Obama's Blackberry and Reframe Your Inner Game 2

I’d bet money that Barack Obama has (in MBTI terms) a preference for introversion. Why? Because he, like people with a preference for introversion, tends to think things through before he speaks them out loud. In contrast, people with a preference for extraversion talk things out to discover what they think.

Anyway, whether I’m right or not, Obama’s ongoing fight to keep his Blackberry in spite of security concerns (he doesn’t want to lose touch with real people) has me thinking about different styles of networking.

The framework of MBTI helps paint a picture of 2 different (yet effective) networking styles.

Women with a preference for extraversion are likely to:

• Enjoy the richness of meeting many different people at a single event.
• Find social/business events energizing.
• Prefer to keep in touch by phone.
• Maintain an database that includes many “weak tie” contacts.
• Be at risk of making people feel that they are instruments.

Women with a preference for introversion are likely to:

• At events, enjoy meeting one or two people for deeper conversations.
• Find social/business events tiring.
• Prefer to keep in touch by email.
• Maintain a database of primarily “strong tie” relationships.
• Be at risk of having an insufficiently large network.

Do you recognize yourself in either (or in between) these profiles? I often get praised for my networking skills, even though I have a preference for introversion! Greta Garbo’s famous line…“I want to be alone” could be one of mine!

So, if you have a preference for introversion consider that you can Reframe Your Inner Game™ by letting go of the idea that you have to be the business equivalent of a “social butterfly” to be an effective networker. And if you have a preference for extraversion, make sure you add big dollops of generosity and authentic attention to your “weak tie” contacts.

Network ON!
By Susan Colantuono