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How do you cope as an introvert in HR in an extroverted culture?

Richard
Hi All,
I was just wondering how any of you who have a more introverted personality cope with a company that has a extroverted kind of culture (I can't really think of a better way to describe it).
I've just taken a new role and like to think that I was hired for my relevant skills such as employment law knowledge, recruitment ability, advisory skills, etc but I'm starting to wonder if they thought they were also getting someone who will be the life and soul of the party, run the social committee and that sort of thing.
To be completely honest I am terrified of public speaking and I don't really have any desire to be seen if that makes sense but I am starting to feel (and worry) that my remit is also to plan and run social events. As someone in my mid 40s with a young baby, at this stage in my career and life it just feels like too much on top of an already insane workload.
Someone has approached me today and suggested a quiz at the next company all-hands, sounds good and happy to support it but upon suggesting it, they want me to essentially organise it all and have suggested I be the quizmaster which is massively out of my comfort zone.
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  • Not so much from the introvert side of things but from generally just being too busy too have time to organise the social events. In a previous company I often used to get employees come to me to moan (and it was definitely moaning) that we didn't do enough team building/social events etc. I used to push this back to "ok, well if you have some ideas or if you can gather some suggestions among your team, I will be happy to raise this in our next managers meeting to se what we can do to support organising something and we'll look for volunteers to get involved in doing so". More often than not the topic usually went away as I found that while people are quick to want such events they're not so quick to want to volunteer their time or add to their own workload to get something planned. For me that was the tell tale of how serious anyone was about actually doing something. They often just expected that I would run with it, which I knew I didn't have time for. I was always happy to support but I was never going to agree to organising it all on my own when I barely had time to get a cup of coffee during my day. Sometimes saying "No" doesn't have to look like No.
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  • Not so much from the introvert side of things but from generally just being too busy too have time to organise the social events. In a previous company I often used to get employees come to me to moan (and it was definitely moaning) that we didn't do enough team building/social events etc. I used to push this back to "ok, well if you have some ideas or if you can gather some suggestions among your team, I will be happy to raise this in our next managers meeting to se what we can do to support organising something and we'll look for volunteers to get involved in doing so". More often than not the topic usually went away as I found that while people are quick to want such events they're not so quick to want to volunteer their time or add to their own workload to get something planned. For me that was the tell tale of how serious anyone was about actually doing something. They often just expected that I would run with it, which I knew I didn't have time for. I was always happy to support but I was never going to agree to organising it all on my own when I barely had time to get a cup of coffee during my day. Sometimes saying "No" doesn't have to look like No.
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