 My name is Tobias Andberg, I'm here all the way from Sweden to talk about being introverted on Agile team. So this is me. I work for a company that is based in Stockholm called Agical. We're a small consultancy company. I myself live in the south of Sweden in Krihansta in an old house from the 1880s. I do coaching and software development consultant. I'm married and the father of three, two girls and one boy. And also I'm a podcaster, me and a colleague runs a podcast on software development in teams. Unfortunately it's in Swedish so it won't do you any good. But apart from this, I'm also an introvert. So I thought let's go all the way to India to talk at the conference. Excellent idea. I base this talk around the hypothesis that if we understand a little bit more where people are coming from, how we differ as introverts and extroverts, then maybe we can make some small changes to our daily work routines and make everyone a little bit better. So this is the agenda. I will start to talk about the differences between introverts and extroverts. Then I will dig into the science of introversion. I will talk about psychological safety and I'll finish up with some agile practices that work extra well for introverts. So let's start at the beginning. Introversion was first mentioned by Carl Jung in a book in 1921 called Psychological Types. This is the first time that extroversion and introversion was mentioned. So what is it? Well, it is a trait which is an aspect of personality that is relatively fixed. So you're basically born with it and it doesn't change as you get older. And in fact it's one of the five big personality traits which often is called canoe because they begin with the letters canoe. The C stands for conscientiousness, how conscientious you are. The A stands for agreeableness. The N for neuroticism, how neurotic you are. The O stands for openness and that is how open you are to new experiences and new ideas. And the E stands for extroversion. And this is an important point. It's not shyness because shyness is often anxiety driven and based on low self-esteem. And shyness is something you can work with. There are introverts that are shy, but there are also extroverts that are shy. The simplified view is that introverts gain energy from spending time alone while extroverts gain energy by being around other people. So let's dig into this. Well, as I said, introverts prefer to spend time alone while extroverts often get energized in large groups of people. We're not anti-social, but we prefer close group of friends while extroverts often have large number of friends and acquaintances. Most friends on Facebook wins, right? Introverts are often very quiet, but also often have a very rich inner monologue. And we get drained quite fast in an environment like this, for instance. And if we don't take care, we might suffer from something that Susan Cain calls introvert hangover, which is basically that you're completely drained, and then you need to be alone for like a whole day maybe to regain the energy to be around other people again. We often hate small talk from reasons that I'll mention later, but we love deep meaningful conversation. We also prefer written communication to verbal. Me, for instance, I hate talking on the phone. Extroverts thrive in social and networking environments. Introverts tend to be quieter at meetings and keep their ideas to themselves. And this might be a problem, especially in an agile environment. We need everyone's ideas on the table. So this is something we have to work against. Extroverts, on the other hand, are often quite talkative and likes to share their ideas. Decision making, well, introverts tend to think things over quite deeply before making a decision. While extroverts often have a tendency to make quick decisions and share unfinished thoughts and ideas. Put it out there on the table. Some introverts can concentrate for long periods of time and are not easily distracted, while extroverts are quite easily distracted in general. Introverts likes to observe and we are not interested in getting the attention, while extroverts love to be in the center of attention. Introverts often do not like change. That's not very good in an agile environment. While extroverts easily accept change. A good thing though is that we often have an eye for detail and are generally good at spotting problems. And that's something that we need to take use of. We're also generally good listeners. Introverts are also very creative when being alone. But so are extroverts. So in fact, if you want to innovate, it's good to be alone. You still need input from other people at regular intervals to fuel your thinking process. But it's actually quite good to be on your own when being creative. Okay, quick poll. How many in here self-identify as introverts from what I've just been talking about? Yeah, it looks quite right. In fact, science shows that 30 to 50% are introverts. And of course, there are cultural differences and also differences depending on what you do for a living, for instance. I think in software development, we're probably more introverted than, for instance, sales. Okay, let's look at what the science says. Jonathan Sheik is a psychologist. He has invented the star model, which defines four types of introversion or shades, if you wish, where the first one is social introversion. And that is what we generally think of when we think of introverts, that we like to spend time alone and get energized from that. The other shade is thinking introversion. And my youngest daughter