself in the four-piece framework to go out and speak. So what’s your advice now? If you’re listening to this and preparing for a conference, the biggest misconception is that a conference talk is just a bigger meeting. We’re not going to be reading from a slide in front of an audience of 200,000. This is a performance and it’s a high stakes performance because unless you’re very comfortable speaking in large groups, you know, this is a high stakes event and you want to be doing all of the four-piece, not just one of them. Most conference talks, they are monologues. They might last 10, 15, 20 minutes, 45 minutes. They are monologues. And the monologue can be practiced. To give you an example, a talk that I used to give was called Design Leadership for Intruder. It was a 25-minute talk. When I was preparing that talk, my commute to work at the time was 30 minutes. And every day for good three weeks, I would be driving to work. And each way, I would be simply giving that talk out loud as I was driving. I was memorising that script of what I wanted to say from one slide to another. At the time, I was driving. I wasn’t second screening. I was looking at my slide back. I was simply practicing and going through the entire talk from memory. And it was this level of practice that allowed me to be comfortable enough on stage because one of my biggest fears of being on stage was actually to forget what I wanted to say and to start making up stuff on the spot. To be fair, on stage, I still had a script. I had my presenter notes in case I needed them. But at the same time, I knew that I wanted to be so comfortable with what I was going to say on that stage that it will almost be muscle memory. So that if something happens during that conference, during that talk, something happens within the crowd, I can be present. I can react. I can change. I can adapt. But none of that will be possible if I was not confident in my material and the things I want to say beforehand. And my deal, this kind of preparation takes a lot of effort. Takes a lot of time. You don’t want to be doing this for your weekly meeting, for example, unless it’s super high stakes. But preparing for this kind of level of attention, this kind of scale, this kind of high stakes, you use it in the smallest of scenarios. Because it’s important, you don’t want to fail. And it takes a lot of effort. One follow-up question on that, when you are practicing, are you memorizing word for word? Or are you allowing the language to vary a little bit? The way that you write and the way that you see things naturally, there might be two different things. As you develop your script for the talk, for example, you might find that as you’re saying things, new ideas will come up. You might find that new words that better express what you’re saying will come up. And it’s only through saying these things out loud that you actually can iterate your script and to make the actual talk better. So oftentimes I find when I’m helping people prepare for these events, they start off with a written script and they stick to it the whole way through. But I find that if you actually say it out loud, you practice, you might find a better way of saying those things. And then that just makes your talk a whole lot better. So do it to practice, get used to the words coming out of your mouth, and also to use this as a opportunity to sharpen and make things better. That’s good. And as you do that, these words are more natural and probably you’re more likely to remember them because of that. Yes, definitely. And new stories might even come up, new points will come up all the time. Excellent. Another thing for introverts, and your book is the quiet achiever. If you’re listening, you’re likely achievement oriented. You want to have an influence. You want to grow and become more visible in your organization. So when you’re quiet, how do you go about that in doing it in a way that’s authentic to you? I think a lot of people think that they want to be visible and they want to be a lot more seen. That those opportunities openly happen in meetings. When you find the biggest meeting with your bosses, bosses, bosses, bosses, and always having the opportunity to speak. And for them, the seniors speaking at those times, a lot of people think that that’s a way to be visible. So who says that’s the only way? I found that, especially when you work with teams around the world, one of the best ways I found to actually be a whole lot more visible was to record short videos of myself. You know, who says everything has to be a meeting? I used to do fortnightly, weekly updates of the design team, everything that we worked on. I would do that in a short video less than five minutes. I wouldn’t go through everything that we’ve done. I would just go through the highlights and the key accomplishments. And for details, they can always click on the link and they look at details of the work after. And I would share that on Slack, which is a messaging platform. And those videos, they’ve gone out into across the company, across people in different time zones. And people are consuming their content at the time when they are at their best. No, I’m meeting. They’re consuming it when they are at their best. That might be at 7 a.m. in the morning. That might be 9.45 p.m. before they go to bed. But you don’t have to be in a live synchronous meeting for people to see and hear about your