Transcript by Sean Jackson

Full transcript:

Aidan: What are we going to be talking about today Damiano?

Damiano: Today we address a question coming from Benny from Berlin. Hey Benny, thank you for the question. It's about introvert versus extrovert, especially in the workplace.

Aidan: You make it sound like this is going to be some blockbuster movie, where it's the biggest stars introvert fighting extrovert.

Damiano: A wrestling match between them, absolutely. This is the ultimate showdown, because if there are other introverts in the core, they know how it feels, they know why we have to talk about this today and I'm going to come clean first. I'm an introvert, big time introvert. Aidan, are you an introvert or an extrovert?

Aidan: Oh, that's a very exciting question there. You know how I love to bring my games into this podcast. I don't want it to be a one-way conversation.

Damiano: Cliffhanger.

Aidan: Yeah Nah, I'm going to give the listener at home a couple of seconds to guess before I reveal later on in the episode, I'm going to leave a cliffhanger now. Today we wanted to talk a bit about some of the assumptions and stereotypes around introverts and extroverts. I won't leave you hanging for any longer, because I'm actually an introvert. People never guess that anytime I say, "Oh yeah, I was always feeling really anxious that I didn't know." "But you talk all the time. You give presentations, you do a podcast."

Damiano: All the time, right? I think that the answer that I get also all the time they're like, "I can't believe you're possibly an introvert." I'm like, "I promise you, I'm an introvert." What I find incredible is that I think 99% of the people that I'm talking with, there seems to be an association with being introvert equals being shy, being extrovert equals being outgoing and always being in the spotlight.

Aidan: Yeah. Confident or a great presenter. There are a lot of stereotypes attached to it.

Damiano: Exactly. But that's technically not really true, isn't it?

Aidan: Yeah. It's not quite that simple unfortunately. That's why we have different words for shy and introverted, that they're not just synonyms by their very definition.

Damiano: The way we can think about this, at least that's how I approached it, is really thinking about how do we use or recharge our energy. I'm really thinking of a battery of sorts, when I talk about being an introvert or being an extrovert. It's a bit of a crude metaphor, but if you indulge me I think it could make sense.

Aidan: Indulged, please.

Damiano: Please.

Aidan: That was not a sentence there, you have been indulged, please go.

Damiano: I think being an introvert to me means that when I interact with people, when I'm going to this social space, I use my energy, so my energy gets depleted. When I'm on my own in my own time, doing my own things, which could be anything, reading a book, playing video games, watching a movie, my things, I recharge my energy. While extroverts are exactly the flip side of this. When they are on their own, when they're alone, actually their energy goes down and they need social interaction to recharge their batteries. I think this is maybe a simplified way, but to me resounds with how I feel. Does it resound to you Aidan?

Aidan: Yeah, absolutely. Throughout the whole thing I was trying to get rid of the image of when you're playing the Sims and you've got the bars for, you need to eat food, you need to get sleep. For some people it's, "I need this social connection with others and that gives me energy for others." It's like, "This bar is going the other way around."

Obviously it's never a binary thing. It's not a case of, if I talk to one person today, I'll be really tired and drained and panicky and everything, that's not the case. Our brains don't work in binary manners like that. I can still have very lovely conversations with close friends, it doesn't mean I don't enjoy having conversations. I enjoy going to parties, but it's on that higher level. At the end of the day, I am very happy to sit and play Minecraft for 20 hours straight. I will happily do so many things which don't involve people, for others they're like, "Okay, now I need to go and see a pal. I need to do this," that's okay. That's the way we are all unique.

Damiano: Absolutely. I think the beauty of imagining this bar, like you were saying for the Sims, or like a battery, is that I think it changes the perspective on how we understand our energy first, so internally, and then also understanding how we interact with other people. For example, I know that being an introvert I do need to recharge if I spend too much time in meetings at work, for example. I wouldn't know that I prefer in general to have a block of work, like work time for myself in the middle of the day, because it allows me to buffer between the meetings in the morning and the meetings in the afternoon. This is something that I come to understand by simply acknowledging really that my energy level would fluctuate during the day, or the fact that if I have a long day of meetings, I do know that once I close the computer off, I need my hour walk outside by myself, not with friends, not with family, nobody, it's just me because I need to recharge that battery first. Does it happen to you as well during the day?