has this very strongly. In fact, our favorite expression at home is Earth calling Ines, because she's never present with us. She's always up here somewhere in her own mind. So a thinking introvert has tendency to get lost in their own thoughts and fantasies. The third one is anxious introversion. And this is very strong in me and my eldest daughter. And an anxious introvert has a tendency to turn things over and over in their mind. So, for instance, if we're faced with a new experience or something new to try, we try to figure out in what ways might I die doing this before not just jumping into it. The fourth one is restrained introversion. And these are the slow starters to people who take some time to get started in the morning, for instance. Now, I like to think of these as dimensions. So you can have each one of these to a certain extent. So, me, for instance, I score quite highly on anxious introversion and social introversion, but very low on restrained introversion, for instance. Well, another person might score differently. So you can see now that it's not just one or four types of introversion. There are infinite number of introverts. Okay, let's look at our brains. And in fact, we differ. Introverts have a less active reward system. Every human being has a number of rewards sort of coded in our body. For instance, we need food to survive. We need sex to become more of us. And when we expect to get one of these rewards, our brain rewards us by generating dopamine. And this dopamine is supposed to give you sort of a nice buzz that makes you want this even more. And in fact, extroverts and introverts react bit differently on the dopamine. Introverts tend to be overstimulated by the dopamine, and we don't get this nice buzz. And that might be one of the reasons that many of the many introverts are not as competitive, for instance, as an extrovert. We also have longer pathways in the brain. So when we get external stimuli, an image or sound, more parts of the brain process the stimuli. This also leads to that it takes a bit longer for us to think. So we have trouble to thinking on the top of our mind. And this might be one of the reasons why we don't like small talk, for instance, because that often it's often needed that you need to think fast. Many introverts are also highly sensitive people, which means that they are more sensitive to sound and light and touch, for instance. And in fact, I read about a quite interesting experiment that's been done on this in that people were told to solve a word puzzle while listening to music in headphones. And they were allowed to set the volume to what they thought were the optimal volume for them. And it turns out that people who self-identified as introverts generally set the volume much lower than the extroverts. But then everyone were about the same at solving the puzzle. Then they switched it around so that the introverts had to set the volume to the extrovert level and the extroverts had to set the lower introvert volume. And it turns out that everyone got worse at solving the puzzle. So there seems to be some kind of optimal stimulation for everyone where the introverts were overstimulated by the high sound while the extroverts were under stimulated by the low sound. So that's interesting. Now we are affected by situations in, I think maybe the 40s of 50s there was this whole psychological theory called situation theory, which basically stated that we're different persons in different situations. Now that's not valid anymore, but what psychologists believe now is that we are affected by the situation but we have a fixed personality in the bottom, in the base, as a base. And we're able to stretch our personality so an introvert can sort of act extroverted to a certain extent. And this, how much you're able to stretch is different for different people. So Susan Cain talks about rubber band theory of personality, whereas some people have a very loose rubber band so they can stretch very far while some people cannot stretch as far. Now if we think of this as a scale where you have introverts on one end and extroverts on the other, then some people are in the middle of the scale and those people are called ambiverts. And Carl Jung he said that there is no such thing as a pure introvert or extrovert because such a person would be in a lunatic asylum. So you might say that we're all ambiverts, but we have a tendency to lean towards one or the other. That's how I like to see it. Okay, I'm going to take a short break from the subject and tell you something from my life. As I said, I live in an old building from the 1880s, which means I have a lot of work. We were remodeling our kitchen and we tore down this wall and found a hidden door behind it. Now it wasn't a secret door to another dimension or something like that, but the interesting part was that the door was covered with these old newspapers. And from that we could see that the door was shut off in 1941 during World War II. And among these papers was an old local newspaper, Kechensta Bladet. And it was amazingly interesting to sit down with a cup of coffee and read about these news during World War II about the English submarine that had been lost and about the mysterious voice on German radio that after the news broadcast there is finished. He comes in and states, but tomorrow the line starts again. So that's a little bit about my life. Let's continue with the subject, psychological safety. Psychological safety, it's the basis for one of the guiding principles of modern agile, who's heard of