work. And strangely enough, there will be people watching the stuff that you make who have never seen you before, who have never heard of your name. But it’s because of these things that you’re posting out there that they learn about you. Video is a very engaging medium. You don’t think about writing a two-page update of all the things that you’ve done. Because maybe these days, nobody is time for that. They just want bite-sized information. I found this to be a really effective way of actually communicating BigMove, is it all? I really love this advice. You have been in some larger companies. I’ve been in smaller companies. But I think it applies even for smaller companies because people are in that fitably in different time zones. Just the fact that you can consume it when you actually have a minute to give it some attention seems like a huge advantage. The problem why people don’t do this very often is because they are super uncomfortable listening to their own voice and seeing themselves on camera. That’s why people don’t do it. I wrote about it in the book that I called it the hump. The hump is kind of like the tipping point and it actually happens. The hump is the tipping point where all of a sudden watching yourself on video listening to your own voice is not uncomfortable anymore. And it’s a great way to actually practice public speaking because how do you know you’re doing well? If you can’t see yourself speak and hear yourself speak for real. If everything that’s stopping you from doing it is because of your personal discomfort. I found in my experience that it’s almost like exposure therapy where you might be seeing yourself and hearing yourself so often that you’re just a talking head on the screen. I think if you can get yourself to that point, then the opportunities are limitless. You can do so much more, so much more practice if you can do that. I’m telling you everyone I just got over this hump. There’s nothing like watching for yourself and editing yourself of 10 hours worth of video. I’ve got 10 podcasts out done video editing on all of these. I’m over the hump now. It’s possible. It can be excruciating at first though, absolutely. But the nice thing is that, for example, I found that I always said, I’m a lot. And I always, for some reason, just started scratching my chest and I don’t know why I did that. But I never knew that I did those small little ticks, those little habits until I started rewatching those videos of myself. I didn’t like them. So then what I noticed, I can edit and iterate and improve. Yeah. I realized at first I was trying to get other people to edit my video because I was a little bit much at first, but then I came back around and I was like, all right, well, that’s feedback. I want this feedback and to continue to improve as a communicator. Speaking of feedback, I want to think about that in the context of communication with teams. Let’s say you’re progressing and you are a leader or maybe you’re working with a team. What’s the best way to give feedback to that team? I think when it comes to feedback, the most important thing is knowing that you actually have to give it. How many times do people actually shy away from giving feedback because they don’t want to be the better of that news? They don’t want to potentially destroy a work relationship because maybe the feedback they’re giving is not a good thing. For me, the shift already happened when I realized that the intent of giving feedback is to make the thing better. The thing could be code, they’re writing, it could be a design that you’re making, the thing could be a working relationship. It’s not about the person they are giving it to is about the thing that what relationships think they are making together and you give it to the intention of trying to make the thing better. Once you realize that, they realize that it’s just iteration, you want to improve the thing you care so that’s the other person and that’s why you give that feedback. The worst thing that you can do, especially when it comes to work relationships, maybe somebody within the team behaved very badly. Maybe that person was always speaking over the rest of the group and then the rest of the group in the future just stops talking. That’s one example of a bad behavior. How do you do it? There’s a very simple framework that I use that was taught to me by a leadership trainer called Paul Mills. He goes through the situation, the behavior, the impact, the consequence and then the change that you like to see, those five things. Some of you listening to this might have heard of the SBI framework, but this goes two steps more. It talks about the consequence and also the change that you want to see. To give you a real life example, you could say John last night when you used the bathroom, you put the toilet seat up and you forgot to put it down and when I went in in the middle of the night without the lights on, I nearly fell in and could have really helped myself. Next time after you used the bathroom, could you please put the toilet seat down please? So that goes through the entire framework. You talk about the behavior which is not putting toilet seat down. You talk about the consequence which was really hurting yourself. You could really hurt yourself and then you also talk about the change that you want to see which is next time put the toilet seat down please. Now by going using this framework, having