"Just how do I position myself, my uniqueness, as a business coach? The field is so competitive," the budding coach asked.
"Well it's right here. You state it in your biography," the life coach observed.
"I do?"
It took a life coach to jolt my awareness of that personal uniqueness in a successful business career that could apply to a then budding new career, years later as a business coach, that something special each of us live with on a daily basis is not necessarily easy to find. After all, how could you notice? It is almost as unremarkable and taken for granted as the air you breathe. Often, it takes an outsider to make such observations for you.
For me, the uniqueness as a highly successful sales person is that I am an introvert.
In my online blogging about almost everything introvert, it's been exciting to see the number of people who are introverts and position themselves to help other introverts as either coach, or speaker, or author is growing since 2007 from just the two of us to dozens of people today. Over the years, introverts have become able to find information to discover a variety of techniques, ideas, and skills that are either innate to their temperament or learned. These skills, once understood and brought together, can help any motivated introvert get to a level of success wanted in business—regardless of the field or profession.
This book is going to be different and, in some ways, more relevant than many those are available to help the introvert in business. It is an all in one place toolkit in which you will find six essential communications skills, which are accepted by many authorities as the most needed to get ahead in a more extroverted world.
With anecdotes, examples, and supportive research, you will recognize your authentic introvert nature is highly valuable in any workplace situation.
Additionally, this is presented by an introvert author and interviews with other introverts and extroverts who have first-hand experience in all the aspects and have achieved best results for them and others involved using these techniques.
Chapter 1, Communication Preferences of Introverts and Extroverts, will fully and clearly define communication differences between introverts and extroverts so that each can work more effectively in an environment that suits their temperament.
Chapter 2, Identify and Count on Your Introvert Strengths, will allow you to appraise the introvert strengths of planning, listening more, self-reflection, thinking things through, and meaningful relationships to have specific actions to leverage them in more communication situations.
Chapter 3, Confident to Communicate, will distinguish between self-confidence and other "selves" to affirm often unrecognized self-appreciation, which helps to compose a personal plan to develop the key to workplace success: communication.
Chapter 4, Your Hardworking Wrench – Tighten or Open Up Your Listening, does a thorough examination of listening, which will increase your understanding of how people listen and what gets in the way. Then, with anecdotes and examples you will have specific ways to go from listening more to listening better and getting your voice heard.
Chapter 5, Your Headband Light – Succeeding in the Business Meeting, will discuss how with a formulation combining introvert strengths and subtle changes, introverts will be in charge of themselves and their contribution in the next and future business meetings.
Chapter 6, Tape Measure Your Success for Powerful Presentations, will discuss the key elements that presenters use in the most successful presentations; using these, an introvert can creatively and comfortably design the elements to make a presentation to any size group with poise and confidence.
Chapter 7, Do You Have an Axe to Grind? Use a Positive Approach for Workplace Conflict, explores how in the next inevitable business conflict situation, you will be more equipped to use your self-reflection and calm demeanor to assert yourself to achieve a positive outcome for all.
Chapter 8, On the Level to Negotiate with Success, will examine the strengths of an introvert in the light of a win-win negotiation process to employ more of what the introvert has going for them than not, for more successful outcomes—from the smallest to the highest-level negotiation.
Chapter 9, Power Tools of Influence, Persuasion, and Selling, will evaluate a variety of comfortable techniques to increase influence in more high-stake business situations, as well as any sales encounters, with a full understanding of the pervasiveness of influence and persuasion.
Chapter 10, Quiet Communication can Triumph, will move you quickly from planning to a prioritized schedule of actions after going through opportunities for self-reflection and thinking things through in the previous chapters.
If you have this book, you are likely an introvert with a desire to succeed more easily and even more effortlessly in everyday business situations.
One potential problem is that either you aren't aware of the introvert strengths you innately have to help or you think the more extroverted have something you don't in their natural traits.
Or, you could be an extrovert and believe that having a communications toolkit could be useful in mentoring or helping introverts who you work with everyday.
