 Talk like walk the mic to them. Do you want to be my volunteer? Thank you There's not very much of it. So don't worry And it's it's very early in the talk. So your responsibilities will end and then you can Leave or whatever you can stay if you want self-organization self-management pair programming mob programming some of you may have just been in that session we're actively transforming the way Developers and people in the entire world work Study I found said that in the US anyway over 50% of people are introverted I tried very hard to find a stat on India. Unfortunately. I was not able to do that Would would you guys agree if I made the assertion? I couldn't find any data on this But if I made the assertion that in technology workers that number is probably higher so Is there a contradiction here? We're asking people to work in very collaborative ways Get the majority of people We're asking to do this our introverted So that is that makes sense. Is that even gonna work? This is kind of the topic. I'm gonna be exploring today Before I dive into this I kind of want to explore this meaning of this word What does it mean to be an introvert? So What I would like is everyone in this room who identifies as an introvert. Please stand up Whatever whatever that means to you All right, so and I recognize maybe the Know what keeps the stay standing Because I because one of you is gonna get picked on and I realized that asking an introvert to speak up in a Big room like this may be a little bit futile But would anyone like to volunteer To tell me in the room what it means for you to be an introvert. What does that mean? any volunteers So I've got a microphone, so Time to open up. Okay. Anyone else That's you you're tired you feel tired when you're with people, okay Ken Okay Anyone else? Fear of being judged because you're shy excellent. Thank you Okay, you can sit down now. I won't pick on you anymore What when when I have typically because I have my own mental model of what this means And what I've typically in the past thought of this I think of people who are shy people who don't like people Basically, they do whatever they could to be alone and not in groups not really socializing So this is one of the common definitions that I think was touched on Myers-Briggs talks about the where people get their energy So extroverts get their energy by interacting in groups doing a lot of socializing introverts get their energy by a lot of sort of quiet time Maybe still talking but having more deep interesting conversations So something you should know about me is I feel fairly passionately about agile Collaboration the teams I've worked with that I consider to be the most High-performing or effective teams are ones that they spend a lot of time communicating. They spent a lot of time Sinking up and getting a shared mental model of the work they're doing and anyone who's sort of Attended Woody session just now you talked about mob programming, which is like an extreme Version of this where people are working so collaboratively that everyone is working on the same thing at the same time and I've seen I've seen teams work like this and I've seen them Be extremely productive they can accomplish incredibly large amounts of work in short amounts of time and I Feel I feel pretty strongly that this is a very very effective way of working But about two years ago. I started working with a new team and what was drastically different with this team from the other ones for instance, I was attending a stand-up and There's 15 people on the team and they organize themselves in a semi circle With the manager standing in the middle and they would go one at a time and give their status update to the manager What's wrong with the situation? It's not the manager's meeting Yeah, they're not really talking to each other They're just talking to the manager and in this context has made a lot of sense because every single person in that room was working on a different thing So why why would they talk to each other? There's no need for this person to really be paying attention to what that person's working on because I'm not gonna be helping them anyway So I'm a fixer When I see problems, I want to help people. I want to help things make better. So I started Getting on my high horse my soapbox and talking about these amazing collaborative teams I'd worked with I was preaching to people about how awesome this could be I started saying well What if we what if we broke into two smaller teams and what if we tried working on one thing rather than many things? How do you suspect they reacted to this it said yeah, yeah, okay, that's fine Leave me alone like we actually like the way we're working. We know how to do this we've been working this way a long time and People started telling me on the team that actually lots of them identify very strongly as introverts and they like Quiet they like being able to sit they like build being able to concentrate on the work They're doing without being interrupted They said what what you're describing sounds like a lot of noise like a lot of chaos in the room Like I'm describing people at whiteboard like actively talking to each other and having little side conversations and to them This sounds like a lot of noise and distraction Does anyone here read people where? familiar with it So one of the things in there he talked about some this famous study the coding war game they showed that Open offices people where we're far less productive and noisy open office spaces Not only that people become sick hostile Unmotivated and secure so the team started quoting these studies to me in a way to get me to shoo Shoe away and leave them alone And one of the books multiple people on the team recommended to me was this book by Susan Cain Is anyone familiar with this book? Nourish talked about it in his keynote last year very famous one of the I think it's one of the most popular Ted talks now and They're trying to they're trying to get me to leave them alone So essentially like through this book at me and said go read this book and leave us alone I think I don't think they actually expected me to read it I was starting to realize I wasn't