I remember recently I was reading through the comments my boss made on the annual employee report.
The comment that she made about me started off with, “Even though she is soft-spoken…” and that got me thinking.
Why is it seen as a weakness to be the quiet, soft-spoken person?
I do not believe that any one kind of personality is better or worse than another. However, I really do not understand why the person who is outgoing and the first to speak is almost always favored over the more reserved, quiet individual.
In the classroom, in a work environment and in so many other places, being quiet is often frowned upon. In class, participation points are offered as an incentive for speaking up and participating. On the other hand, they can also be seen as a forceful way to get every student to speak in class, even if they are intended to be an incentive or an easy grade-booster. In the workplace, interaction with others is a must. If it is retail, it is enforced that the customer be greeted right away and be checked on again and again. If it is an office job, phones have to be answered all day in an upbeat, polite manner.
Now, I am not at all saying that professors should be OK with a quiet classroom, that customers should be ignored, or that it is OK to be rude to people on the phone. It just baffles me how much more preferred those with loud, outgoing personalities are to professors, employers and many others.
I think that what people often fail to realize is even though some people are more quiet, that does not mean that they are less engaged in what is going on around them.
While the talkers are the ones who offer advice and comment appropriately, the quiet ones are those who observe, listen and understand. Even though the more outgoing person is actively engaged in the conversation, the quieter person is observing and picking up on the things that many others do not notice. The quiet one realizes the pain that is subtly expressed if the outgoing person says something out of their bounds, whereas others would not normally pick up on that small detail.
In my experience, those who are the quieter people, the ones standing on the sidelines observing, have always been given a bad rep.
Just because someone is not verbally contributing to something does not mean that they care less, are shy or have no idea of what is going on. It just means that they communicate and contribute to things differently than those around them, which is not something to be looked at negatively.
As I have said before, I do not think that any one personality is better or worse than the other.
Every single person has a different personality, and that means nothing more or less than just that: they are different, and that is perfectly OK.