modern agile. None of you? Amazing. It's the latest and greatest by Josha Kirievski. Anyway, the blue quadrant here in the bottom makes safety a prerequisite. Now, Google, they have initiated a project called Project Aristotle, where they try to find what signifies a successful Google team. And they found that one of the five keys to success is safety. Amy Edmondson, who is a Harvard Business School professor, she defines psychological safety this way. A belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes. Sounds like a good thing, right? And we need to feel safe in order to take risks and in order to be creative. And if we are safe, then we are more open-minded, more resilient and more motivated. Motivation is something we want, right? It must be safe to fail in order for us to innovate and to dare to experiment. And experiment, we need to do that because it's through experiments we learn, right? And when we feel safe, we dare to be ourselves. And this is very important, especially for introverts, because the world today has sort of an extrovert ideal. We're all rewarded for being extrovert and talk all the time. So this makes psychological safety even more important for introverts. So how do we get this safety? Well, Amy Edmondson again, she states that, first of all, we need to frame all the work as a learning problem instead of an execution problem. We need everyone to share their ideas for us to learn. Everyone's voice needs to be heard. Second, we need to acknowledge our own fallibility. We're not superheroes. In fact, I would say none of us are. I might miss something, and if I do, please tell me. Third, we need to model curiosity by asking a lot of questions. Because if you ask a lot of questions, then people need to generate answers, which also forces people to use their voice. And also trust goes both ways. If we trust our coworkers, hopefully they will trust you back and don't ever play the blame game. That's the best way to kill safety, to blame other people. Get to know each other. Have lunch together. Go out for dinner. Or if you, like that, have beer together. This is an exercise that I borrowed from Esther Durbin and Diana Larson, which is personal shields. So have every team member draw their own personal shield. Well, they put their name in the middle, the green quadrant. Here they list their skills, what they're good at. The blue quadrant is previous experience. The yellow quadrant is learning objectives. What do I like to learn while being on this team? And the red one are secrets, sort of stuff that you learn about me on a later time, or after we've had a glass of wine, perhaps. And then you finish off with your own motto at the bottom. And then you post this in the team room for everyone to see. That's a very good way to get to know each other quite fast. And if someone new joins the team, they can just read up on everyone and see who else is on this team. And, of course, draw their own personal shield. Another exercise that I've found quite recently is affinities, where you pair up with someone, one of your colleagues. And then you ask each other, tell me something that you like about me, that I don't know about you, and one thing that we have in common. And then you switch around, and then you do this three times. And the three times, the iteration part is very important to my experience when I've tried this, because the first round tends to be quite shallow. But when you need to find the third thing that you have in common, you need to dig deeper. And that's when the interesting stuff comes up. So that's also a way to get to know each other a bit better. Okay, let's look at some agile practices for the introvert. Let's start with team size. The common definition is, I think, 7 plus minus 2 people, right? So somewhere between 5 and 9. And I think that's way too large. I would say 4 to 5 people is optimal. 4.5 is the best if you can manage to fix that. Speaking at meetings, I talked about this earlier. Small spontaneous meetings are much better than the large ones in a large conference room around the table, where you have 20 people that tends to shut everyone up. The best sort of meetings are the ones at Hock meetings, where three people stand up in front of a flip-shart and draw some design or something. Cater for remote work. This is somewhere I've changed my mind quite recently. Technology today is so good that that doesn't stop us from working remotely, even on an agile team. Some prefer to work from home, at least part of the time. Others don't. From my own experience, I prefer to be on site because I tend to be even quieter when I work remotely. But we're all different, so if you manage to have the technology for remote work, then I don't see why not. Brainstorming is something we like to do in agile. And we need to take advantage of that in order to be more creative on their own. So instead of having everyone sit in a meeting to brainstorm something, brainstorm solutions, let it take time. Post a question that you want to brainstorm answers to somewhere visible, maybe on the way to the coffee machine or on the way to lunch. And let it take a few days. People can pass and put their ideas up on the flip-shart or whatever. And they can read what others have written, refuel their own thinking process, and then go back to continue brainstorming. And the same thing goes for retrospects. If you intend to have a retrospect around a certain subject, for instance, a subject via email to everyone beforehand and have them gather data beforehand, write their post-its