Preoccupations: Success Isn’t Only for the Extroverts
October 31, 2009 by admin
Filed under Career News and Advice
THE year was 1989, and I had just joined one of the world’s financial powerhouses as a marketing manager. My progression of jobs entailed planning, writing, editing and producing marketing materials. I enjoyed the thinking parts of the jobs the most. My days, however, were filled with meetings.
Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times
Nancy Ancowitz, left, who went from Wall Street to a career as a business communication coach, talked with a client, Carol Robinson, in New York.
One of my senior bosses wore fiery red suits and, in the conference room, held meetings that often spanned two mealtimes. People would pontificate. Although I can be assertive, I struggled to lob a word over the net amid the frenetic volleys of my bosses and colleagues. Sometimes I was put on the spot with pointed questions and I’d think of snappy answers only later.
In a hard-driving, deadline-oriented organization where instant decisions and constant interruptions were part of life, I craved time to reflect.
At first, I didn’t have an office door to close. When I got one, I was asked not to close it. In the corporate culture where I worked, a closed door meant a closed person — stand-offish, inaccessible and not a team player. So I hid in conference rooms between meetings and in the cafeteria off-hours to concentrate. When I had a workspace with a window, I got my best ideas gazing at the cityscape.
Everyone worked long hours, and mine were longer than most. I found that I did my best work when the commotion fizzled and all I could hear was the buzz of the vacuum cleaners of the maintenance staff.
One day, something clicked for me. I took the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, a popular personality …
Read the original article at NYTimes
