Amy Heidbreder

Let me preface this with, I enjoy what I do for a living and love the people I work with.

However, I am an introvert, and for me, the office environment creates a drag in my creativity, energy and productivity. It is no fault of the office environment. It is simply my personality. People are individuals with a variety of different traits, strengths and weaknesses. What energizes one person may fatigue another.

Because I’m an equestrian, I like to compare things to horses, and in this case, there is a relevant analogy. In training horses, there are a wide variety of sports a horse can go into. With each sport there’s a wide variety of training methods, equipment and riding styles that can create success. The characteristics that make up a good jumper are horrible for a reiner. Let’s say, a horse is performing in his or her ideal sport, but needs a program with a lot of variety, like work in the arena mixed with trail rides, and a lot of turn out. If they’re at a barn that insists on only structured work in the arena with barely any turn out to prevent injury, that horse is going to start not liking his job, possibly start acting out, and maybe even stop working all together. Choices are made in a horse’s training and lifestyle to improve their performance and to keep them liking their job. You see, the thing about horses is that they cannot be forced into anything. They weigh somewhere in the range of 1200lbs and if they don’t want to jump, no amount of spur or whip is going to convince them otherwise. A horse doesn’t care about the cost of shows, about affording board, or paying rent. If he doesn’t like it, he’s not going to do it, and if there is an amount of force that can convince him to do it, do you think he’s going to do it well?

Human’s having a need to pay their bills is good conviction. It forces many people to be responsible and go to work, but a staff member there to just earn a pay check is not going to go above and beyond. If a staff member does not enjoy their job, they won’t do a good job, and that’s a problem. A bad job reflects poorly on the staff member, reflects poorly on the person managing them and ultimately reflects poorly on the company.

My personality is such that I enjoy working from home. I have been loads more productive working from home than going into the office. There’s a lot of reasons why, not just because of my personality, but my personality does have a lot to do with it. I took the StrengthsFinder Assessment by Gallup a few years ago, and out of it made a discovery that has since resonated with me. My mix of strengths causes me to feel fatigue when interacting with people, especially multitudes of people. For example, if I was to be at a party, my tendency would be to connect with a singular person and be happy to converse with that one person all night. For me, this revelation explained A LOT, explained my anxiety for meeting new people, even over the phone, and explained why a full day of meetings felt so draining. The anxiety I felt wasn’t actually anxiety. It was more that feeling before diving into the next exercise in your workout routine when you’re already tired. You take a deep breath because you know it’s going to take something out of you.

I find being present in the office takes a lot more out of me than working from home. Since I’m not so drained at home, I have the energy to be more productive, to dig in, to get creative, to put in extra hours, to go above and beyond. I understand, I am just one person. Not everyone is like me, and many possibly rather enjoy going into the office. One might argue with me that if I want to work from home so bad, why don’t I just get a new job? In my field that’s completely plausible. Within web and tech are a plethora of startups and forward-thinking companies that allow for a more flexible schedule and perks like working from home. I’d argue, though, that these companies don’t offer these perks to be “hip” and “trendy.” They offer these perks because of the type of worker they’re trying to attract. Developers aren’t known for being the social type. I’d argue many of them are introverts like me. They need peace to get in the zone and channel calculative thought that allows them to engineer entire web interfaces. If your company wants to attract the best developers to build its web presence, would it not be best to offer flexible perks?

One might argue that the service industry, for example, just does not work that way. Waiters have to be present to wait on people. Bartenders can’t bartend from home. Right, and I completely understand that, but why are you going make a web developer adhere to a waiter’s schedule? Why can’t there be a more nuanced approach in managing staff’s time, and if it means you’re going to get more work out of that staff member, why not change?

This does require a bit of trust and a mental shift. One question I hear sometimes is, if a manager can’t see what his or her staff is doing, how can they adequately know if their employee is on task or not? I feel like this is a question rooted in a rather old school mind set and a sense of mistrust. There are plenty of digital ways to know if your staff is on task or not. As a manager, do you stand over your staff’s shoulder all day? How do you know when you leave the room, your staff is still on task? I feel like the roots of these questions aren’t based in actual concern. They’re based in fear of change and an unwillingness to learn technology to evolve, adapt and meet staff where they feel most comfortable.

I recall being interviewed by an agency that was auditing a few departments where I worked at the time, including ours. Little did I know at that time, I was on the precipice of being promoted into management. Managing people was an area I wanted to grow in. I mentioned this in my interview. I also mentioned a desire to work from home. The woman interviewing me, in all her righteousness straightened, and pierced me with her judging gaze. “But how are you going to manage people then,” she inquired. “You have to be present to manage people.” Those weren’t her exact words, but she said something to that effect. She was probably over 20 years my superior, and had a way of speaking that made me feel inferior. I didn’t clap back. I didn’t know how to, but I wish I could tell that lady now, during this COVID-19 pandemic, that forcing our offices to close and having us work from home has made me a far, far, far, faaaarrrrr better and more effective manager than I would have been had I continued going into the office. So how do I manage people without being present? Web chats, documentation and thorough use of project management tools.

So, let’s say you’re not an introvert. There are still plenty of perks to working from home, even for an extrovert, the biggest of which is NO TRAFFIC. Living in a large city, my commute into the office and walk from the parking garage generally lasted an hour each way. By working from home, I have been given 2 extra hours A DAY.

Another perk is being able to more easily care for your critters. I don’t have to worry about my dog like I did while at the office, and am personally available to let her out or in based on her needs or the weather. I don’t have to be stressed about a pop-up thunderstorm and the muddy mess I’m going to come home to and have to clean first thing. These perks result in not just saving time, but also saving money. You can save money on gas, vehicle maintenance, and dog care. Perhaps as an extrovert, being with people outweighs those perks. Well, more power to you, but maybe it’s time that the work force reevaluate how it treats its staff, not in a one size fits all method.

If we look at the bigger picture, we see people trending toward less physical interaction. People have even stopped going to the grocery store and order their groceries online. Whether we’d like to admit it or not, online services are what are trending. People want convenience and less fatigue. To survive, companies may need to think more like introverts, and if you want to attract those brilliant introverts and squeeze out of them some ground breaking ideas, your company is going to need to meet them with perks that aren’t just money.

These are just my thoughts on being an introvert in today’s crazy world. I understand people to people interaction is still very much a necessary and beautiful thing, and while I don’t need physical conversation, some of my team might, so I meet them where they are comfortable. Those that need it, I meet every single week to chat via FaceTime, or Microsoft Teams, or Zoom. While it takes something out of me, if it makes that team member more productive, I am willing to do it, because in the long run a more productive team member will benefit the team, benefit me as a manager and ultimately benefit the company, making it worth it. My opinion is more companies should think this way and evaluate what makes their staff more productive. Sometimes it’s not punishment or more control, but instead positivity and freedom. If I could choose something positive that has come out of the COVID-19 pandemic, I would definitely choose thrusting people out of their comfort zone and forcing “in-office only” hold outs to allow staff to work from home. It has revealed a lot. In my department it’s revealed we can get a lot more done.

I hope this represents a groundbreaking shift in the workforce, and that the future is more flexible.