before the meeting so they have ample time to get the data down, pair programming, well, introverts favor one-on-one communication. So it works quite well. But to my experience, it works best with someone that I know and that I have some common ground with. Because it's quite draining, quite fast. Once again, if you have small teams, then this shouldn't be a problem because you should know everyone quite well. But stuff like promiscuous pairing, for instance, might not be such a good thing if you're a large team and everyone doesn't know each other or feels safe around each other. And remember to take restorative breaks. Woody's here. Well, ModProgram is a software development approach where the whole team works on the same thing at the same time in the same space and at the same computer. Introvert hell, right? Well, to my experience, it actually works very well. In fact, one of the original mobsters on Woody's team, Aaron Griffith, he is an introvert and he has blogged about this as well. And he shares my view that it actually works well. Because in a mob, it's easy to take these restorative breaks. When you start to feel drained, then go for a walk. Go take a cup of coffee and the work continues in the mob anyways. An important remark is that since you are quite a slow thinker, it's easy if you have an idea and don't put it out there immediately. It's quite easy that the mob runs away from you. So you need to find a process where you can, like, raise your hand. Wait a minute, I've got something. Let me think for a while. Open office. It's bad for everyone. It's extremely bad for introverts, especially hot desking, where you don't have your own desk. At my current assignment, they have these activity-based offices where the office is designed for all types of activities that you might be doing during the day. And I tend to get drained before lunch at that place. I think maybe not everyone needs their own desk, but at least the team needs their fixed space in the office where they can post stuff on the walls and arrange the furniture the way they want. We have, like, memory queues connected to our environment, and you completely lose those if you need to move around all the time. And also, introverts, we need something called restorative niches where we can sort of slip back when we start to get drained. And these are impossible to find in an open office as well. So you tend to get stuck with the restroom stall number five. So long toilet breaks is an introvert's best friend. I've seen pictures from open offices where people have sort of gathered whiteboards on wheels and stuff and build their own cubicles so they can sort of be by themselves for some time. Okay, I've been talking too fast once again. To summarize, intro and extroversion is a personality trait that cannot be removed and our brains actually differ. Sometimes introverts need to be by themselves to regain energy. Please let them. We all need safety. I say get to know each other, favor small team sizes, and do mob programming. And introverts require restorative niches. So no hot desking, please. As I said at my current assignment, they realize that the activity-based office doesn't work. So now instead, they've started to... These agile teams have said we need our own team space. So now there's an entire floor that is an agile workspace instead where everyone has their own team space. Apparently, activity-based wasn't agile. So it's a problem. Anyway, if you want to learn more, Susan Cain's book, Quiet, is the place to go to. Another great book is The Secret Lives of Introverts by Jan Grenman, who mentions this star model for instance. And also I've posted Aaron's blog post there. Mob programming for the introverted. And by that, questions? Questions? We have around 10 minutes. When I noticed somewhere towards the end you mentioned people don't change much. So I've been a lifelong... Almost 105 years ago, I was a complete introvert. I would get butterflies in my stomach. I had to introduce myself in a conference or something. So the last three, four years I've been a complete extrovert. I've made a complete 180 degrees change. Is that common or I'm still exploring what made me change? Today I'm a trainer and I'm learning development and stuff. That's actually the first I've heard of. So it can be very common. You might be one of those people who can stretch very far. If you dig deep, maybe you find that you in fact are introverted or the other way around. That you acted introverted before. I don't know. I found for myself that... So when I first realized I needed to be speaking about things I couldn't do it. And so I knew I needed to speak in front of people. And even right now in front of this many people it's difficult for me. And so my dad who had the same problem told me find people that you can speak in front of without being afraid. And get it to the point where that's easy for you to do. So I'm not really asking a question but it kind of sounded to me like saying can we change? I think we can learn to adjust. It doesn't mean necessarily that we're changing. But I think maybe closer in the ambivert area and the things that excite me I can start talking about them without being too worried about it. But as soon as it's something else it becomes difficult for me. So I had to prepare a lot and practice a lot and that sort of thing. I think it comes down to motivation as well. So for instance this talking in front of you I find it's extremely fun. So then it's easier than if I wouldn't be motivated to do it. What do you have seen? The