Susan Cain Explains How Society Would Benefit From The Strengths Of Introverts

our society glamorizes extroverts but Susan Cain offers a powerful case for introverts in her book quiet Susan why do we have this extrovert ideal in our society well you know it really comes from the rise of big business itself because until the turn of the 20th century when we lived in a more agricultural economy people valued each other based on character and based on their inner worth because they were working alongside people they had known all their lives and then all of a sudden at the 20th century we saw the rise of big business people flooding into the cities meeting suddenly to stand out a job interviews on sales calls and so we shifted at that time from what historians call a culture of character to a culture of personality and that's when qualities like magnetism and dominance and charisma and those kinds of things became more important than inner character and we're really still living with the legacy of that today we're culture of personality even though I think what our businesses are really facing today is the question of how to be creative how to be innovative how to manage risk wisely and these are not necessarily things that are met through personality as opposed to character but I think we still act as if they are what are some of the biggest misconceptions

about introverts people have well I would say the biggest one is the idea that introverts are inherently antisocial it's funny people sometimes say this to me they're like well you're an introvert but you're friendly how can those two things be and you know that's not it at all many introverts are quite friendly and they're just as warm and caring as anybody else but they prefer to be in environments that are a little quieter and they tend to want to socialize one-on-one as opposed to in a big Zoro ger gary a social setting what

are the biggest strengths so many um so one of them has to do with creativity that I was getting out before when psychologists look at who have been the most creative people over time across a broad variety of fields they almost always find people who are quite introverted these are people who are usually extroverted enough that they go and exchange ideas and promote ideas because that's obviously important too but it's people who can go off by themselves and are either servile with solitude or crave it and give themselves enough solitude to actually give birth to a new idea and in

your book you list a bunch of inventors and CEOs who yeah are introverted yeah we're some that you mentioned oh gosh well Steve Wozniak who invented the first Apple Computer you know we tend to associate Apple with Steve Jobs who is more of the show man of the company but the person who actually did the work of inventing out of nothing a computer where none existed before was a very quiet introverted guy named Steve Wozniak who he was working at the time at Hewlett Packard had a little cubicle there and he would go into the office by himself early in the morning and late at night when no one was there and he would sit by himself and create this thing which became which then became the Apple Computer but he

had to work with Steve Jobs so you had to be an extrovert in some respects well that's the interesting thing I mean introverts and extroverts together are that's really what I'm calling for introverts and extroverts together a unity yang and we're all better off when they're working together so in that case you had Steve Wozniak going off by himself for three months yeah pounding out this amazing creation coming back showing it to his friend Steve Jobs Steve Wozniak had no ID no vision of starting a company he just showed this great creation to his friend who said this thing is amazing we have to start a company around it and then he was the one who kind of took it and ran with that idea and how can introvert to be

more extroverted when they have to be well some of it is a question of drawing on your own strengths and doing things your own way so for example an introvert a networking event should not think of their goal as being I have to go in and work the room planet noxious expression there's another way of doing cocktail parties or networking events you can see your goal as being I'm gonna go in and I'm gonna make one real connection and if I've met one person whose company I truly enjoyed who I want to help in the future I want to stay in touch with that's a success and you do that enough times you suddenly have a whole network of people who you were truly really connected to you without having to be the social butterfly of an event