Susan Cain’s Ted
Talk, The Power of Introverts, highlights the importance of embracing and
promoting introversion. Our culture is
designed to celebrate extraverts, who crave stimulation and social
interaction. Both schools and businesses
are setup to support the extravert in both physical structure with open, pod
like work environments, and with group projects and problem solving. However, Susan indicates that great ideas
come from deep thought and thus we are missing opportunities for productivity
within our society. Our society
continually provides the message that introversion is wrong and pushes people
to behave counter to their natural tendencies.
As such, many natural introverts are not spending their time in quiet
solitude; problems are not being solved and ideas are not be generated as a
result.
For leadership, the major implications are
that we may be overlooking employees with the best ideas because they are more reserved
and quiet. Additionally, if we are an
extravert, we may be overpowering our introverted employees and not letting the
best ideas bubble to the surface.
Finally, because our structure and environment is setup to support
extroverts at the cost of introverts, we are not allowing them to leverage
their strengths. I believe this ties in
very nicely with Peter Drucker’s premise that you can only perform from the
position of your strengths. Introverts
must be empowered to look in their suitcase on a periodic basis; they must be
allowed to play to their strengths. As
leaders, it our responsibility to understand that our employees are diverse and
that some may prefer lively, constant interaction while others prefer solitude
or intimate talks.
References
Cain, S. (2012). The
Power of Introverts [Web]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQH2U-kmBdY