Aidan: Yes, a hundred percent. This is where people, everyone, some of the team, they're assuming I'm extrovert. I can say that I am now okay at talking now, I didn’t used to be. Sometimes people say I'm too good at talking and talk too much. Not always quantity, it's quality.

This is something I find interesting, I can happily give a presentation and I enjoy doing that. I enjoy the adrenaline, the thinking on the spot, that's all great. I was chatting to my life coach last night about this exact thing. It's something I've been working on for a while, but we were talking about goals and possible goals. My impossible goal for this year was to deliver a TED Talk, obviously impossible is in the name. But it's something to work towards little by little. If you fail that goal, you've still made progress and that's great.

But I was saying that actually now I think about it, if someone gave me the choice right now between delivering a Ted Talk tomorrow or going to a networking event on my own, that kind of thing where you've been invited to a party and your friend goes, "Hey, how's it going? Oh yeah, come on in. Oh, by the way, I've got to go and do this."

Damiano: And they disappear.

Aidan: Yeah. And you're alone and your brain immediately goes into, "You're alone. Everyone's looking at you." I'd rather give a Ted Talk. That's how much I'm naturally afraid or resist wanting to have those open vulnerable conversations where you don't know anything. That's where I'm at in terms of introversion, how about you?

Damiano: A hundred percent. I think this is a perfect example actually, of the difference between being maybe shy in a public situation versus the level of energy. Because you're on Ted Talk, it's virtually like being on stage a little bit, where you are on your own, you don't necessarily need to interact with other people, but it's also like a performance, very powerful example.

Interestingly enough, I don't know if you remember when was the first time you started to really think about you as an introvert? Because I do have these memories and I think it was really when I moved from Italy to Ireland. That was after a couple of years of doing musicals in Italy, where I was performing on stage and then it started to work and a lot of people were telling me, "Oh, well, you're good at talking with people and when you present stuff." And I was like, "That doesn't sound like me at all. What are you talking about? No, I feel really weird all the time." I don't remember exactly when, but there has been a switch where I understood that energy metaphor that we were doing earlier. Did you have a switch moment as well? How did it happen?

Aidan: I did. I don't know if it was an overnight thing. I grew up in a village where there weren't really many people my age. We went to primary school and it was quite a small primary school, so small that when we got to the final year of that primary school, I was the only person in my year. I was the only year 6, which is quite interesting. I did stuff with year 5s, but they were all smart so that was fine. I went from that, a school of 45, 50 people, Seventh Day Adventist Christian school. It's very lovely and chilly that I have fun friends, this is great. And I was like, "Yay. This is fine, a uniform."

I went from that to a school with about a thousand boys, it was an all boys school.

Damiano: Wow. Lots of fun, I guess.

Aidan: Yeah. Of course I was the only person coming from my year, so I knew no one. There was no one else that I knew in the village who was going there. That was like a networking/party dialed up to the max.

Damiano: Squared, yes.

Aidan: Yeah. I struggled then, it got better near the end, but I wouldn't say I enjoyed that.

Damiano: Was it a boarding school or did you have to commute every day?

Aidan: Not boarding. No. I got a bus in every day, which is nice. Eventually, I did get chatting to the people on that, but before it was, get on bus, headphones on my with iPod classic, oh, I remember that, on the bus go there, go to school. It's my two or three friends there, rinse and repeat for about three or four years. Generally it's not a smart idea to completely segregate one half of the population from... Separating anything or segregating by gender doesn't make sense because that's not how the real world is.

Damiano: Society works.

Aidan: Yeah. Toxic masculinity is a thing in its own right. It's only turned up to 11 in that situation. Lots of trauma and therapy stuff to get over there, but then went to uni, studied computer science. That was around the moment I was like, "Huh, I just want to go home and play Pokemon."

Damiano: Right. Did you find that when you were playing Pokemon, you would suddenly feel better? Or do you find patterns where if you're supposed to go out on the weekends with your friends, you knew that you had to play Pokemon first to charge the battery to then go out and have a good time with your friends?

