How to be charming as an introvert

“Don’t think of introversion as something the needs to be cured, spend your free time the way you like, not the way you think you’re supposed to.”

— Susan Cain

Shyness is often confused with introversion. While the two things are not the same, introverts are generally shy. As we grow up and mature, we learn to overcome shyness to a certain degree, enough to be functioning adults, who can conduct day to day transactions with strangers. However, there are situations where we’re shoved into the spotlight and being in the spotlight tests the core limitations of our introversion. Being the centre of attention is something that extroverts crave and introverts dread. Unfortunately, as introverts, we often make an absolute mess of the attention, coming off as anti-social rather than embracing the occasion, and push ourselves to enjoy the social interactions.

Recently, I had to present to a room of about 120 attendees with just one other guest speaker. There was a 15 minute presentation but this was followed by an extended Q&A panel discussion, which spans an uncomfortable 45 minutes. I prepared weeks in advance for my presentation. By the end, I was so comfortable with the content, I did it without once referring to my notes. However, I was highly uncomfortable with the panel discussion since I couldn’t prepare in advance, and I was also highly uncomfortable with the network event immediately afterwards. As a guest speaker, a lot of people naturally come up to you afterwards and having given all of my energy to the presentation and Q&A session, all I wanted to do was to finish up and go back to my office.

However, as part of my preparation, I rediscovered advice from the boys at Charisma on Command on how introverts can handle the spotlight. While I won’t say that re-watching the video multiple times made me more comfortable, it did at least provide me with a baseline framework to work from on how to behave when people came up to me, and in particular, give me positive feedback on the presentation. At the end of the day, I did receive a lot of positive feedback and I must admit, I actually enjoyed the session. So much so that I’m looking forward to the next session.

Responding to compliments 01 - redirect to someone or something

It’s true, most of us introverts are terrible at taking compliments. If you’re like me, as much as I genuinely appreciate a compliment given for work well done, my response is generally muted, taking the form of a very awkward “thank you”, followed by silence or I try to change the subject and move on. When this happens, the person giving the compliment often give me a look of “that’s strange” or a look of disappointment as they were expecting more of a reaction.

However, an easy way to avoid the awkward response, is to redirect the compliment or attribute your success to someone else or something else. This way, you are perceived to have accepted the compliment but you’re also building on it by adding a little bit more to the situation than just an awkward thank you. For example, you can do:

• Thank you… a lot of it was due to the advice you gave me regarding [topic x]. I built upon that and it really helped to extend the point I was trying to make.

• Thank you. Although I have to admit, a lot of it came from the HBR article, which I leveraged off. In particular the point around [topic x].

As you can see, the above is much better than an awkward thank you followed by silence.

Responding to compliments 02 - heartfelt thank you’s

Redirecting a compliment is not always possible or it’ll actually sound even more awkward when you force yourself to redirect the compliment. When that happens, then the best approach is to embrace the compliment and give a heartfelt thank you. You do this by building out your thank you and explaining what it means to you. For example:

• Thank you so much. That means a lot to me as I’ve been working very hard on my presentation style.

• Thank you. I know you’ve been pointing out this improvement area to me and it’s great to get feedback that I’m improving.

Again, so much better than an awkward thank you, followed by silence or forcing the subject change.

Avoid being a wall flower - spikes of energy and use your hands

As introverts, our external showing of enthusiasm is not reflective of our internal feelings. We could be feeling 100% excited on the inside on a topic we’re passionate about, but it comes out as only 50% or less on the outside. This can often lead people to think we’re not that interested, and worse, we’re not that interesting. When we’re perceived as not interesting, people tune out from what we’re saying. And if you have a reputation for not being interesting, people tune out before you even open your mouth.

There are two ways to break this. Number one, you break your response with the occasional spike of energy. It wakes people up and it jolts them. They were expecting a low monotone voice, articulating facts and figures. But as you talk, you emphasise some facts and figures with a louder voice or a sudden pause. This works because people’s brains are awaken and engaged with something happens that is not aligned with what they’re expecting.

The second way is as discussed in a previous blog, avoid the use of T-Rex arms. Use your arms and your hands. Swing them around widely (not wildly) to emphasise a point. The eyes of your audience perceive movement, and move triggers the brain to engage and pay attention. One of my mentors had a great trick to help engage his audience. He would always use his right hand when emphasising a positive point, and his left hand when emphasising a negative point. The hand movements not only trigger engagement, but by building a pattern, the audience sub-consciously pays attention to try and pick the positive/negative elements of his message.

As always - make eye contact

This is a core theme from our blogs. I cannot emphasise enough the importance of eye contact. Not fleeting eye contact of a few seconds nor giving someone an uncomfortable death stare. I’m talking about looking at one eye for around give seconds. I mean genuinely engage in eye contact. I’ve recently realised that I can give myself assurance that I’ve made eye contact when I can recall the colour of the iris and particular for Caucasians, I can see the lines around the iris. If I can recall seeing them and the colour then I know I’ve made proper eye contact.

As always, focus on one eye rather than try to cover both. That’s just strange when you move from one eyeball to another.

Finally, as you talk, make eye contact on key points you want to emphasise. It forces the person listening to snap to attention and the brain to wake up and receive the message. If you do this, you increase the chance of the person walking away, and recalling the points that you’ve emphasised with eye contact.

Importantly - stop thinking about time

This last point is the most subtle but perhaps the most important. On reflection from that presentation I had to give, I realised that when I started enjoying what I was doing and the interactions with the audience afterwards, I stopped thinking about time. The presentation I had prepared for and knew so well, I didn’t need to track time. I was thoroughly enjoying it. When the Q&A session started, I was counting how many minutes were left before the 45 minutes was up. But by question two, I was had stopped counting.

Finally, when interacting one on one or with small groups of the audience, I found that I enjoyed the interactions when I stopped thinking about when it was going to end and started to focus on genuinely understanding the key points they wanted to ask and how best to answer the questions. I enjoyed it so much, I ended up being told by the host that it was time to wrap up and I should just give them my business card and talk later.

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