As part of the BGSU Honors program, every student is required to do a final project to utilize everything that we’ve learned during our four years in college. It’s generally suggested that to get the most out of the project we do it on something pertaining to our major. Being in the College of Business, I will admit that I initially felt limited by my options. Most Honors students are in more creative majors and do projects that, at least in my mind, appear more “exciting.”
Thankfully, though, I am a reader and found inspiration for my project in one of the books that I had been reading during my leisure time, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain. As an introvert myself, I picked up the book curious to learn more about the differences in the two personality traits, as well to read about real-life experiences of an introvert in what the author dubbed an “extroverted world.” No more than a chapter in, though, and I realized that what the author was discussing didn’t just apply to a person’s personal life, but their work life, too.
Further, throughout my management courses at BGSU, several topics have included personality considerations for managers, and this base knowledge, along with what I was reading in Cain’s book, piqued my interest and I decided to do my Honors Project on “Educating Managers on How to Manage Introverted vs. Extroverted Employees.” Also, I would like to mention that these classes were taught by the teachers that I would eventually choose to be my advisors to aid me in this project.
Before venturing into this subject, I had not realized how many different considerations had to be made for introverted and extroverted employees. In addition, I had also not realized how common it was for these considerations to not be made at all, and in their absence, decisions that naturally preferred extroverts tended to me made. This explains, in part, why a larger portion of the focus of my project is on introverts rather than extroverts. I still cover both sides, but there is a much stronger emphasis on introversion because those are the employees that are usually slighted and hurt the most in the workplace in regards to personality differences.
The blog post that I enjoyed writing the most was on how to best motivate employees of each personality. This post allowed me to pull in knowledge that I have gained through my management courses that I took this semester. Particularly Herzberg and Vroom’s theories were topics that I learned a lot about and was excited to be able to connect to my project.
This project didn’t just teach me about managing employees; however, but what I learned also taught me a lot about myself. As I stated previously, I identify as an introvert and reading research on motivation and job performance of introverts made me self-evaluate how I operate in a school/work environment. The ability to apply some of these concepts personally only further enhanced my understanding of the material and I think helped me to convey the facts in a way that was objective, but also conversational in nature so it made for an easier read.
In the future, I would like to explore this topic further and in more depth. One area of interest that I would enjoy researching more is how personality types of the managers themselves can affect their abilities to manage, and what strengths/weaknesses this lends to them. Also, for simplicity sake and because of the length of this project, I only focused on two personality traits (or one spectrum) in my posts, but there are more, both identified by Myers-Brigg and the Big Five, and while those other traits do not have quite the same validity in application as introversion/extroversion does, I think it would be interesting to see what research has been conducted on how those traits impact performance in the workplace.
Madison Hays 