Ep89: Dave Stachowiak of Coaching for Leaders

Ep89 Show Notes

About Dave Stachowiak

Dave Stachowiak has spent the last eleven years honing his skills at the prestigious Dale Carnegie corporate training and self-improvement firm. He is currently Executive Vice President of Talent Development with Dale Carnegie of Southern Los Angeles. Dave leads training programs for top organizations, and was named by Forbes as one of the 25 Professional Networking Experts to Watch in 2015. He produces and hosts the Coaching for Leaders weekly podcast, as well as the daily Carnegie Coach podcast with the Dale Carnegie organization.

Key Conversation Points

• Being honest with yourself and where you fall on the spectrum
• Coping with the introvert-extrovert “disconnect”
• Giving others the opportunity to honor your differences
• Speaking up and making your needs heard
• Accomplishing the same tasks in a different fashion
• Nurturing the introvert inside
• Complementing the extroverts around you
• Aligning yourself with meaningful causes
• Acknowledging the importance of flexibility
• Considering ambiversion
• Recognizing that all skills are learnable
• Respecting your core and cultivating the opposite

Detailed Conversation Highlights

Since his college days, Dave has been intrigued by and deeply interested in leadership and personal development, which fueled his interest in Myers-Briggs personality typing. A self-proclaimed “geek” on the subject, he tested himself several times over several years, scoring as an ENFJ. He was mostly drawn to the extrovert descriptor in his assessments and considered it an integral part of who he was, especially in his career.

However, that classification didn’t prevent him from feeling out of place at times, or recognizing that strong extroverts had a much easier time excelling in certain areas than he did. He also noticed that those areas didn’t come as naturally to him. He reached his ultimate revelation during an MBTI training exercise. Even though his assessment pointed to the expected ENFJ personality, during the pragmatic exercises created to help people understand preferences and working “style,” he realized that he deep down wasn’t an extrovert at all.

It took Dave a challenging year after the training exercise to finally reconcile with the idea of being an introvert. Not only did he refuse to entertain the notion of being an introvert at that time, but he also held stereotypical misconceptions about introverts – primarily that they don’t interact well with others and are too passive.

Now, instead of shunning the idea of being an introvert, he fully embraces it and unapologetically utilizes his advantages in project management, strategic planning, and follow-up to address his company’s needs. He also realized that Carnegie’s trait list for honing interpersonal skills is split pretty evenly among introverted and extroverted qualities. He also seeks to clear misconceptions about Dale Carnegie, citing that the company’s goal is to help people not only to hone natural skills, but develop ones that don’t come naturally.

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Resources Mentioned in the Podcast*

How to Win Friends and Influence People – Dale Carnegie
Not an Introvert, Not an Extrovert? You May Be An Ambivert – Wall Street Journal, Elizabeth Bernstein
Dave Stachowiak’s Podcast – Coaching for Leaders  // Episode 201 interview with Beth
Goodreads.com Giveaway for “The Introvert Entrepreneur (through 10/2/15)
Deluxe eBook edition of “The Introvert Entrepreneur”
Jeb’s gonna Jeb: Why Bush embraced his introversion (CNN Politics)
Debbie Page Whitlock and Peter Walter

Dave’s Introvert Island Book Selections*

The War of Art: Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Inner Creative Battles – Steven Pressfield
The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
Working Days: The Journals of The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
A blank journal to challenge himself to write

Related Podcasts You Might Like

Ep 59: Building an Extroverted Brand, Introvert Style: A Conversation with Tony Hsieh
Ep60: An Introvert-Friendly Approach to Networking with Sandy Jones-Kaminski
Quiet: The Power of Introverts with Susan Cain

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