Tell the boss: open-plan offices make us sick and hostile
LIVES are shaped as profoundly by personality as by gender or race, Susan Cain argues. “The single most important aspect of personality is where we fall on the introvert-extrovert spectrum.”
According to Carl Jung’s volume Psychological Types, introverts are drawn to the inner world of thoughts and feelings, while extroverts are drawn to the external life of people and activities. But even though introverts make up a third to a half of the population, the world still seems to favour the brazen and the bold.
“Today’s employees inhabit open office plans, in which no one has a room of his or her own, the only walls are the ones holding up the building, and senior executives operate from the centre of a boundary-less floor along with everyone else,” Cain writes. It comes down to what she calls the “new groupthink”, which elevates teamwork above all else and insists that creativity and intellectual achievement come from a gregarious place. But even though 70% of people work in open-plan offices, these environments don’t provide the personal space vital to creativity. Worse, they cause problems in relationships and health.
“Open-plan offices have been found to reduce productivity and impair memory,” Cain writes. “They’re associated with high staff turnover. They make people sick, hostile, unmotivated and insecure.
“Open-plan workers are more likely to suffer from high blood pressure and elevated stress levels and to get the flu; they argue more with their colleagues; they worry about colleagues eavesdropping on their phone calls and spying on their computer screens.”
Her advice is for employers to think twice about how they design their organisation’s space. “Don’t expect introverts to get jazzed up about open office plans, lunchtime birthday parties or teambuilding retreats. We need to create settings in which people are free to circulate in a shifting kaleidoscope of interactions, and to disappear into their private workspaces when they want to focus or simply be alone.”
Another problem with the “new groupthink” is brainstorming. With the exception of online collaboration, studies show that performance goes down when group size goes up. Organisational psychologist Adrian Furnham even suggests that “business people must be insane to use brainstorming groups” and that “people should be encouraged to work alone when creativity or efficiency is the highest priority”.
Cain offers three reasons for this. The first is social loafing: some individuals sit back and let others do all the work. The second is production blocking: because only one person can talk at a time, other people have to bottle up their ideas while they wait their turn. The third is the fear of looking foolish in front of colleagues.
“Introverts prefer to work independently, and solitude can be a catalyst to innovation,” she writes. “If it’s creativity you’re after, ask your employees to solve problems alone before sharing their ideas. If you want the wisdom of the crowd, gather it electronically, or in writing, and make sure people can’t see each other’s ideas until everyone’s had a chance to contribute.”
Cain is not suggesting that people sit inside their cubicles and never speak to each other. Research suggests that population density is correlated to innovation, while studies show that face- to-face interactions create trust in a way that online interactions can’t.
Because the most effective teams are composed of a healthy mix of introverts and extroverts, she proposes that employers refine how to go about collaborating. “We should actively seek out symbiotic introvert-extrovert relationships, in which leadership and other tasks are divided according to people’s natural strengths and temperaments. Not everyone aspires to be a leader in the conventional sense of the word. Some people wish to fit in harmoniously with the group and others to be independent of it.”
But if there is only one insight she hopes readers take away from the book, it’s “a newfound sense of entitlement to be yourself. Figure out what you are meant to contribute to the world. Use your natural powers — of persistence, concentration, insight and sensitivity — to do work you love.”