getting anywhere. I wasn't really able to influence these people So maybe I realized I if I'm really gonna be able to hope that they're gonna start hearing My ideas and the suggestions I have that I need to take some time to understand where they're coming from So I did I did pick this book up and I open the first page If you haven't if you haven't read this book the first page is a bright red page with white text It says the manifesto for introvert So I the hair in the back of my neck started like crickling up as soon as I saw this and So if you haven't figured it out by now, I'm I don't identify as an introvert I identify as an extrovert so I'm starting to think this is a bunch of who we and really When when is a manifesto ever convinced anyone of anything right? Oh, sorry So I start reading this book and about the first third of the book it's essentially making an argument an argument in favor of introversion and It starts painting a picture of introverts and extroverts that I didn't really say with me very well So we've got extroverts are prone to risky rewards seeking behavior and lack impulse control Okay, that doesn't really feel very fair introverts, however are slow and deliberate people extroverts are a sort of indomitant and and actually Comfortable and maybe even prefer conflict whereas introverts are sort of these deep like these deep interesting conversations Well, I mean actually that that doesn't really describe me. I don't think I actually like having deep interesting conversations with people The extroverts have lots of superficial friendship introverts have Small number of meaningful relationships So I'm reading this book and I'm starting to picture it painting this caricature of an extrovert is this sort of oafish person who Is sort of dominating everyone around them and not letting anyone else speak and and you know They have this impulse control problem. So they just say the first thing that comes to their mind. Oh Sorry, maybe that's too politically charged So at this point I'm ready to just throw this book away because it's obviously a piece of garbage Now I'm gonna be honest. This is not the first time. I've read a book. I has evoked an extreme emotional reaction to me The other times that I'd done that and I kept reading I ended up learning something gaining some new insight some new piece of information, so this is actually a Lesson a mentor of mine gave don't just read books that you agree with that reinforce your bias read things You disagree with And in this in this case, it was actually really valuable I pressed on I kept reading and I actually think that the the second two-thirds of this book contains some really really interesting insights into human personality and and introversion and So I'm gonna walk through some of the lessons and information I learned So the first study I Came across that really started flipping the way I think about this concept was by Jerome Kagan. He is an eminent psychologist he's research has mainly been around the emotional and cognitive cognitive development of children and One of the things he was trying to figure out was his sort of nature versus nurture issues, so Are introverts born or are they made? So he He did a study what the study? He started out with infants. So he wanted to see at that birth Are there differences in people's temperament? So he ran the study and so infants were played tape recordings of voices like loud voices and and Balloons popping and showed them colorful mobiles and exposed them to like strong sense And he wanted to see if there was differences in the way the infants would respond So given this large group of infants and what he found was there's actually wildly varying Reactions to that different different babies reacted very differently than other babies So one about 20% when they're exposed to stimulus Reacted expressively so you could actually see them move their arms around more Maybe their heart rate would increase or their eyes would maybe they look around you could see a physical reaction to their chain So he called these high reactive infant 40% Were quiet and placid so they didn't really respond at all Maybe maybe a little bit but not really at all They called these low reactive And then about 40% was somewhere In the middle so already we're seeing that at birth by the time you're born. There's already some temperament programmed in you So he followed this is this is called a longitudinal study so they follow The kids throughout their lives and he did it at age four seven and eleven and actually Other researchers have taken this on I think they're well into adulthood now So there's I haven't followed up on the research, but I'm sure there's even more interesting results Okay, I Don't know if you read that but I was gonna ask a question before you read that How would you expect so what what are your guys predictions? How would the lower reactive babies? What personalities would you expect them to grow up into and how would the high reactive babies? What would you expect their personalities to be any guesses? Okay, one person with a microphone, please The low reactive or introverts, okay, and And the and the high reactive one right because the low reactive ones are the ones that aren't They're not expressive right that's what I thought you it's the exact opposite The low reactive were more likely to have relaxed and confident personalities These are personalities that you would associate with people who are more social there. They're these relaxed confident types They're they're gonna be gregarious. They're gonna go out there. They're comfortable speaking in front of people The high reactive the ones who who reacted strongly to the stimulus developed serious Careful personalities. So these are the ones who you would expect to be more reserved Do not want to be around people as much. This seems a bit backwards, right? So the other interesting thing is the high reactive kids seemed to be more empathic So if they're around a friend who would be experiencing certain emotions, they would tend to Experience those emotions along with their friend more strong. Everyone's got some empathy But these kids experience