Aidan: Yeah, it's interesting. Sometimes, and I never wanted it to feel this way, but I do feel like there's a certain point, probably university is a better time to talk about here for me, because it was when I was actually self-aware at that point, it wasn't, "I'm sad all the time." It was like, "Oh, actually, I'm going to go out to this party, I'm going to see these people." But there's a certain point where I'm like, "Actually I don't want to go out to the club. I'd happily go home, watch some things on YouTube, read a book and go to bed."

Now it's the same with, "Yeah. Okay. I know there's this post-work call and I really do enjoy the time I spend with you. Oh yeah. Okay. We can do a post-work. I can do a Zoom quiz with my friends from uni, or I could just listen to a podcast and eat some food and have an early night and that's okay." That's something which before I would have judged myself like, "Oh, well you're friends are going out and meeting people and doing a lesson." No, it's fine to read the bloody book.

Damiano: It is, yeah. That voice. I don't know if it's a teenager trend, I grew up in Italy and the idea of going partying on the weekend, it's not even an option, it's something people have to do. What kind of a teenager are you, if you don't want to party on the weekend? I always felt, like you said, very out of place because I'm not the party person to be honest, and this is again a bit unusual, I still judge myself for this. I actually do like an early night if I'm honest with you, because I do like waking up early in the morning. Again, counter-intuitive maybe, I'm not sure, but part of the question that Benny, hello Benny one more time, was asking is that because Benny is actually a people manager. Take everything we were seeing now and the dynamics that we've seen during our teenage, but even university, and now project them into the world of companies.

Maybe you work for a big company where there's tons of people and maybe your career progression depends on becoming a people manager at a certain point, managing other people, and then you tend to have these meetings with millions and millions of people, and you have to stand up for yourself, you have to show what to do if you really want progress. In your experience, when it comes to a company environment, how did you leave your relationship with your job, with your colleagues as an introvert, working for a big company or for a small company?

Aidan: That's an interesting question. It's something I was definitely aware of when I got to first year of uni, I was like, "Right now, I'm always going to have to talk to people." It was something I was always working on. But this may not be relevant for everyone, but for me at least the differentiator that I found when, if I find a conversation difficult or not, there's one or two things, one of them is, can I escape the conversation?

If I bump into someone on the street who I haven't seen for ages, again, it's such a weird dissonance because I act like, "Oh, Hey Jack. I haven't seen you in ages. It's great to see you." I'm genuinely excited to see them. But the other part of my brain is like, panic. Got to go home. I need to go to shops." Even if I haven't got a deadline, it's like, "Say hello, but get out quickly because you can't run out of things to say, if you run out of things say. If there's a lull in the conversation, they're going to judge you, blah, blah, blah."

That's all to do with, I can't remember if I mentioned it before, but I definitely will in the future if not, about how our brains evolved and adapted to fear judgment, because if you are judged and ostracized, then you end up being kicked out of the tribe and then it's more difficult to survive on your own. That part of your brain is always going, "Don't want to be judged," regardless of if you're introverted or extroverted, it's like, "Don't judge me."

What I mean is, can I escape? Because if it's like that and like, "Oh, by the way, I've got to go to the shops." "Okay, cool. Yeah. That's fine."

Damiano: An easy way out.

Aidan: Exactly. Yeah. You've got that escape and, "Ah, it's okay. I can go back to listen to my podcast." The other one is, is there an existing thing in our quotes to talk about? When I'm on a training course, say a training course to do with how to give engaging presentations or crucial conversations. It's like, "Okay, go into groups and roleplay a thing." I'm like, "That's great." I go straight into, "Okay, teams we're going to do this and then you're going to do this and what do you think of this?" It completely flows out of me, but if it's, "Oh yeah, thanks for coming to our talk today. There's going to be food and drinks out in the lobby. Go around there and network."

Damiano: Lost.

Aidan: How do I network?

Damiano: What is the goal of this? How does this work?

Aidan: What is your weather today? Doing good? Hi. Sorry. Got to go. Wash the cat.

Damiano: This is very interesting actually. Do you think it is because of the framework, is that what changes your mindset in that situation?

