So, I’ve started reading again: Quiet

For all those struggling to define what their leadership style is, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain is a special book that I think can provide a lot of answers. This book was recommended to me by my superior who I really respect (hmm it seems the military is a place with people who have good book recs). As an introvert (I don’t know why people seem surprised that I am), this book taught me a few important things:

1. The extroverted ideal: Dale Carnegie, author of the book everyone probably has seen before “How to win friends and influence people”, represented the rise of the extroverted ideal in tandem with America’s Industrialisation. The growing need for speakers and salesperson to sell products seeped its way into the type of leader we idolise – we want someone who is charming and well-spoken and can sell to us ideologies just as they sell to us pots and pans.
2. Transitioning from culture of character to culture of personality: Together with the rise of ideals that Dale represented was also the rise of self-help books that dictated what we should learn to become. Institutions like Harvard and Yale also changed their model student towards the well-rounded man rather than the neurotic introvert in some cultural wave to reject European “intellectualism” and stuffy rules. This marked our turn towards an extroverted public life and personality > character.
3. Bus to Abilene: This is a cute story about how a family was sitting around a table, and randomly someone suggested to go to Abilene, and they all agreed and piled aboard a bus and went. There, they all admitted that they didn’t really want to be there, and had only went because they assumed the others wanted to. This goes to show that many times a decision isn’t made because it is rational, but simply because we are willing to follow anyone who initiates action. Another cute experiment in the same vein: Harvard business school has a subarctic survival situation where groups rank what to bring to a subarctic survival situation. The list is often dictated by the most vocal people in the group, even though the more “correct” and rational suggestions are made by the quieter ones who simply got brushed off. All these demonstrates the winner’s curse, where vocal people get things going their way, but not necessarily always the right way.
4. Is charisma necessary for leadership: We often criticise our leaders for not being dynamic and charismatic, possessing the “it” factor. However, more often than not great leaders prove to not have that special something. Big company CEOs do not have the “charisma” because corporate leadership is done from a distance and introspection. Fortune 500’s top few CEOs are all described by their employees as unassuming, as there is no need for giant personalities, instead they turn their focus on building the institution they run. Introverted leaders are the majority, yet our common psyche only remembers the extroverted examples because they are quotable and memorable and are easy to recall. Research has shown that the correlation between extroversion and leadership is tenuous as they more often only measured people’s perception rather than their actual skills. Maybe we should stop critcising ourselves for not being as charismatic.
5. Heart of knowledge economy innovation is social: Introverts might not like that we must collaborate with people nowadays for creation, but luckily for us the internet is a haven for Introverts. Collaborative learning in schools and companies were birthed because of the internet where research has found that collaboration yielded much greater productivity. In fact, when done on a virtual platform, introverts find it easier to express themselves online. Osborn did a research on brainstorming and found that online collaborations had individuals generating more ideas and quality ones.
6. Extroverted evangelising: Introverted pastors struggle with the extroverted nature of evangelising. And this is my first time realising just how extroverted religion is. I think back to one of the only few services I have tagged along with for a Good Friday. Even while walking into the church, everyone was saying hi to each other, and in a suspiciously reserved culture in Singapore where we ignore each other in lifts, this was strange. Everyone came up to each other to talk and ask how my experience was with Christianity, and they talked like they were close family friends even though this was like their second time meeting. Even for religion, which emphasizes on personal connection to God, the culture of personality has seeped in.
7. Introverted creatives: While not all introverts are creative, studies have shown that introverts can focus better, hence most inventors and artists who need to focus on a prolonged work are one. Solitude, which runs antithetical to our love affair with group projects, is essential for good creation. Deliberate practice alone is what differentiates elite musicians and athletes and students from merely good ones, even though the same amount of effort and time has been dedicated. Top programmers have their privacy in cubicles. Successful show companies implement No-Talk-Thursday. All these research and facts challenge our concerted effort to move into open plan offices and away from dull typical cubicles. While it is certainly better that we move away from the prison cell like environment, this should be a cautionary tale that neither should we all plunge into the new “fad” of open space offices as there are unintended consequences (such as increased hostility and decreased productivity).
8. You can tell whether you’re an introvert or extrovert as a baby: introversion and extroversion are temperaments and can be observed early on. In a research that spans decades tracking babies in their growth, babies who had reactive amygdala, flails more at stimuli, all turn out more introverted as they are more alert and hence cautious. It’s those mild, less reactive babies who turn out extroverted as they seek higher than average amounts of stimulation to feel something, and they have less inhibitions that stand in the way of them forming relationships. This gave rise to the two types of children, orchids vs dandelion children. The first are likened to introverts, who are more sensitive and dies easily, but are more responsive to positive nurturing, while the latter are more hardy and can thrive anywhere. We should not force either types to emulate each other, as they all thrive and reach heights in different situations.
9. What we can learn from Great Tit Bird: Besides knowing that people who name birds all give it strange names, it illuminates the fact that the situation leaders are faced with, whether we have passive or proactive followers, determine how effective our leadership style is. During peacetime (lots of food), more gentle female birds thrive because they make better mothers, while aggressive males are better because they fight for territory for the home. During bad seasons (no food), aggressive females thrive because they fight and obtain food, while docile males succeed as they don’t expend energy needlessly when territory can easily be obtained by waiting for others to die first. This philosophy is demonstrated in a research for t shirt folding competition. Extroverts do better in groups with low motivation, but overwhelmingly introverts out-perform them when dealing with people who are highly-motivated and have their own suggestions on how to fold shirts faster.
10. The science behind introversion and extroversion: Extroverts more receptive to dopamine and get a bigger kick out of things, which motivates them to seek high risk. In other words, they are more reward sensitive and when faced with a mistakes they would speed up rather than slow down to learn from mistakes. That is why introverts are better at learning from mistakes and while conservative, they tend to make more sensible decisions. Sensitive people also learn to inhibit their high reactiveness, their cortex learns to calm down the amygdala so that we have better control over the shyness, so these pains are manageable. Introverts tend to make small talk at the end of a conversation after discussing ideas as a way to continue a new relationship, whereas extroverts use it to start. Introverts rated people they meet in friendly context higher (they like that niceness more) whereas extroverts prefer those they compete with (they like that competition more).
11. Culture and its impact: While it is not right to make sweeping generalisation, the US is one of the most extroverted nations whereas Asia in general is much more introverted. Especially in a world very much western-centric, introversion when linked to cultural background is seen as weak and lacking, and we internalise it. When seeing how western students actively participate in class, we see it as highlighting own limits. However, it is important to remember that every culture has their strengths and means of thriving. The quality of your ideas or conviction doesn’t decrease regardless of how loud you say them.
12. Free trait theory and fake it till you make it: pretend extroversion is possible for introverts. In a study, introverts who were asked to act like an extrovert in teaching math had things like their strides, volume, gesticulation measured, and upon analysis they were very convincing in faking it. The only drawback to this is that introverts need a restorative place to be themselves.
13. The story about the Bengali cobra: this one stuck with me about how instructive it was about communication between an introvert and extrovert. There was this cobra who bit every villager who passed it, and one day a Swami (enlightened one) told told them to not bite because it is bad. So the cobra listened, but the villagers gradually lost their fear and took advantage of the defenselessness and ended up beating them. The cobra complained to the Swami to which he replied: I told you not to bite but I did not tell you not to hiss. As introverts we might find it hard to engage in conflict, but we have our own ways of drawing lines and we cannot be afraid to use them as warning to protect ourselves.