typical personality traits of an introvert. What are your views on an introvert becoming an agile coach? I think in fact since introverts are very good listeners listening is a very good quality for a coach. I think it's quite a good match. In fact some of the best scrum masters are also introverts. I would like to add something because there were like two points raised. So I was actually alarmed by the thing that I still exhibit most of the traits of the introvert even today. But then I think somewhere from my childhood because I came from a financial background where I was not treated well by the society. My school I had no friends. So it was more of an identity question that I started exploring theatre and stage. And when I was on stage everybody clapped for me or I was something and today what I find is that when I'm on stage I would look like a huge extrovert that this guy would be meeting maybe a lot of people but I just go back into my cocoon very fast. So just by looking at the person talking the way he talks or how much he talks on stage or in social interactions I don't think so we should conclude anything about the true personality at all. Thank you. Absolutely agree with that. And you talked about four dimensions and a lot of it depends on which dimension you are more introverted on. But anyway that was not my question. My question is about so introverts as you said briefly are slow thinkers as well and that happens not just to me but specifically a couple of people on my teams as well. They'll continue to run through things in their heads and when the moment has passed the day after, two days after something will click but the moment has passed. So oftentimes either they are too hesitant to say that maybe we should think about it this way or whatever the moment has passed. So how do you deal with such situations because there will always be people who will keep thinking about it keep mulling over it and they'll come back with amazing input but then they don't think there is audience anymore. Yeah. It's difficult. It's a facilitation problem I guess. I think you need to come up with a solution that works best for you together because that's the same thing that I mentioned about mob programming and that Aaron mentions in his blog post. I don't think there's one solution to it. You have to discuss and sort of okay when I have an idea what do I do to put it out there or allow me to think. Yeah, prime it. It will come without any preparation and then you will have everyone with some agenda or topics to discuss. That was a lot of time so just like not having a conversation. So I'm just pulling it out there so you can think all the introverts can think it in. Yeah. This is literally what my talk is all about. Basically the idea like the solution without spoiling too much is to not have those moments. You have meetings. Have asynchronous meetings. Let people push out the agenda like I said in advance. The deep work. But the idea is like meetings and social environments are typically less conducive for introverts and you should have less meetings. To abuse my power as the mic holder and ask a question. So as an extrovert and this is something that I know you have a lot of folks in the audience as well. So as a facilitator who is I guess who self identifies as an extrovert what are the things that I absolutely should not do that I probably don't think about because it wouldn't strike me because that's not how I am. So as a facilitator what are the absolute worst red flags or the worst sins I can commit with introverts in my team that going ahead I should probably I'll have a checklist in my head that you know do not do this, this and this because this is actually going to kill the confidence or the psychological safety or I mean not the obvious ones like don't tear down people's code I don't do that hopefully anymore as I've gotten older in here but I think one big no no is to force people to speak for instance but instead you need to make the space for them to open up if they want to easier said than done but I kind of get what you're saying so sometimes we try and be extra helpful that why don't you chip in or try and pump them up that's not really helping but I think that one of the most important skills for a facilitator is to listen and try to be aware of everyone because we tend to if we have something if we have an idea you tend to see it on them and they might not as I said share it but maybe if you sort of like open up or do you have something to say it's easier. I'm just you know thinking about reflecting on most of what we've covered right in terms of you know one of the core values of you know being individuals and interactions over processes and tools how much do you see introverts fitting very close to this in terms of dealing with all sort of personalities when you are within a team right whether you do a meeting or you just have a casual conversation with your fellow mates you've got to deal with many other personas as well and a lot of people talked about dealing with moments or you have to make a consensus driven decision you need to speak out or you have to just respond how do you see that this is gilling naturally well for introverts or probably does it make introverts more easier for them to deal as an individual contributor rather than being a player within a team what's your opinion on that? very hard question I don't think I have an answer for that actually let me think about that get back to you thank you so much that was a great talk I really enjoyed it thank you