Aidan: Am getting major déjà vu because this is the exact quote was talking about with my life coach last night (Kate Wiltshere), incredible human. We're talking about, how much of this is actually me? How much of this is actually my inability to talk and how much of it is around that matter thinking? Like, "Oh, I'm not able to talk. Oh, I don't know what say, Oh, I'm worried about having the silence." We can talk, we are having a conversation right now. As long as we find it interesting, that's a loose one. This flows really well.

I'm sure you at home are thinking the same. There are times when conversation flows and there are other times when you go, "Oh, I don't know what to," you have that ability and even if you don't and you struggle to keep a conversation going, that's again in air quotes. That's okay as well. We fear the silence, our judgmental brains go, "Oh, no panic, panic." It's okay, not every conversation has to be an incredible world-renowned presentation, more like conversation.

Damiano: It is true. I was thinking in particular when it comes to in-work situations, this has been, I suppose, the way I've built my own armor, against the judgment and the fear of judgment you were mentioning before, which I completely subscribed to, it's a well known friend for many years. I think the idea for me at least, is to trigger or to deviate the conversation from the ordinary. There are a lot of times where people would start... Imagine your typical video call that starts, "Hi, how are you today?" "Good." "Me too. How's the weather?" "Oh my God is raining for like three days." "Oh Jesus. How is the COVID going in your area?" The usual questions.

I made a point for myself to try as hard as I can to deviate immediately from that. My first question would be something totally unrelated that could be, "What is the last brand of coffee that you drank." This person has no idea, they don't care, but it creates this canyon in their thinking process that literally shutters the expectation of the conversation. Usually I find that because I deconstructed the expectation from the other side, I am able to, "Control the flow of the conversation," a little bit better and make the conversation a bit safer for everyone. Because suddenly everybody's in the same place of, "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Aidan: Okay. That wasn't where I was expecting that to go. You're making everyone feel not a safe level playing field by confusing the hell out of them, is that right?

Damiano: Yeah, in a way. Because it's the moment I think where you deconstruct them, the appearance I guess in a certain way. We were doing a recording with somebody in a company and relatively high profile. I suppose most people that go into this conversation or these meetings they're like, "Oh, hello. Oh, please can I do this for you?" Blah, blah, blah. Again, I deliberately make a point not to do that because first of all, then there is this a stiffness in the air, which doesn't help when you're doing a video work. But on the other side, I think is extremely boring. This is, I think where people would say, "Oh, the man is an extrovert, because look how he's talking to this very important manager," when the truth is exactly the opposite. The truth is look Damiano that is afraid to be judged for being boring and whatever, and he's trying to find another way. Do you use similar tools to achieve a different result?

Aidan: Yeah. You stumped me for a sec, because I've never thought about it that way. I do something similar, with check-ins I like to do the like, "How are you feeling today? How are you really feeling today? Some are like, "Okay. What do you want?" The call thing that's important rather than me talking for an hour. Well, I'm pretty good at that as you can tell right now. I like to ask that random question similar to when we were doing the question from, we're not really strangers last week is anything like that.

Damiano: That was episode seven for the personal user manual, by the way everybody should go back and listen to that.

Aidan: Yes. I might as well to remind myself. But things like some recent questions asked, have you got any role models or heroes? What'd you do on the weekend? Anything that's not work related. Like you say, is unexpected, because if you think, if you're on 10 back-back calls a day, every single call is going to be, "How are you doing?" "All right." "How are you doing?" "Yeah. All right." "What's the next project?" "All right." What's the weather?" "It's good." "How's COVID going?" It's getting better." "Okay."

Am like, "That's it" but if someone asks you, "What's your favorite book series of all time? What good podcasts have you been listening to?" "Oh, this thing called Brainstorm Squared that's all right." Little things like that. I think that's the key that I'm only realizing now is, introverts might sometimes make better conversationalists. Because I'm always thinking I'm going to be judged if I'm not good in a conversation and I'm continuously working on it. It's almost like overcompensating and then almost like, "Oh yeah, he's confident. He's fighting up like, "I just want to go play Animal Crossing and have a quiet sob."