empathy more strongly and they would experience their environment more strongly So this this still seems a bit counterintuitive to me But the next study I think helped me understand this a little bit better So this gentleman ran an experiment with his hypothesis was that human being Seek to calibrate our environment So that we can be as at an optimal level of arousal So like our level of arousal is like our level of stimulation, you know, how how strong is our heartbeat? you know and So maybe if you're an introvert You might not want to get up in a room full of this many people because that might not be an optimal level of arousal for you So the experiment he ran he took introverts and extroverts a big group of them and he gave them a very challenging complex task to perform and Something that it was there was very easy to measure what their performance was on it So it was used a lot of high high reasoning He gave them headphones that were playing sort of loud beeping noises And he allowed them to adjust the volume of the headphones to a volume to them that felt just right And this is a very subjective thing. It's what it was just right mean to you might be different than someone else So based based off of what we saw before what would you predict? What happened here? How would how would the introverts? What what volume would they adjust it to relative to the extroverts? Introverts will be lower higher introverts were lower Okay So what why did that happen? so they They they need they want a lower level of environmental stimulus to achieve optimal arousal That makes sense right because if I'm an introvert Am I gonna go into a loud nightclub and be constantly socializing with a bunch of people? That's gonna be a lot of stimulation. Now. I want lower stimulation to achieve optimal arousal or stimulation for me So what's interesting is if they were allowed to control the level of volume or the level of stimulation Everyone performed equally well introverts and extroverts however If you force the introverts to listen to the sound at the volume that was optimal for the extroverts They got worse So they were at a higher level of arousal than was comfortable for them So the extroverts if you reverse it you force the extroverts to be at the volume of the introverts They performed worse as well, but not to the same degree So think about this for a second we we are creating environments in our workplaces That may be optimal for extroverted people and Forcing introverts to work in those environments We may actually be forcing people to work in an environment that makes them perform in a worse way so this this is the first and Really, this is what they were telling me People I'm working with But it took me to read studies in a book to really believe it But essentially what what I'm starting to realize is that we can't expect every person what works for me We'll work what worked for those other teams. I Can't sit here and preach to them. What's best for them? We have to realize that different people have different needs and that there's an actual direct physiological reason for this This was a bit of a turning point for me while I was reading this book So to understand Why this happens? This is a very brief Lesson on neuroscience. So there's two regions of the brain that can help you understand this the first one is the limbic Systems, this is where your amygdala is this is like your center of emotion. This is the part of your brain that responds when you're under threat or fear and The prefrontal cortex. This is this is the part of the brain that basically makes Humans different from animals. This is where higher reasoning occurs. This is where complex thought occurs This is what makes us intelligent being and the way they can tell What pieces of the brain do different things is they Do what's called an fMRI the functional magnetic magnetic resonance So they can put you in this machine and they can tell which areas of your brain are being activated given different stimulus So if I lay you in the machine, I get you to do some complex task that requires higher reasoning your prefrontal cortex will get stimulated if I Put flash images in front of you that are going to cause you to feel like you're in danger Your limbic system is going to be activated So anything interesting thing is if they do both at the same time, what do you think happened? You think both would be activated what actually happens is if if I ask you to do a task that requires higher reasoning And then put you under threat The prefrontal cortex shuts that shuts down Your the blood actually moves from the front of your brain into the back of your brain and people become measurably Stupid so there's another Study so showing basically that people do require some level of Stress or stimulus we can't just pull put people in a situation where they're not under some kind of stress There is an actual optimal level that people want to get to but if you push people over the level They become So we're thinking about these open-office plans, right? We've got open-office plans, and I'm sitting there, and I'm trying to concentrate on my work And there's a guy over here standing next to the photocopy machine screaming at it because it's not working and other people are making like loud noisy conversation This is going to especially if I'm an introvert This is going to be perceived as like a threatening environment. So picture like we're back in the jungle Well, the savannah millions of years ago when our brains evolve If there's a lot of Threat around me a lot of strange noises. I don't know what to make of it It is it's going to be evolutionary advantage for now my brain to be able to do calculus No, I'm going to be going into a state where I'm going to be heightened awareness so that I can flee danger So I've talked about one aspect of introversion And I've painted a picture that sort of is very definitive, you know People who are high reactive babies become introverts babies that are low reactive become extroverts It's actually a lot more complicated than that and even Kagan the guy who did the original study He wanted to assert in his work that there are multiple paths To