Notes on “Quiet. The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking” by Susan Cain

Introversion and extroversion as central building blocks of personality have been popularised by psychologist Carl Jung in his 1921 book Psychological Types. Based on Jung’s theories, Myers-Briggs type indicator is now used by most universities and Fortune 100 companies to evaluate how we perceive the world around us and make decisions.

Introversion and extroversion are a common thread in the 2012 book by Susan Cain, Quiet. The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking. Cain, a Harvard Law and Princeton honours graduate and former Wall Street corporate lawyer, is a self-described introvert who “prefers listening to talking, reading to socialising, and cozy chats to group settings”. Now running her own negotiation consultancy, she attributes her accomplishments to all these traits, “as annoying though they may sometimes be,” she says.

Since 2012, her now-famous TED Talk The Power of Introverts accumulated more than 20 million views. Her book is an introverts manifesto and a critique of bias towards the extrovert ideal in both business and education. At offices and schools around the globe, Cain says, “the desire for collaboration has led to an onslaught of open floor plans and group projects where individuals aren’t given much space to think on their own.” Cain feels this is a big problem.

The Myth of Extrovert Ideal as a High-Powered Executive #

As her book and TED Talk demonstrate, Cain believes in the power of introverts and makes a convincing case for introverted leadership. But she is also clear on what introversion is not. “The word introvert is not a synonym for hermit or misanthrope. Introverts can be these things, but most are perfectly friendly.” Cain goes to great lengths to provide research that confirms introverts can execute leadership positions equally well, albeit with quiet competence and not as an alpha role.

Research shows that “extroverted leaders enhance group performance when employees are passive, but introverted leaders are more effective with proactive employees.” Adam Grant, an organisational psychologist at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, says that “introverts are uniquely good at leading initiative-takers. Because their inclination to listen to others and lack of interest in dominating social situations, introverts are more likely to hear and implement suggestions. Introverted leaders create a virtuous circle of proactivity. Extroverts, on the other hand, can be intent on putting their own stamp on events that they risk losing others’ good ideas along the way.”

Subarctic Survival Situation #

“It is approximately 2:30 p.m., October 5, and you have just crash-landed in a float plane on the east shore of Laura Lake in the subarctic region of the northern Quebec-Newfoundland border. Your task is to rank 15 items salvaged from the plane (a compass, sleeping bad, axe, etc.) in the order of their importance to your team’s survival.”

This is the premise of the Subarctic Survival Situation, one of the most popular group problem-solving survival exercises. First, participants are asked to rank each item individually and then as a team. As Cain describes, the point of the exercise is to teach group synergy. “Successful synergy means a higher ranking for the team than for its individual members. The group fails when any of its members has a better ranking than the overall team.” The exercise often serves as a lesson in the dangers of assertiveness within a group. The most assertive person may not have the best ideas, but more often than not, it is assertiveness, and not correctness, that determines whose ideas are chosen.

How much assertiveness is the right amount then? Cain recalls a situation as one of the participants in the Subarctic Survival Situation was “in a group lucky to include a young man with extensive experience in the northern backwoods. He had a lot of good ideas about how to rank the salvaged items. But his group didn’t listen, because he expressed his views too quietly.” As an exercise, the Subarctic Survival Situation is a harmless game, but wait until it unfolds in a real-world high-stakes scenario, such as a jury deliberating whether or not to send someone to jail.

According to Cain, studies in group dynamics show that ideas of assertive talkers often prevail over their quieter colleagues. “Talkers are perceived as smarter than quiet types,” despite that the research suggests that more talking is not correlated with greater insight and studies reveal this perception to be inaccurate.

Good presentation skills and assertiveness are a valuable trait, but only if paired with substance and critical thinking. History tells us that nobody should be put in a position of authority only due to rhetorics as persuasive oratory. Quick, assertive and vocal leadership style may sometimes lead to outright bad decisions.

Osborn’s “Rules” of Brainstorming #

In his 1953 book Applied Imagination, Alex Osborn, a legendary advertising man and the founder of advertising agency BBDO, invented and popularised the concept of brainstorming, a process in which group members generate ideas in a nonjudgmental atmosphere. Osborn considered that his employees were not creative enough. He believed they had good ideas, but “were loath to share them for fear of their colleagues’ judgment.”

The solution for Osborn at the time was “not to have employees work alone and in solitude, but to remove the threat of criticism and the constraint of social judgment from work.” Unsurprisingly then the first rule of brainstorming was “Don’t judge or criticise ideas.” The other rules went “The more and wilder ideas you have, the better.”

According to Cain, research on brainstorming shows that group brainstorming doesn’t actually work. The problem with brainstorming is that some individuals tend to sit back and let others do the work (social loafing), and that only one person can talk or produce the idea at once, while other group members are forced to to sit passively (production blocking).

The biggest problem with brainstorming, apparently, is that participants fear looking stupid in front of one’s peers (evaluation apprehension). The problem with evaluation apprehension, according Cain, is that there’s not much you can do about it. “Recent research in neuroscience suggests that the fear of judgment runs much deeper and has more far-reaching implications than we ever imagined,” she says, and it is not that simple to overcome it with will or training.

The Free Trait Theory #

Of course, it should be of no surprise to anyone that even introverts can give an effective public lecture, plead their clients’ case in front of panel of judges or act hard-nosed during a business negotiation. According to Free Trait Theory by professor Brian Little, fixed traits and free traits coexist. You can be born with certain character traits, like introversion, but can “act out of character” to pursue your core personal projects.

According to Cain, “introverts are capable of acting like extroverts for the sake of work they consider important, people they love or anything they value highly.” But beware, pseudo-extroversion works only if your core values and interests are clearly identified. Otherwise, if overdone without down-time for restoration, acting out of character for too long can be disastrous and lead to burnout.

In this day and age, workforces are diverse and made of different personality types. “A third to half of people in the world are introverts”, Cain says. In order to match market conditions, decisions must reflect input of all these personalities. Conviction is conviction, the book reads, at whatever decibel level it’s expressed.