Damiano: This is so true. To be honest, and also connecting to the question from Benny, is the fact that I do believe people managers, when they are introverted, it's more about appreciating the energy expense in having these social interactions. If you're a people manager who's introverted, who understands how introverted people work, I think you also have a much easier time connecting with the people in your team, because by default you understand this level. If you happen to have extroverts in your team, all the better. They take energy from the meetings that they have with you and the rest of the team, fantastic.

But I do think that having introverts as people managers is an incredible resource for a company because first of all, not everybody's an extrovert and to recalibrate the definition of introvert versus extrovert, which is something that we're doing, I think quite well today because, it's very important. But secondly, is then understanding, "Okay, if this is how people work and this is how they prefer to have their workday organized," for example, how many ways we have to then help them understanding that different people in your team allow you to cater better to different team members, and not everybody can be an extrovert or a central stage person, but everybody should be given the possibility to speak their mind, feel safe, psychological safety is priority, and then the question becomes, "Okay, how do we do this? How do we let people, they're not introvert, maybe they're shy, participate?" How do we give them the space to feel like they can belong and they can openly talk about what they thing?

Maybe there are a few examples let's say, that we can think about from our experience because both of us are introvert, secretly introvert, unexpectedly introverts.

Aidan: Which means we know all the tactics. I've got a few there, there's one beckon to recommend before we move away from the high-level definition. That's a book called Quiet by Susan Cain, C-A-I-N. She's also done a fantastic Ted Talk called, The Power of Introverts, which is far better than I could ever explain, but talks about how our world... I don't want us to come across here as, “introverts are great and extroverts are bad,” that's not the case at all. I think I briefly mentioned, it's never a clear binary definition. You're not super shy introvert or super loud, noisy, excitable extrovert. Everyone is a blend of both. I'd probably categorize myself now as an ambivert, the general gist of the whole general gist of the whole, that's as vague a sentence as you could get..

Damiano: That was beautiful.

Aidan: How our Western world is geared towards extroverts. I think you mentioned like, you have to brand and sell yourself and speak loudly in order to get promoted and do all this. A lot of it is catered towards that. If I want to be chill and do my thing and not shout about and promote it on LinkedIn or Instagram or this and that, you're not as likely to get recognized, even if you're doing the same work or even better work. The keeper is to give everyone the opportunity to share their ideas, share their thoughts and be rewarded and recognized for it too. But I want to hear about your life hacks because I love life hacks. Do I want to spend time and effort doing it? No. I want a simple life hack to make this easier.

Damiano: Absolutely. To be honest, I think there are a few, let's say strategies that I found that worked for me. I would be curious if you had similar ones, and to our listeners if you do find yourself in these ones, please let us know. We do have social media now @brainstormsquared.

The first one, I think the golden rule for me is starting with vulnerability first. This goes way back to our first podcast episode about vulnerability. Like I was saying earlier, by starting the conversation suddenly almost puzzling the audience a little bit, shaking the expectations, usually I do this by putting one of my vulnerabilities on the plate for everyone to see and setting the tone of the room. Usually if people let's say respected and usually if you are in a work environment, everybody should, so nobody's going to tell you, "You look horrible today. I hate your haircut," or whatever.

Aidan: That's very fair feedback and I'll take that on board. And cry.

Damiano: Exactly. But usually that sets the mood I think, and sets the tone of the safety level in the conversation. I find that again, for me being introvert but a very outgoing person, it's a place where I want to be, to set the tone of the room because I want to make sure that the people that are maybe less outgoing, a bit more shy, feel that they can participate, one. This would be, I think the easiest thing for everybody to try to do, the behind the scene work that brought me here though, because I was a very shy kid in elementary school and middle school and high school, has been working on acting actually for quite a few years. When I was in my late teens, there is a lot of work that you do when you're acting, especially when it comes to breathing is one of them, but improvisation techniques and literally the most effective magic mantra I would call it. It's the “yes and” exercise, which I'm sure you know, I'm sure you know because I see you smile. This is something that everybody should try because it's one of those things you cannot imagine, first of all, what a difference it makes. It's two words and it breaks everything.