the same personality traits to the same behaviors and the studies even show that the introversion extroversion is only about 40 to 50 percent so This paints part of the picture But even this doesn't tell me if someone it's so of all you people that stood up and told me that you were introverts That doesn't necessarily tell me exactly what kind of introvert you are it maybe you are a high reactive Maybe you're not maybe some other thing can explain The reason that you identify that way so The book actually in and I don't have time to go through in detail all the different studies I actually encourage you to read the book It exposes multiple different dimensions to this this sort of concept of being an introvert And I'll very quickly one of them we already talked about was where do you get your energy? Another one was brought up in the front here about being shy so it's interesting somebody can be shy But get their energy from being around people that might seem a little bit of a contradiction Somebody might be very gregarious and spend a lot of time interacting with people and like that But then they'll need to make sure they get a time to recharge while they're alone So these these are not contradictions. There's actually I'll tell you in a second. I'm I'm one of those types of people I I do need time to recharge but I people who Know me would tell me that I'm fairly socially outgoing When I talked about briefly it was reward sensitivity So do you have the type of personality where you're slow and deliberate and you'll go along or do you have the tendency to seek impulses so When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is check facebook to see if anyone has commented That is a impulse reward seeking behavior That i'm sure I should not do I talked about high reactivity versus low reactivity another one self monitoring so do you Adjust your behavior and personality based off of the people you are around Probably a big variety of people in this room on each side of that spectrum What's really interesting about this one is they they gave They were doing a research study and there was actually like husbands and wives in this In some cases it resulted in divorce because So think about it if I'm a if I'm a high self monitor I'm going to think that people who don't Calibrate their behavior based on the people that are around to be kind of selfish If I'm a low self monitor I might think that well, I'm just being honest about who I am And I might think they're liars So they were finding that when they had people who were married that were on the opposite ends of the spectrum It usually didn't end well so I I've done If how many of you have done the Myers-Briggs just like an online test probably quite a few If it will give you your personality type But a lot of the ones will actually tell you where you are in the spectrum So when I do the Myers-Briggs, it tells me I'm Very slightly extroverted So even to say that like 50.7 of the population is introverted That doesn't that just tells you like where the mean is it could be like that It's like a bell curve and there's very few people who are actually at the end of the spectrum I I haven't seen that data, but the average doesn't tell you very much So for me, I just did quickly like In the book, there's actually like a whole bunch of Like questionnaires that you can fill out and it'll give you an idea like where you fit on these different spectrum So if you take me who like I was right down the middle, right? But if I break down for myself where I fit in each of these things I'm actually like at opposite ends of the spectrum So to say I'm an introvert or an extrovert Or to say I'm right in the middle. I'm actually not right in the middle I'm actually at a lot of extremes based off of what type of Um Individual like dimension of introversion or extroversion we're talking about so this concept this of personality is incredibly complicated So even like when people are saying telling me go read this book because I'm introverted It doesn't really even tell me what they're what they mean when they're telling me they're introverted So it's not it's not It's not I don't think it's really a helpful label in understanding people So, uh, how many of you attended woody's session just before this? Okay, so a few number for those who haven't did woody just did a session on mob programming This is this idea of yeah of the whole team works On the same computer at the same time in the same place I first learned about this a couple years ago at the big agile conference in washington So jason kerney Who works at hunter so hunter is where they pioneered this concept. He did an experienced report talking about This way of working and what it meant to him And it's around this time I was reading this book And I had this burning question in my mind while the whole time i'm listening to his talk I can't wait to ask this question. I said so like introverts must hate this right He said well we have a couple and like they tell me that they wouldn't work in any other way That doesn't really Sort of everything I've just read about this says that that doesn't make any sense um The following year, um This was uh, Atlanta the big agile conference in Atlanta. This is erin griffith. He also works at hunter He came back to the conference and he did an experience report. He's an introvert Who works on a mob and he talked about? Uh, why he worked on a mob why he likes working on a mob He's one of these guys that said he would never work in any other way Some some things that I found very interesting from his paper and from his talk One he said it's not easy He talked about the downsides for him as an introvert working in a mob. So He does need to recharge You know at the end of a day he can feel quite tax Um, some of the things that he found that he really liked about mobbing Was the fact that when you work with people all day You can't help but get to know them and build strong relationships with them and what he told me is that to him and he said to he was generalizing to introvert Relationships and loyalty are very important things And as he the longer he worked with a team the the stronger his