The hidden workplace bias
BACP Workplace, July 2026

Picture this. The meeting begins. A few voices fill the room, ideas moving quickly from one person to another. Someone jumps in before the last point is fully finished. Then another adds to it. There is both energy and pace – this is what a good meeting should look like. 

But around the table, not everyone is speaking. I’m listening closely, following the discussion, shaping my response in my head. I wait for a pause, a natural opening. It doesn’t quite come. The conversation moves on. I’m left sitting with my thoughts. 

Afterwards, my manager delivers their feedback casually, almost as encouragement: ‘Why were you so quiet? You need to be more visible…You need to talk more.’ 

This has happened to me, not once but many times during the course of my working life. It’s a scenario that plays out in different forms in all organisations and across every sector. You may recognise something similar in your own professional lives or in what your clients tell you about their experiences at work. And while the settings may look different, the pattern will feel familiar. It’s hardly surprising, as in the UK, around 50% of individuals identify as introverts,¹ which makes this group a substantial part of every team, department and organisation in the country. 

And so, for many introverts, what may be intended as developmental advice from a helpful manager can signal something far deeper: that how they naturally show up at work is somehow not enough. However, introverts are not absent in these moments. They are observing, processing, and choosing when and how to engage. But that way of showing up at work is often misunderstood. And this is where a silent bias begins. 

In this article, I explore the hidden bias against introversion in the workplace based on my research, and a qualitative study into the experiences of introverted professionals working in the advertising industry in India — a sector built on fast-thinking, client energy and the ability to hold a room. However, what emerged in my study is not unique to advertising or to India. It showed a pattern that will be familiar to anyone who has ever been told to ‘speak up’ in a meeting they were already fully present in. It’s my hope this article will help therapists in their work with clients to be more conscious of the hidden bias that exists in organisations, and to increase awareness of our own bias and blind spots towards introverts. 

A professional liability 

But first, it’s worth pausing to ask how we got here. How did a natural way of engaging with the world come to be treated as a professional liability? The story starts further back than most people realise. It was Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, who framed introversion (the counterpart of extroversion) as a sign of neurosis or a developmental setback, more than a century ago.² This was followed by the psychologist, Carl Jung, introducing the terms ‘introversion’ and ‘extraversion’ in 1921, but even he described introverts as being prone to inferiority and self-absorption.³ The academic framing was never neutral. From the beginning, introversion was positioned as the less desirable end of a scale, defined not by what it was, but mostly by what it lacked. 

Modern personality research moved things forward, but not entirely. The widely used five-factor model of personality measures introversion as the low-scoring end of extraversion, again, framed as an absence rather than a presence.⁴ However, what is missing from that framing is any real account of what introversion actually brings: the capacity for deep focus, careful listening, considered thought and reflective decision making. They are strengths that are harder to see in a fast-moving room and so they often go unseen altogether. 

What this history produced, in practical terms, is a cultural script. One that says introversion is a personal flaw to be managed, something to work on, a tendency to push through. Many introverts have internalised that script so thoroughly that they no longer question it. 

They have simply got on with the work of trying to be more extroverted, not because anyone told them to do so in so many words, but because the message has always been clear. And when a belief runs that deep, it finds its way into institutions, including the workplace. 

When personality is a prejudice 

Bias against introversion is not usually overt. Nobody announces it. It does not show up in job descriptions or performance frameworks. It operates through perception, assumptions and the slow accumulation of small moments that add up to something significant. Research by the organisational psychologists, Mallory McCord and Dana Joseph in 2020 identified two processes through which this bias occurs.⁵ In the first, introverted behaviour such as being quiet in meetings, taking time to respond or preferring written communication, triggers negative stereotypes. Being reserved is often seen as arrogant, thoughtful is read as slow, and considered is perceived as disengaged. Since introverted traits are clearly observable, they are often considered to be something that individuals consciously choose and can control, which can justify their exclusion. 

The second process is subtler. Because introverts are less likely to offer and perform their contributions as visibly as extroverts, their contributions are systematically overlooked. The idea that may have taken three days of careful thought does not carry the same weight as the idea delivered loudly across a table. Depth becomes invisible, whereas volume becomes currency. 

Together, these two processes result in introversion being both misread and misunderstood. 

The extrovert ideal 

In many organisations, there is an unspoken expectation about how people should show up. You start to notice who is heard first, who is responded to, and whose presence seems to carry weight in a room. It is often the person who speaks easily and often. The one who can think aloud, respond quickly and hold the room. The one who is visible, energetic and always part of the conversation. These are the people who are seen as confident, engaged and full of potential. 