If you never thought about this before, dear millions of listeners, the first thing you should try tomorrow, or whenever you listen to this, it's to end your sentences with “yes and,” or to begin the next sentence with “yes and,” and this is a quick exercise to avoid dropping the ball of the conversation so to speak. It's a way to make sure that the other person has a ledge somewhere or I'm holding... How do you call when you're climbing? Help me here, I'm missing the word.

Aidan: I should know this because I used to do rock climbing, a handhold? I'm trying to think what are they called. A rock.

Damiano: Yeah, exactly. A rock.

Aidan: A conversational rock to hang off.

Damiano: Beautiful. Let's trademark, a conversational rock to climb on. It seems such a silly thing, but how many times in our conversation we are left with nothing from the other person, then of course we don't know what to say next. If we are the person that provides that conversation on a rock, trademark, people on the other side really appreciate this and they feel so much more engaged. Definitely two things to start the vulnerability in the conversation and beginning and ending with the "yes and" framework to provide the conversational rock, trademark. Definitely the first two strategies. What worked for you in the past?

Aidan: Yes, it's something that I've only stumbled across in the past few years. I've only recently started thinking about it in terms of conversations. I've always come at that from like, you come in to see it an improv, but it works very well in podcasting. If you said something like, "Oh yeah. There are these really great exercise of introverts. This one time when I," and I went off on a complete... It feels really stunted, you don't feel great. It feels like someone's not acknowledging what you've said.

Damiano: A hundred percent.

Aidan: The key bit is you don't always have to physically say the words yes and. Often times it is just the spirit of the phrase. You don't want to sound robotic, saying "yes and, yes and" it can come in more subtle ways

Damiano: What about for the sake of argument we do a little demonstration. We can force it a little but using "yes and"  just to bring the point across. What do you think.

Aidan: I am definitely OK with that and I will try my best to not completely forget half way through. I am definitely up for that, who wants to start us off?

Damiano: OK, I'll give the scenario. We are at the supermarket. We are both in front of the vegetable aisle and we are both reaching out to the very last pack of tomatoes.

Aidan: Clean up on aisle four, please. Clean up on aisle four.

Damiano: Oh, our hands touched. How embarrassing. I was looking at these tomatoes because I am going to prepare a stew, a beef stew, were you planning to cook as well?

Aidan: Ah yes I am quite new to cooking and was planning to make a tomato cheesecake. I thought tomato and cheese goes together, so tomato cheesecake. Sorry about brushing hands! We could half the tomatoes if you want to

Damiano: Absolutely yes, and you know what I am also thinking, I dear friend of mine tried to make tomato cheesecake once and she got a terrible rash on her face, she spent months and months with creams and things, what a nightmare. How about since beef stew really is no problem at all, how about I take you to the next aisle where the pickled cherries with cucumber and chillis are, an you use those for the cheesecake?

Aidan: Yeah, yeah, I would love to do that we can go over there and take a shot of the pickled tomatoes, I feel so young again, doing shots in the middle of a supermarket, I wouldn't usually do this, is it safe to do so?

Damiano: Absolutely and just for the record, it's pickled cherries, pickled cherries darling, I am going to keep the tomatoes, I am bringing you to the cherry aisle so you can have the cheesecake with cherries that is still all right with you isn't it?

Aidan: Yeah that sounds lovely, my grandma used to make a lovely cherry cheesecake and pickle I am sure adds a really dynamic flavour to it, but like I said I am pretty new to baking but I trust your judgement, you seem like such a friendly helpful chap. What is your name by the way?

Damiano: My name is Peter, Peter Dressing

Aidan: Peter Dressing, it is lovely to meet you. My name is Bork.

Damiano: Bork?

Aidan: Yeah, it's Scandinavian

Damiano: Absolutely I should have guessed from the combination of cheesecake and tomatoes.

Aidan: Well, it gets cold and we've got to stay warm somehow.

Damiano: Yes, so are you enjoying living in the city?

 Aidan: Yeah, so I grew up on the middle of nowhere, it was freezing cold. Lots of herring, so it is really nice around Manhattan this time of year. How about yourself, are you new to the big city?

