How to Be More Outgoing
Key Takeaways
- People with outgoing personalities care about building relationships and expressing unfiltered thoughts.
- People of all personality types may want to call upon the outgoing mindset when networking, deepening relationships, or generating team spirit.
- You can practice being more outgoing by recognizing the thoughts standing in your way, setting goals, and practicing.
- Practice being outgoing by initiating connections, sharing your opinions, and making it easy for others to open up, among other tips.
What defines an outgoing personality?
“I reach out to others.”
For people with outgoing mindsets, it’s about connection—everyone is a potential friend. They reach out, initiating social and professional contacts. They prioritize relationships and make space for people even when they’re busy.
Source: Everything DiSC® Agile EQ™
Outgoing people are more willing than others to let their guard down and speak in an unfiltered way, building trust and making it easier for others to open up as well. They are candid and generally self-confident, saying what they’re really thinking. These folks often project an upbeat and welcoming attitude that brings people together and makes them feel included.
Which needs drive outgoing people?
Each EQ mindset is built upon the needs it satisfies. People with naturally outgoing outlooks feel comfortable in that space because it helps them meet their need for:
- connection
- a friendly environment
- acceptance
- social influence
- being at the center of the action
Benefits of an outgoing mindset
Whether being outgoing is natural for you or takes effort, it has many benefits. Being outgoing allows you to:
- create stronger, more rewarding relationships
- build trust and open channels of communication
- develop a network of allies you can draw on for support
- foster a sense of camaraderie and inclusion
- energize those around you with your optimism and team spirit
- understand other people better (and misunderstand them less)
Gaining comfort with the outgoing mindset will have different benefits for people of different DiSC® styles.
People with i styles usually feel pretty at home with this frame of mind. For others, being outgoing means taking a bit of social risk and redirecting energy toward reaching out to others and connecting in an honest way. Redirecting energy in this way often pays off.
C styles, for example, may prefer to work alone, but almost no one truly works alone, so taking the time to build strong relationships can minimize inefficiencies and misunderstandings down the road.
D styles will see the long-term benefits of building a network of support as they work toward their goals.
S styles are often inclined to weigh their words carefully for fear of saying the wrong thing, but this can be an exhausting way to approach interactions. They may discover that letting down their guard a bit actually uses less energy and opens up new opportunities.
Limitations of the outgoing mindset
When you feel comfortable in a certain mindset, you often forget that there are other options for how to approach a given situation. If you rely too much on being outgoing, rather than adapting to the situation, you might:
- press people to open up before they are ready
- be overly trusting
- overshare in ways you later regret
- focus so much on relationships you neglect other responsibilities
- overvalue a friendly atmosphere when a bit of conflict could be productive
- be overly blunt, potentially alienating people
- monopolize conversations
Situations in which being more outgoing might be helpful
Perceiving the best mindset for the situation at hand is the key to agile emotional intelligence. Once you gain familiarity with all the mindsets available to you and when they may be most useful, you’ll be able to adapt your approach to the needs of each interaction. In general, you might try to get into an outgoing mindset when:
- networking
- establishing new relationships
- developing trust
- deepening working relationships
- generating team spirit
- showing others you are interested in what they have to say
How to be more outgoing
Your DiSC style will determine the steps to take to gain comfort with the outgoing mindset. In addition to DiSC style, Everything DiSC® Agile EQ™ measures how much effort it takes you to stretch into the mindsets that aren’t intuitive to you. People with the exact same DiSC style and dot placement can have very different effort meters for any given mindset. Your personalized Agile EQ report (see sample) will walk you through steps specific to your needs and current comfort level with each mindset.
Obstacles to being more outgoing vary from person to person. This means that learning how to be more outgoing will look different for everyone. We recommend taking the Everything DiSC® Agile EQ™ assessment to see where your “effort meter” is for the outgoing mindset (see sample profile). Agile EQ reports are highly personalized, but here is some general guidance for those wishing to be more outgoing.
Recognize your thoughts
To be more outgoing, you may have to challenge thoughts like:
- I don’t have anything interesting to say.
- I’ve got more important things to do than socialize.
- I’m not letting them see this side of me.
- They won’t respect me if I lower my guard.
- This is a workplace, not a social club.
- I need to be careful about what I let slip out.
These thoughts are often happening under the surface, so you’ll need to notice when they pop up.
Set goals
From there, you can set some goals. These are broken into beginner, intermediate, and advanced in the Agile EQ system. They’ll look different for everyone, but some samples are:
- I don’t hesitate to talk about myself in front of others.
- I’m willing to share my feelings, even ones that make me feel vulnerable.
- When appropriate, I adapt my communication style to make others more comfortable.
- I carve out time to give encouragement to my teammates.
- I initiate social events on a regular basis.
- I’m typically comfortable at networking events.
Start practicing
Those can seem like lofty goals, depending on your comfort level with the outgoing mindset. So where do you even start? Your Agile EQ report will give you detailed and concrete action steps for moving forward a little at a time. In general, here are some ways you can take action to be more outgoing:
- Identify your emotions and communicate them to others.
- Make it easy for other people to open up.
- Build a larger network of connections.
- Share your opinions openly.
- Give people “the gift of going first” in conversations.
- Be the one to initiate connections and opportunities to get together.
- Reach out and get clarification, instead of being defensive.
- Be more unfiltered.
Even for people on the other side of the DiSC model, there’s a way to be more outgoing while still being authentically you. If you are naturally composed, tapping into the outgoing mindset during a conversation doesn’t mean you’re suddenly super lively. It may just mean you remember to say what you are thinking instead of deferring or clamming up. Or you text someone to check in and say hi, instead of waiting for them to text first.
You can activate different parts of your personality countless times throughout the day without changing who you are.
Posted 09/30/2020, Last Updated 12/26/2024
