“Focus on quality interactions rather than volume”

Creative Career Conundrums is a weekly advice column from If You Could Jobs. Each week their selected panel of professionals from the creative industry answers your burning career questions to help you navigate the creative journey.

This week’s question:

“I work as a senior graphic designer at an advertising agency in Jakarta. I’ve only been at the agency for about five months. For context, I’m an introvert. I’ve been a senior designer for four years, but I still struggle with communication; I find it hard to start conversations with my colleagues and my manager. This impacts how I delegate work to my colleagues. I worry that whenever I assign tasks, I could be triggering a sudden indifference or anxiety in them that can ruin their day. Other barriers, such as an evident age gap and different interests in what we’re reading or watching, feel like a wall blocking us from connecting.

How can an introverted senior designer like me better communicate with a younger Gen Z team who have such different habits and perspectives?”

Kat Wong, founder of career change platform Oh Yeah:

You’re not alone on this. And wanting to feel more confident and equipped to communicate with others in various situations is felt more keenly in open-plan offices or socially-oriented cultures, which can be intimidating.

Here’s a fact check from Susan Cain’s bestseller, Quiet. At least a third of us are introverts, and we should learn to take advantage of our talents and strengths in the workplace. There’s a reason why it’s a bestseller, so use this as a soothing balm.

Here’s the practical bit.

Everyone has a preferred way of communicating and processing information. In any team, a good way to democratise work communication is first to understand everyone’s preferred ways that will support an inclusive culture.

So what’s yours? Here are some questions to think about:

• What’s your preferred way of communicating? Is it written channels where you feel more confident because you have more time to formulate ideas or thoughtful responses privately?
• What’s your preferred way of processing information? Do you need more time and space to percolate, or do you enjoy thinking (and responding) on your feet?
• What’s your comfort level if you compare one-to-one chats versus how you feel in team meetings?
• What’s the team meeting culture like currently? Is it inclusive, or are they continually dominated by a few voices?

Once you have a fair idea of your preferences, and assuming you feel more confident in writing, email your manager with an agenda for your next 1:1, a general ‘work health check’ five months into your new role.

In this health check, you can cover ‘work communication’ and outline your preferred style. Outline yours ahead of the meeting via email, and suggest that it would be great to learn the preferences from other team members, too.

This should cue your manager to ‘re-boot’ team communication, especially in meetings, which should always be inclusive and chaired fairly by balancing out voices and opinions.

This includes having an agreed timeline of when feedback needs to be in by, with a reminder that this can be communicated in different ways over a certain duration, e.g. email or verbally in 1:1s. That way, all answers can be collated and discussed as a team together at an agreed time. Which means you’ll have a chance to prepare in advance, knowing it’ll be on the agenda to be discussed. Hopefully, you’ll feel more confident sharing your valuable idea and point of view, without being rushed or needing to think on your feet.

With these steps, you should find yourself feeling more confident in your communication. And remember, it’s not all on you; this is about the work culture as well, so your manager/leader is responsible for structuring the meetings fairly.

Focus on quality interactions rather than volume, building on thoughtful contributions, rather than ‘small talk’. Over time, you’ll find your balance and your value with more support from your manager and team overall. You’ll then be more equipped and ready to be more open, to grab that coffee with someone as that first small step forward.

In answering your creative career conundrums we realise that some issues need expert support, so we’ve collated a list of additional resources that can support you across things that might arise at work.

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