It’s okay if you need alone time to re-energize yourself, I do.

I am a proud introvert.

No, I am not shy or quiet. Sadly, these two words are the first attributes that people think about when they hear of the word introvert. Even Google defines the word incorrectly, “a shy, reticent person. a person predominantly concerned with their own thoughts and feelings rather than with external things.” Wow, I can’t believe this is how the world’s biggest search engines defines the word introvert. No wonder people have the wrong idea of what it means to be an introvert. Google get it right.

The area of my life where being an introvert has had the most impact is in my professional life. On LinkedIn I came across the article “How extroverts are taking the top jobs — and what introverts can do about it” (The Guardian), which discusses the cultural bias that exists towards extroverts and introverts being undervalued. This is quite troubling for those of us introverts. Susan Cain’s book, Quiet, has challenged the long held biases we have towards introversion and extroversion, but the American workplace (and culture) has a long way to go!

I’ve always worked at large companies where I was surrounded by peers who had the same goals as me – to be a rockstar performer, be promoted, work on high visibility projects. Most companies have a forced ranking system where employee performance scores are fitted to align to a bell curve. This naturally means that there will be team members who receive low scores in order to fit into the bell curve distribution. And the underlying performance measures that many companies use to rank their employees naturally favor extroverts.

Even at team meetings employees who are more talkative or have the loudest voice in the room or express their opinions more frequently are viewed as being smarter and more interesting. Many times their performance rating and perceptions are higher than those of introverts. However, research has proven that extroverts do not necessarily have better ideas. They have the loudest voice in the room thus, their ideas get heard.

Because organizations are structured to benefit extroverts, I have always felt extreme pressure to act like an extrovert. I’ve tried being more extroverted but I always come away feeling like a fraud and feeling exhausted for trying to constantly be in front of people. When you factor in competition with your peers, being an introvert feels like an even bigger disadvantage.

I’ve not only felt this way at work but also in business school. The culture at business school catered to extroverts and students who thrived in social situations and spoke up the most in class or were the face of student organizations.

So what can you do? Whether you’re an employee or a manager or a teacher or an administrator, be cognizant of the following:

1. Understand what it truly means to be an introvert or an extrovert. The biggest difference is – an introvert gains energy in solitude and while focusing internally while an extrovert gains energy in external social situations.
2. Design formal processes that encourage introverts to contribute during meetings. Introverts think before they speak. During meetings, send out presentations beforehand and ask team members to come up with a few questions or go around the room to get every team members to contribute instead of relying on those who tend to speak up – the extroverts!
3. Most importantly, do not measure intelligence or competence or effectiveness of leadership based on who speaks up in a room or who networks with the most people or who is front and center in a larger group. Take note of the “others” because most likely these are the introverts who have fabulous ideas but aren’t as comfortable sharing out loud in a larger group settling or who would like to have a few minutes to think before they speak, give them this chance.

Ever since I came across Susan Cain’s book, I’ve been fascinated by this topic, especially because the introvert-extrovert dynamics plays a big role in job earnings, promotions and perceptions that introverted people are less successful as leaders.

While we should adapt to become better leaders, we should not have to fit into a mold to become successful in the workplace.