this framework in the back pocket, it actually makes giving feedback a whole lot simpler because you’re just filling in the blanks. A lot of times when you go into these car scenarios and you don’t have a framework, feedback is wishy, washy, you don’t help the person’s feelings. You start using very imprecise words, you’re not being clear. And then the worst case scenario is that the person walks away from this conversation and they don’t know what to change. They don’t know what they should be doing. So having this framework, you can also write it down. In more serious situations, you might even have to document this behavior because it’s serious enough that you might have to actually write it down for reasons after. So writing it down beforehand, let’s you prepare, you can also practice it because it’s going to be a difficult conversation. But always remember that the intention is to make the thing better. A couple of things else, don’t wait more than 24 hours to give feedback. At the same time, don’t give it too soon. You want to be giving it doing this when you’re in a very emotionally balanced state. By the same time, you don’t want to be waiting six months later at this person’s performance review. They haven’t been talking about something that happened six months earlier that they’ve completely forgotten about and they don’t have the opportunity to change the correct situation. So I find that 24 hours is a nice amount of time. And when you’re doing this, especially if you are a leader of a team, what you may not realize is that your group, this group of people that you are leading, they are all looking at you and they are watching how you behave. And as a leader, you and your leadership style and what you’re willing to accept as bad behavior is really the worst behavior that you’re willing to tolerate and do not act upon. What that means is that if somebody does a bad thing, that is a new low, a new low if you do not respond. If you don’t say anything, you don’t talk to the person about it. There is a new low that you are going to tolerate. And now everybody will realize, you know what, Tom, our leader, this is a new low. This he thinks that this behavior, this bad behavior is okay. So maybe all of us should be talking over each other all of the time because he seems to tolerate it. And then one day this goes on and on and on. You might realize that you’re waking up to a team that is terrible. They’re doing all the bad things that you do not enjoy. And then it comes down to you because you as a leader of the group, you didn’t say anything. And people are watching and learning to understand how you behave and what you are willing to tolerate as behavior. So true, you have to set that standard as the leader. And so part of that I think is understanding that in yourself, what are behaviors that you will accept and you won’t. And you may not know when you first start out in your leadership journey, not having gone into some of these situations. You might not have thought about, well, this is okay with me. That’s not okay with me. And then over time you kind of come up with your own internal rulebook of what you will or won’t accept. And then it’s just a matter of making it proactive and addressing it as it comes up. And the most important thing, these are hard conversations. And again, it takes practice. And having a framework in your back pocket always helps because you can fill in the blanks, but it’s important to have them. It’s important for you, but also for the other person. If you’re a leader and you really care about that person, this is something that’s going to help them in their career and their life. So I always find it helpful to think about it as coming from a point of caring or service to the person on your team. Yeah, definitely. Speaking about sharing hard truths, what if you have to share an uncomfortable truth with your boss? The first thing I’ll say is that there’s already a power differential there, right, between giving feedback upwards, speaking truth to power, doing this carries huge personal risk, huge. Your boss can fire you. You can’t really fire your boss. So that’s the first thing that I’ll put out there. I actually created a program with a panel of mine. His name is Ryan Ramsey and he runs the Chief Design Office at school. The program that we put together was called Convention of Boss, how to frame your solutions as the obvious choice. And it’s hard because a lot of times we may not feel like we have all of the power, all of the decision rights. We belong to other people. If only they care as much as we did. And all we talk about is really trying to understand and try to figure out when is the right time to actually argue. Like do we argue now? Do we actually play the long game? Maybe right now I don’t have all the information, but I need more time to actually build up my case. Or maybe you have a scenario where your boss is just so dead set on a particular way of doing things or doing a certain things in a certain way. In that case, do not argue because you’re going to be putting yourself in a position where you have too much personal risk. Again, your boss can fire you. You can fire your boss. So a lot of this is also about recognizing your boss’s behavior. How likely are they to actually even want to hear a different point of view. In the course of our career as we’re developing this curriculum for the program, we