refrigerate after opening

i recently made a post about being introverted, and what kind of struggles i have with that.  i'd first like to thank people for reading through that as it's easily become the most 'popular' post that i've ever written.  it's nice to have that kind of positive feedback.  the post was born out of some fairly recent talk in certain social media circles about the myers-briggs type indicator.  when i revealed that i was an INFJ, it seemed to have surprised a few people because i’m one of the more active members of our online communities in work — including hello which won the enterprise 2.0 award for innovation. [/shameless plug]

this post is actually born from a comment that steve had left on my aforementioned post about introversion.  he wanted to know — because there seems to be a generalization that introverts may shy away from social networking due to its seemingly inherent extroversion — if i found it more or less difficult to engage people through social media.  again, i can only speak for myself and not all introverts everywhere.  indeed, i may be a special case (hey, there are only like 1% of INFJs in the world after all).

i mentioned in my post that i really need to develop a level of comfort with people before i tend to open up and interact fluently.   social networking helps me build that comfort quicker. it’s the thing i love most about twitter.   a lot of people will ask, “who cares what i had to eat for lunch?”

i do!

i want to know what your likes and dislikes are.  i want to know where your boundaries are so that when i do interact with you, i’m not overstepping any of them.  with social media, i can take as much time as i need to formulate responses that aren't socially awkward because for as real-time as it's supposed to be, it's still not instant.  i suppose it does also take away some of the 'nervousness' that comes about when speaking with people face-to-face.  regardless, twitter has let me learn about and get to know co-workers and many more people in ways that i know i would never have gotten to know them otherwise.  i know topics that i can use for good conversation starters, and other topics that i should avoid when talking with certain people because it will inevitably create a negative vibe.

for such social networking that is directly work-related (sharing information on blogs, adding to wikis, creating connections on linkedin.com, etc.) i join in because i’m first and foremost a scientist and a coach.  my understanding and appreciation for how much better everything is when information is shared is something that has been hard-wired into who i am a very long time ago.  science can’t happen when information is kept close to the vest, and teams don’t perform well at all unless everyone knows what’s supposed to happen.  i bring that same mentality into business.  it’s why i author posts on business as i see it (my professional blog).  it’s why i try to increase the adoption of blogs and micro-blogging, wikis, and forums in my organization.  when we share information, it’s better for everyone from both a scientific perspective (i.e. the person with the breakthrough might be half-way across the globe) and from a coaching perspective (i.e. knowing that there are similar projects going on concurrently allows everyone to share lessons learned and perform better).

i’m not drawn to social media because of any introversion or extroversion, but i think rather because i love to see the possibilities that come from sharing information.  i love answering questions for people, and i love the feeling of excitement that people get when they find the help they’ve been looking for.

just in case you haven't figured it out yet, i'm a huge nerd!  i love data.  sharing information on twitter, in wikis, on forums — it's all just more data and knowledge that's there for the taking.  that's why social media works for me.