Future Performance Training
There is another dimension to your preferred behaviours besides favouring either introversion or extraversion (refer to the previous section). You may gravitate more toward the task at hand or the people who are involved.
For example, you have a strong focus on task if, as a manager of a business, you tend to think first of the business results, and you consider the people in the business as part of the systems and the processes that get those results.
A people-focused manager, on the other hand, thinks of people first and then considers how to make the systems and processes work with those people. Both approaches have advantages and disadvantages at the extremes, and a good manager works to compensate for their own strong preference by adapting their behaviour and/or ensuring that other team members can balance it.
When you add the preference you have for extraversion or introversion together with your preference for tasks or people, you get a certain style or way of being that you can also recognise in other people. Knowing your style is invaluable in working out which of your behaviours you want to develop, as well as predicting how people around you might respond to your behaviour and actions. Awareness of these behavioural styles is helpful in three key ways:
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You can come up with action steps for your goals that fit with the way you like to do things, which means that you can accomplish these goals more effortlessly and enjoyably.
You can identify people who have a different behavioural style to you. You can model how these particular people accomplish their goals in areas in which you may not feel strong.
You can better understand why people around you react in certain ways to your behaviour, and you can deal with resistance and conflict as you make your life changes.