Damiano: Well, not really, but I have to say I do enjoy it. It is interesting that in the Scandinavian language, you call, we are actually in the middle of Birmingham, it is interesting you call it Manhattan, is that a local tradition in your area:

Aidan: Yes, I travel around so much these days that I get these big cities confused. Did you say this is Birmingham? Because the ticket I bought was definitely for New York. Or maybe it was York, new York. I did think the flight from the UK to America was pretty short. Is this not the US of A?

Damiano & Aidan - sound of laughter

Aidan: Find out what happens next week in the adventures of Bork and Peter Dressing.

Damiano: That is a pretty accurate representation of my actual geography knowledge. But I think the point comes across beautifully that it doesn't take much to move a conversation forward. It doesn't necessarily  have to be "yes and". 

Aidan: That's a really cool exercise to keep in the back of your mind. Like open-ended questions, the one-one there, that's the key that I've found, which is what I've always struggled with, because it's very easy to say, "Oh yeah, don't ask yes no questions, because it does drop that ball of the conversation or box."

Damiano: Exactly. Thought of next, the conversation. Yeah.

Aidan: Yeah. Always trying to think like that, it's obviously difficult in the moment, but thinking of those open-ended questions is great, and something I didn't do a good job of there I noticed.

Damiano: On the other side, what is your relationship as an introvert with silence in a conversation?

Aidan: Silence. It's something that I'm conscious that I've been trying to work on because naturally I don't like silence. I like silence when I'm on my own, but when there's silence in a conversation, my anxious tendencies go into overdrive. Because when you're having a conversation, you're talking and my conscious go, "Oh, what do I say next? What do I say next?" Pro-tip, don't constantly think about what to say next, instead try doubling down and listening to what they're saying. My mind immediately goes into, "Well, you failed there. You bad. That's bad. They're now judgy." I think most of mine comes from my sense of, "I don't want the other person to feel uncomfortable." The silence and then they don't know what to say and you can't think of anything right now, so they could be feeling bad. No. They're not going to like you as a friend. No.

Damiano: It's all your fault because you couldn't keep up with the conversation, how dare you?

Aidan: Exactly. All that in the space of half a second of silence. But now I'm realizing, I think a nice question I try to ask myself is, "What's the worst that could happen?" Realistically silence, so what? You're not going to be fired, they're not going to go, "Well, it was a good conversation, but unfortunately that was three whole seconds of silence. You are not our winner today. We can no longer be friends. Goodbye."

Damiano: I think it's actually fascinating because I have two approaches towards silence when it comes to conversation. One is the purely work one. When it comes to meetings and you have the small to say, does anybody have any questions? Then you hear the crickets in the background or the coyote singing in the canyons.

Aidan: Yeah, especially over Zoom or the internet.

Damiano: Exactly. I hate that because it's wasted time. If there is no action for more than three seconds, exactly like you, I feel compelled to do something, but in this way I think I framed this in my brain to justify, normally I jump in and I go like, "Okay, if there is no actions, we can close it here. Thank you very much. If you have any questions, let me know, blah." I really like to keep these work meetings really tight, because I think I framed this to myself that people will appreciate that they can get time back on the other side, but also the fact that there is stuff moving all the time and we're not here hanging, we're actually progressing, so we're pushing the envelope a little bit. That's been my mental trick.

Aidan: Yes. There's one bit here, I used to do the same. I still do to an extent, but there was one thing, a lot of the time, three seconds of silence isn't actually that much, especially because it takes... I know we've said we're very talkative introverts, but for some people they'll prefer a little bit more time to digest that, or they may have an idea or similar to what we're talking about with psychological safety, someone in the room maybe thinking, "I completely disagree with what you're saying here, but I don't feel safe to openly talk up about that." Giving people a little bit more time to actually answer those questions and allow the silence to sit there.