Over time, this shapes everything. Who gets called on in meetings, who gets recognised as leadership material and who gets the opportunity before anyone else. It is rarely a deliberate decision. It happens quietly, through assumptions that have gone unnoticed for so long that they no longer feel like assumptions at all. 

In Susan Cain’s bestselling book Quiet: the power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking, she refers to this as ‘the extrovert ideal’, a deeply held cultural belief that the ideal self is gregarious, comfortable in the spotlight and always switched on.⁶ This belief has quietly become embedded in many workplaces, never consciously adopted, yet widely practised. Visibility is mistaken for value. The first voice is assumed to be the best. Silence is read as disengagement. While none of this is inherently true, these assumptions persist and continue to impact careers. 

What the research reveals 

It would be easy to think this is only a Western issue shaped by the American hustle culture. However, the preference for extroverted behaviour exists in many workplaces and cultures. In conversation with the employees who I spoke to for my research, the first thing that struck me was not what they said about their workplaces. It was what they said about themselves. Almost without exception, they described their introversion as a problem. A limitation. Something to overcome. One employee told me plainly: ‘I want to be extroverted. I’m taking those extra steps. I’m trying to get out of my comfort zone. I’m aware of what I’m lacking.’ 

Another reflected that whatever professional success she had achieved had come in spite of her introversion, not because of it. These were not people who lacked self-awareness or confidence but experienced professionals, some in senior roles, who had, quite simply, internalised a belief that had been passed on to them quietly, consistently, over the years. Each heard a subtle voice that said: ‘the way you naturally engage with the world is not quite right for your career or this organisation.’ 

What was perhaps most revealing was where participants located the responsibility for change. Not with the organisation. Not with the system. But with themselves. This is a pattern that organisations have quietly benefitted from for a long time. 

So, what do introverts do? They adapt and find ways to survive in environments that were not designed with them in mind. And the strategies they use come at a cost that is rarely noticed within their workplaces. 

Faking it until they make it 

Introverts often engage in what might be called ‘performative extraversion’: the effort of acting out of character to meet workplace expectations. Some rehearse conversations before meetings. Others overprepare, bringing extra research and structure to compensate for what they feel they lack in spontaneity. As one person told me: ‘I’m always over-preparing for engagement with larger groups. In the absence of an exciting personality, or whatever the extroverts bring to the table, I bring more researched content.’ 

Another senior person described talking over colleagues simply to be heard, something that conflicted with who she was: ‘Sometimes if they talk over me, I talk over them, because I don’t know how else to navigate the situation. I have to fake aggression at times to make a point.’ 

These strategies are not irrational. They are a reasonable response to an unreasonable set of expectations. But they are exhausting. Over time, they do something more damaging than create fatigue; they erode authenticity. I find the sociologist, Arlie Hochschild’s idea of emotional labour is helpful here,⁷ as it refers to the effort of showing emotions that do not match with how you actually feel. At work, this may look like being more sociable, enthusiastic or spontaneous than you naturally are. For introverts, this becomes a daily experience, occurring during client calls, across open-plan offices, during team brainstorms and networking events, that requires a constant shift in how they show up at work. And over time, that effort builds as one person explains: ‘I basically power through, but I’m so self-aware of not being authentic. It’s not something I would have said or done naturally, but you do it.’ 

The quiet disadvantage 

While the consequences are felt deeply at a personal level, there are consequences for the organisation in terms of productivity, staff retention and turnover. Several people in my study spoke of anxiety, self-doubt and a nagging sense of not belonging. One had sought therapy specifically to understand why she felt so depleted at work: ‘This takes a lot out of me. I actually took up therapy to talk about how I can find some confidence in myself; to go deeper into where it was coming from.’  

Another described reaching a point where, rather than continuing to mask, she simply left her second role, another post that she had exited earlier than intended: ‘I just get really sad and start feeling really stuck. If I can run, I run. I leave.’ This is not disengagement, a lack of ambition or commitment. It is what happens when the cost of showing up at work becomes higher than the reward for doing so. 

The organisational cost is equally significant, even if it is harder to measure. When the loudest voice consistently wins, organisations stop hearing their best thinking. One participant explains: ‘It’s the loudest voice that gets the most attention. Terrible ideas go through because the person who was heard was the loudest.’ Ideas that need more time to take shape are unlikely to make it to the table. Decisions are made faster, but not necessarily better. And, talented people who are reflective, precise and deeply capable, too often quietly conclude that there is no real place for them and start looking elsewhere. 

It’s worth noting that most workplace research over the past decade has focused on the benefits of extraversion while paying relatively little attention to what introversion contributes.⁸ The result is that organisations have built performance systems, meeting cultures and leadership frameworks around one kind of personality, and then wondered why a significant portion of their workforce never quite reaches its potential. 