actually synthesized all of the kinds of bosses and stakeholders that we encountered into six archetypes. There were things like the authoritarian, the being counter, but the micromanager, the design by community boss, the friend boss, the visionary. The reason why we came out of this architecture is to really help people very quickly identify when to argue. You might have an authoritarian that says go left. This is the wrong time to say I want to go right because the person that did say that they are not open to become convinced. This is not the right time to argue, but maybe in a different time, in a different context, they have a different behavior, then that’s the right time to argue. Everything else is about really how to actually structure your argument. So much times we spoke into people and they care so much about this thing and they make their arguments through their lens, their lens of what they care about, if only other people care as much as they did. And that’s how they build their arguments, trying to get other people to care more about the thing that they cared about. What we found is it’s way easier and way better. To actually understand what your bosses care about, what they think, what matters to them, what moves their needle. And then you figure out how you can let it up, what you care about, to what they care about, and how they can be mutually beneficial. If you can do that, figure out what they care about, what moves their needle, and how your thing let us up and moves their needle. That’s a much more convincing and easier way to build it now, given. And that’s everything that we teach within that course. But if you remember nothing else, remember you don’t have to argue all of the time, especially in a working problem, where you’re working for executives, it carries huge personal risk. So choose the arguments carefully. That’s right. And it’s something that I think is maybe a little bit more intuitive to people in the sales and marketing space, because marketing kind of starts as you’re trained to understand and communicate the value of what you’re doing in terms of that, of what the customer understands or the user understands, which I mean, maybe in design, there’s some of that as well. And I find sometimes people from more technical backgrounds, this is the most important thing, but they don’t necessarily have that training to think about putting things in terms of what the other person cares about. So it’s really helpful. So help me make a small talk. I mean, I’m saying me, but I’ve done a lot of this over time, so I have some more comfort with it. But a lot of introverts do not love making a small talk, because they prefer to be connecting deeply, having more meaningful conversations, and they kind of see this as an annoyance. So how can we think about this? Well, small talk, but I made peace with it or how I really wrapped my head around it, was understanding that small talk was not real talk. Real talk is what happens after. It’s an extension of saying, hi, it’s an opportunity to connect with somebody at a more human level, and that’s what it is. And you know, do that well, use the muscles hierarchy of needs. Basically, it says that we, as human beings, have five types of needs and it exists on a stacked triangle. So starting at the bottom, you have physiological needs, followed by safety needs, loving, belonging, self-esteem, and self-actualization. So when you’re actually trying to make small talk, somebody, you’re trying to build a connection before the real talk actually begins. So when you’re making small talk, focus on the lower levels of muscle hierarchy of needs. Things like physiological needs. Have you had lunch yet? What did you eat? It could be safety needs. You could be talking about the weather. You could be talking about how last night we had a storm and our roof is leaking right now. You could be talking about love and belonging, your pets, your sports that you’re interested in. If you focus on the lower levels of muscles hierarchy of needs, then you have a higher chance of actually making a connection with somebody else. You might find that you have something in common. If you focus on the higher levels, whether it’s self-esteem or self-actualization, like how you just bought a BMW or maybe you just got yourself a Rolex watch, or maybe how you have dreams of being a rock star, these might not be things that are easy to connect to have a connection with other people. But then things lower down in the hierarchy, food, shelter, pets. These are things that most people could find something they have in common. If your goal is ready to have some kind of connection before the real talk begins, then I encourage you to focus on the lower levels of muscles hierarchy of needs. It’s a helpful framework of reference. A lot of times you hear, compliment somebody and something that they’re wearing that’s low on the hierarchy of needs, clothing. A lot of times this happens in networking events. How should you approach networking events as a quieter person? Online and offline is a short answer. People always think about networking as networking events, walking into a room, or people that you don’t know that are meeting for the first time. This kind of contacts really suits people, I think, who are extroverted in nature, who like that constipation, not me. I’m always the awkward one, the standing in the corner of a room. They’re