I think it was in one of Malcolm Gladwell's books, he was talking about cultural differences. Was it Bernie Brown, Marvin Bernie Brown, can't remember. I'll find it in the show notes, but they asked a question to an audience in South Korea I want to say, they'd asked because I don't got any questions, they went, "Okay. Yep. No one put a hand up, so no," and actually there's a lot of cultural differences where sometimes it's, that person has given the prolonged eye contact. Sometimes you may need to leave 15 seconds because different formalities, different individuals, as well as cultural level, when you're working for a global company, we do kind of go, "Well, no one said anything in two seconds, that's the end of it." It could be that some people are happy sharing via chat or they might not have their video on, so can't exactly raise their hands to talk.

Damiano: Yeah. That's a very good point. This actually leads to my strategy number two more strategy. More strategy I would say mental framework, which is, for example, if I'm giving a presentation where questions are expected or I actually switch actively mindset and I imagine to actually go on stage. Again, it's an association from the memory, if my mind is thinking this is like a performance, silence becomes part of the performance because now I decide deliberately to put that emphasis on something and then I can say, "And we have this system for video making. Any questions?" Then I feel very comfortable holding and stretching the silence further.

Aidan: Yeah. It shows that you want people to ask those questions and not any questions, because I want to go off and have a coffee. You want their questions.

Damiano: I have to say though, for me personally to be able to do that, I deliberately have to put myself into that mindset. It's not something that will happen naturally.

Aidan: I've got one question, where have you practiced this or have you fumbled along and hope that you'll get to a state of confidence all the time, one day, or if you deliberately practice this in any situations?

Damiano: The stories. I would say definitely acting first was the first embryo of more of this. If I'm honest with you, I spent five years at the beginning of my working career in customer support, like phone customer support, when you have to, you don't want to, but when you have to speak to literally hundreds of people a day, there is a moment where you have to come to terms with the fact that you have to do it, and any way to do this has to make do. I've done this literally for years, I really had years to hammer this... Sometimes this conversation automatisms a little bit or making a habit out of some transitioning conversation from one topic to another, especially when you have customers that are angry, sometimes abusive, sometimes really annoyed, sometimes very happy. I think that has been really my battlefield to try and test most of this.

Aidan: Awesome.

Damiano: Yeah. Did you have some battlefield experience as well with this?

Aidan: Yeah. One of them I'd forgotten up until this point, which is why I used to work in a petrol station or garage when I was younger. Again, going through the late years of secondary school, hundreds of strangers a day coming in and going, "Hello, I'd like to pay for the pitcher on pump two please." I don't know where my accents go and stay up. So many different people from so many different walks of life coming in there. Most people weren't angry, some people were on a long journey, but there was a lot of that. The most recent one when we could travel, I used to travel a lot.

One thing I tried to do as I had to get in a lot of taxis or Ubers, and this was almost like deliberate exposure therapy. I said before that when you're trapped in a conversation and that's difficult and I was having to get a taxi to an airport and I be like, "I could sit here in silence and listen to my headphones, but also I could try having a conversation. What's the worst thing that can happen? I have to sit with a taxi driver inside." It's uncomfortable, but that helped me grow. I had a conversation, I found out something new and it was enjoyable. Even though the back of my mind I was like, "Oh, what if you run out of things to say," it's like that exposure therapy going, "Oh, well, remember the last time you felt really worried, you survived obviously, otherwise you wouldn't be having this conversation." I think it's tough, it's uncomfortable, but the more you try it, the more you will grow.

Damiano: That's an awesome story and a fantastic way to wrap up what I think is a great episode, but it doesn't end here because we do actually have social channels now. Of course we would love to hear from literally everyone.

Aidan: I thought you were going to say literally anyone, which is true.

Damiano: I'm definitely more ambitious than that. Homeworks, everybody listen, you go to @brainstormsquared on, where are we Aidan? We are on Instagram, we are on Facebook.

Aidan: I don't know how to Twitter, I somehow missed that one. That's got to be your job.

Damiano: Let's start with the Instagram and Facebook. Let us know, tag us. If you have ideas about next episodes, just like Benny for this one, do tell us, please we will take everything into our master list and of course, this was like a dramatic pause but a bit too early, probably for our closing line.

Aidan: I lost. I thought I was going to say it.

Damiano: We want everybody to know, that it's okay not to be okay.

Aidan: That it's okay not to be okay.

Damiano: We'll see you next time.

Aidan: Take care everyone. Outro music, woop!