Could personality be an EDI blind spot? 

Despite around 50% of individuals in the UK identifying as introverted,¹ personality diversity remains almost absent from formal inclusion frameworks. While most organisations with active equality, diversion and inclusion (EDI) programmes have made meaningful progress on gender, race and disability, personality has not made it onto that list. It’s not because it matters less, but because it hasn’t ever been named. 

Most EDI strategies focus on characteristics that are visible, protected or diagnosable. Yet personality does not fit neatly into any of those categories, and so it gets left out. Indeed, the conversation never starts. Instead, bias against introversion persists, quietly, even in organisations that consider themselves progressive and inclusive, because nobody has named it as a problem worth solving. 

But look closely at what introverts are actually experiencing at work and the parallels with other marginalised identities become hard to ignore. It includes the internalisation of a negative identity; pressure to mask who you are to fit in; the emotional cost of performing a version of yourself that the environment finds more acceptable, and the slow erosion of confidence and belonging over time. These are not experiences unique to introversion. They are the experiences that inclusion research has documented for marginalised groups for decades. The difference for those groups is that organisations have, however imperfectly, begun to name the problem, build frameworks around it and take some responsibility for it, but for introversion, that process has barely started. 

Personality shapes how people communicate, how they contribute, how safe they feel speaking up and how seen they feel at work. It influences whose ideas get heard, who gets developed and who eventually decides to leave their workplace. It is not separate from inclusion. It is woven through it. And when organisations design cultures, systems and leadership pathways that consistently favour one personality type, they are making an inclusion decision whether they realise it or not. 

Broadening the definition of diversity to include personality is not a radical move. It is an overdue one.  Treating personality equality as an environment where employees feel they can show up as they genuinely are, rather than as the culture implicitly demands, as a meaningful indicator of workplace wellbeing, would represent a significant and necessary shift. It is necessary not just for introverts, but for the idea of inclusion itself. 

What can employers do? 

The most important shift is sometimes the most straightforward: stop placing the responsibility for adaptation entirely on the individual. Introverts have been adjusting, masking and compensating for long enough. The question organisations need to start asking is not, how do we help introverts perform better in extroverted environments? But, how do we build environments where different kinds of minds can perform at their best? 

It begins with an honest look at structures that have never been questioned. For example, how are meetings run? And, who do they actually work for? What does a performance review measure: visible behaviour or real contribution? Who gets flagged as leadership potential and on what basis? These questions are rarely asked, not because the answers are complicated, but because the assumptions behind them have always felt like common sense. 

Small changes can make a meaningful difference. It also means employers need to train managers to recognise different working styles, and to create conditions where quieter voices are actively drawn in rather than left waiting for a gap that never quite appears. One of the most consistent findings in my research was that when a manager made even small adjustments, such as a one-to-one check-in, an agenda shared in advance, a question sent ahead of a meeting or an invitation to contribute in writing, it made a significant difference for how introverted employees felt and subsequently, performed. While the effort may have been small, its impact was not. 

Finally, it means personality diversity needs to be included in EDI strategy, not as an afterthought, but as a genuine dimension of how inclusion is understood and measured. 

How can therapists help? 

For therapists and EAP affiliates working with organisations, it means advocating for personality-aware management, and helping organisations understand that there is a psychological cost when workplace cultures reward only one way of being. It is as much a part of supporting workplace wellbeing as anything else in the practitioners’ toolkit. Personality equality exists when employees feel they can show up as themselves rather than as what the organisation implicitly expects them to be – and it is a meaningful indicator of workplace wellbeing, which most organisations are not yet tracking. The role of workplace counselling cannot be underestimated – it’s a vital place of psychological safety to help employees work through the hidden bias existing in our workplaces and come to a place of understanding and growth. 

Closing thoughts 

The goal is not to help introverts speak up more but to help workplaces listen differently. The reframe is important because, for too long, the burden has been placed firmly on the individual. Fix your personality. Adjust your style. Push through the discomfort. And introverts have largely done exactly that, quietly, without complaint, at considerable personal expense. What is needed now is a different kind of effort that asks organisations to examine the assumptions they have never thought to question. It requires noticing who is consistently heard and who is consistently overlooked. And considering whether their organisational culture is genuinely inclusive or simply comfortable for a particular kind of person. 

In a world where employee wellbeing is taken seriously, where inclusion is considered a strategic priority and where organisations increasingly understand the value of diverse thinking, the silence around introversion is becoming harder to justify. It is not a personality problem. It is a systems problem. And systems, unlike personalities, can be changed.