Chapter 1, Communication Preferences of Introverts and Extroverts, starts with a review of the communication preferences and differences of each style, which when understood and used effectively could be your major strength. This chapter will establish how the two temperaments can relate more easily despite some fundamental differences.
Chapter 2, Identify and Count on Your Introvert Strengths, will focus on the strengths of introverts and how these can help in virtually all business settings.
Chapter 3, Confident to Communicate, puts a light on self-confidence, what it is, and how to get it, as is it central to better communications. Then, we will move on to the core communication skills.
Chapter 4, Your Hardworking Wrench – Tighten or Open up Your Listening, is the key to moving forward, because there is one skill the introvert has more than any other in their waking hours: listening. This chapter is the beginning of chapter self-assessments. You may not have considered listening this way, but when you know how to turn up your listening ability, you can get your voice more easily heard.
These first few chapters explore who you are naturally, at your core, when you are feeling relaxed. The intention is to take a break and consider that there may be more in those innate traits than what you give credit to for effective business communications.
Chapter 5, Your Headband Light – Succeeding in the Business Meeting, examines how to bring all those ideas in your head to the typical business meeting so that whether you are the leader or a participant, you can be better in charge of letting the ideas be heard.
If you have given a presentation once, or even more than once, it is highly likely you know that public speaking is a fear that people everywhere have in common. Chapter 6, Tape Measure Your Success for Powerful Presentations, discusses ideas and techniques of public speaking and how you put things into action. With these ideas, you can stand up with confidence to the one communication skill even extroverts fear: public speaking.
Once a church pastor remarked to me, "Relationships are messy." Then, there are the things that make them messy, like the next inevitable conflict. Chapter 7, Do You Have an Axe to Grind? Use a Positive Approach for Workplace Conflict, will equip you with actions that take advantage of your natural strengths to walk away from handling that next encounter, the person you have it with, and yourself—all in a more positive state.
Negotiation can be formal or informal as needed. Theories generally identify types of negotiation. While illustrative examples might include a discussion of some high profile negotiations, the focus in Chapter 8, On the Level to Negotiate with Success, will be to help you identify negotiating skills for those everyday business needs such as a salary increase, or the corner office, or a tough sales prospect.
Sales, often considered as a career that introverts avoid, draws on many skills that stand on their own, including public speaking, negotiating, and conflict management. In Chapter 9, Power Tools of Influence, Persuasion, and Selling, the more silent skills of influence and the sales side of persuasion come together for when you have to balance people-savvy with presenting yourself and ideas to get others to act.
Chapter 10, Quiet Communication can Triumph, may be the end of the book but it is the beginning of your action. It will build on your thinking around "Thoughts to Contemplate" and concludes to move you from getting out of your head into a prioritized schedule of actions.
If you are an introvert, you will find that there are some things that you do already and some things you can do more easily and confidently. Once you understand how and what you can do to bring yourself to act in certain ways without ever compromising who you are at the core of you, your energy will soar and that freedom alone will elevate your everyday business successes.
If you are an extrovert, you will discover a greater understanding of what helps and what hinders the introvert to contribute his or her best self in everyday situations. With this broader understanding, you can either change how you behave to create the best environment or know how to encourage your introvert associate.
Finally, here are some suggested tips to navigate the book to your best advantage:
The best place to start in this book, with both reading and putting ideas into action, is at the beginning where you are now.
Chapter 5, Your Headband Light - Succeeding in the Business Meeting, and the rest of the content, guides you to put the ideas and actions you read about into practice, and flows from basic to more advanced skills.
Beginning with Chapter 5, Your Headband Light - Succeeding in the Business Meeting if you find you would rather skip to a chapter that can help you with an immediate business situation, please do it. The chapters are however designed to flow from core skills to more encompassing ones.
One effective way to get the most out of any one chapter from 4 to 9 is to take the self-assessment at the beginning of each chapter.
I encourage you to keep in the forefront of your thinking that you already have much innate strength to pull into each of these communication skill areas. The goal is to either help you strengthen them or identify what you can act on and begin to start using them.
In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.
New terms and important words are shown in bold.
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