relationship Developed and the more that these people meant to him And the other interesting thing that the guys at hunter talk about a lot is um respect and kindness So they talk about this concept of safety. So if you went to The keynote this morning he was talking a lot about safety. So on their team they they focus a lot on having a safe environment Um last year. Uh, I was here in India Richard Sheridan did a keynote Um talking about his company menlo So at menlo they Work in a big. So this is this is a picture of their office. It's this big open office plan It's the big open office plans that the people where said that are terrible and and don't work, right? So Everyone here works in pairs. They do pair programming and they swap their pairs every five days So once again, like I had this same burning question. I'm like I I managed a corner rich And I asked him like like introverts you doesn't have any introverts that they hate this, right? He actually said The vast majority of people that work here are introverted He actually said he considers it almost a prerequisite to work at menlo So this is still a like massively Like it's totally contradicting The what i'm reading what the team i'm working with is telling me How do these guys have this open office plan that should be triggering all of these like Stresses in their brain and preventing them from being able to concentrate. It doesn't make any sense So I once again Wanted to dig deeper. So I had a Skype call with a few of the guys that work here And I quizzed them a bit and some some something I found really interesting Is one of the Language that one of the guys used and he used this phrase Cultural expectation he said at menlo we have a cultural expectation of kindness consideration and respect And this is pervasive across the company And once again, he said, you know, there's there's downsides to this like they feel Drain working with people all day. They do need to recharge at the end of the day Don't really feel that social at the end of the day Um, they often get stretched outside of their comfort zone One thing he said he's like if I go talk to someone on another side of the company That I don't know that person very well. I know because We have a cultural expectation at menlo that they will treat me with kindness consideration and respect So there's a very strong sense of safety in their culture Another interesting cultural expectation if you ask for help Um, the person you ask for help will drop whatever they're doing and come help you So you will always feel supported. You will never feel like you're not being helped out by your your teammate in your community You know this morning had this exact same slide so I won't go over in too much detail But this is the google study trying to figure out what are what's high performing What's unique about their high performing team This concept of psychological safety a sense of confidence that the team will not embarrass reject or punish someone for speaking up We evolved as humans in communities You take a human being You put them in the wild They are going to be under a constant threat of survival You put a group of people in a community Those people take care of you. They keep you safe The blood can move out of that limbic system back into the prefrontal cortex We are capable of doing great things as humans When we are in communities that take care people we're with people that take care of each other So I have kind of one last thing I want to say about this book It's very obvious to me that this book was not written for me The sort of reaction I had at the front while reading the first section of this book Is not a reaction that introverts I talked to you have This book was written for people who have been told their whole lives that The way you are is not the way you should be Society tells you you should be more gregarious more outgoing If you want to be a leader you need to be a confident leader You need to have more friends. I actually have a co-worker. I worked with her daughter Had a bad grade on her report card because she didn't have enough friends in class So this book is written for it's written to tell you That it's okay to be an introvert. It's okay to be who you are. You don't have to change So when my team members handed me this book What they were trying to tell me is understand me Listen to me Don't try and change me It's okay for me to be who I am and I want you to be okay with who I am This is a lesson I got from Esther Derby from a talk she gave a couple years ago When I first started working with this team I came in with all kinds of judgments about the way they should be and what was wrong with them By the time I was finished reading this book, I realized that I needed to totally flip my approach I needed to spend a lot more time understanding listening And getting to know who these people are And by the I I didn't I didn't convince them that they should all be Working in mobs. I and I don't expect that they ever will be By by the time I was done By the time I had left this team one of the team members had come to me and told me that She actually believed that they should all be doing pairing at least one day a week As she said I cannot see us all doing pair programming Five days a week, but she started to come to a belief that that there was value in it And that they should be at least trying to do it some of the time so to me that was a A pretty big coaching Insight that I gained from this whole experience. It really changed the way I coach people the way I lead people And it gave me a lot of Insight into personality it helped actually helped me if I go back to this whole This is really far value this this one here gave me some interesting insights One of them being maybe I need to reflect on my impulse control And maybe I need to Not spend so much time Thinking about my own needs and spend some more time trying to listen and understand the needs of the people around me So that went a lot faster than when I rehearsed it back in my hotel room. So I have time for questions Oh, what happened there? That's my kids I don't know what happened. All right any questions Thank you for listening