getting so uncomfortable that I’ll just start staring at my phone and wondering why I’m there in the first place. The thing that changed was really for me when I realized that the goal of networking is resourcefulness. It’s a growth of a number of people that I know that I can help and who can help me. That was the goal. I can only do that if I actually go and actually meet people and get to know them. You don’t always have to do this online or offline. If you’re doing it in person, there are two things that you can try. Number one, you don’t have to stay in one spot. You can always walk around the room. When you walk around the room, what happens is you actually increase the surface area and the number of chances of you meeting interesting people. You don’t want to be walking from point A to point B. You want to be thinking long, meandering loops. So that, again, you’re increasing your surface area and increasing the chances of you bump into interesting people. If you see this person that’s really interesting that you want to talk to but they’re talking to somebody else, that’s okay. You can always come back around. The second thing you can do for in person networking to join a queue. Every event has got a queue. Whether it’s a queue to the bathroom, whether it’s a queue to get food or drinks, there’s always some kind of queue. And within a queue, you have a captive audience. You have one person in front and one person behind because all of you are in a queue. So why not use this as an opportunity to get to know one or two people? So there’s two things they can try. Walking the room and joining a queue in person. But the truth is, most of my networking that I do these days is online. It’s on LinkedIn. I think that’s how we met as well because we connected each other on LinkedIn. And then maybe exchanging a few direct messages, maybe commenting on each other’s posts, we start to build a connection with each other. And then at the right point, you can always meet up and have conversation. Or in this case, joining the other person’s podcast, which is how we actually connected in the first place. So you don’t always have to think of networking as a person. Most of the networking that you do these days is actually online. But the goal is still the same. It’s to become more resourceful so that you can help other people when the time comes. Next year we’ll meet in Australia then. It’s settled. I’m looking for an example one. I’m looking for an example one. Yeah, perfect. Tim, I want to thank you for being so generous with your time and your knowledge here. You have incredible experience and frameworks and just do a beautiful job of making them very concise and memorable. So thank you so much. And I want to make sure everyone else can know where to go to find out more about all your work and learn more. Well, Greg, thank you so much for your questions. They’re really interesting. There are some of these questions that people have never asked me before. So thank you so much for asking them. It shows all the homework that you did really shows. So I appreciate that. Preparing and being present and all the things. Oh, there you go. Yeah, the full piece. So those listening, I wrote a book last year called The Quiet Achiever. It’s all about tiny habits of impact at work without pretending to be an extrovert. You can find that book on my website. It’s called the quietachiever.com. You can go through the quietachiever.com. You can find my book on Amazon. It’s also available as an audio book on audible and Spotify. You can also buy it directly from my website. I have a newsletter which you can sign up for. The program that I spoke about earlier is called ConvinciaBoss. So it’s convinceyourboss.com. It helps you frame your solution as the obvious choice. If you want to find me on search, you can just search for Timio, The Quiet Achiever. I found out the other day it can also ask Chad to be GBT. Just tell me more about Timio, The Quiet Achiever. And he’ll tell you more as well. But before I go, again, thank you for the opportunity. But for the people who are listening to this podcast, I want to leave you with one final thought, which is to realize that if you’re quiet in nature, who you are is enough. I spent so much of my time in my life and in my career comparing myself to others and comparing myself to others and wishing I was more like them. And really, that was my recipe for misery. I think the important thing is to realize is that who you are is enough. And everything else that you are uncomfortable with right now, whether it’s public speaking, small talk of networking, they’re just skills. And if skills can be practiced, you’re going to get better and better and better. Who you are is not the problem. It’s really about focusing on the things that you can’t do, seeing them as skills and just practicing. And maybe you’re going to have to practice harder than other people and that’s okay. But just because you’re not good at something, doesn’t mean it’s because of who you are. It’s not your personality. So who you are is enough. Amen, beautifully said. Thanks so much, Tim. Thank you so much, Greg. Speak soon. That’s why I stay locked in with the Bleacher Report app. For me, it’s about staying connected to my sports. I could follow the teams I care about, get real-time scores, breaking news, and highlights all in one place. 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