About a third of the population are introverts. If you’re going to broadly generalize, most Oranges are extroverts and most Greens are introverts. In between, it’s more likely that Golds (especially Gold/Greens) are also a large group of introverts.
Whoever they may be, it’s a minority group that’s often misunderstood. After a busy week, surely you’ll want to go out and have fun? Hey look: Three people we haven’t seen for a while – lets go talk to them…or why wouldn’t he or she want to sit with us at lunch? Did we do something wrong? Is he or she just totally anti-social (today…this week…always?) That’s a big fat no to all of those. Introverts spend their energy on people whereas extroverts GET their energy from people.
The insights of Colors lets people-first Colors of Blue or Orange understand why a Gold loves to spend hours cleaning the garage, or a Green spends a whole night researching something. It lets you understand that a Blue loves spending time with others, and Oranges want to be with their friends.
In that same way, there are some things you can do to honor and care for your introvert friends, clients, or people on your team:
-Respect their value of (and need for) privacy
-Do not ever embarrass them in public or put them into the spotlight
-In new situations, leave them alone to first absorb and observe
-Give them processing time before forcing an answer to anything
-Let them have a heads up for any changes to their lives
-Always give them 10 minutes notice to finish what they’re doing
-Teach them anything new in private and with books, written materials or take-aways
-Allow them to have a maximum two or three real friends. Just because Facebook says they’ve got 200 “friends” does not make it so