Harness the strength of introverts to change how you lead: Susan Cain

hello and welcome to Franklin cubbies on leadership series my name is Scott Miller and I serve as your host as we interview thought leaders from around the world beginning today in our new studio here at our headquarters in Salt Lake City I am honored today to have Susan Cain the renowned researcher scientist speaker practitioner and author of the runaway best-selling book quiet the power of introverts in a world that can't stop talking Susan's burke book has sold millions of copies impacted world or lives worldwide and today joins us from the east coast to talk to us about quiet Susan welcome thank you Scott it's so great to be here with you I know we've been talking for a while about doing this we have it's an honor to have you here today my sense is it really happens we're looking forward to a great hour because you have a raging introvert who's or extrovert who's I'm interviewing I'm guessing an introvert so should make for a good hour absolutely if I was write a book I am certainly would be called loud tell is it a bit about your journey to write this book I've watched your TED talk which has been viewed by almost 20 million people I always like to start the interviews with a bit about the person's journey maybe start with that I'm endearing but somewhat awkward summer can't story and how you came to write this book and the influence that's having not just on introverts put an extra extroverts as well yeah well I mean I guess you're talking about the story I told in my TED talk which is from the time that I went to summer camp when I was nine years old and my mom and you know and I was going off to camp for eight weeks and my mom packed this suitcase full of books for me which in the culture of the family that I grew up in was a really natural thing to do we're like this very quiet scholarly family and I had this vision of going out to camp and being with all my new friends all reading our books together and I got to camp on the very first day and was instead confronted not with the dream I had been imagining but rather this counselor who said that she was going to teach us a cheer for us to do for the rest of the summer and the cheer was some of you may have heard this before it was our our owd ie that's the way we spell aroud EU rowdy rowdy let's get rowdy and I I couldn't figure out like why were we supposed to be so rowdy why did we have to spell the word incorrectly and and I wondered about it I've kind of been wondering about it ever since so in that case I kind of learned to do the cheer and I learned to enjoy it but the real takeaway for me it was that I should be a rowdy or and more extroverted version myself not only for that summer but into the rest of my life and so so what ended up happening was I was kind of always impersonate trying to impersonate an extrovert to the best of my ability and that meant for me that I ended up practicing corporate law for almost 10 years it took me a really long time to get into writing which is what I had always wanted to do and and that was because I was in this in a reflexive habit of always not following my own preferences but rather the ones that I felt I was supposed to follow and and and I looked around me and I realized that this was happening throughout our culture you know in our schools especially in our workplaces especially and and that it's a mistake and so I guess I've been spending the last how long has it been I started writing quiet in 2005 so ever for some fan I've been I guess fight this fight to to try to use the power of everyone's natural temperament instead of shoehorning all of us into a pre narrow temperamental straitjacket Susan I learned of your book a couple of years ago when my brother Mike who is kind of the opposite of me in every way my brother is a very competent I'm somewhat competent but very competent well-educated professional you know it has an MBA from MIT master's in chemical engineering Master black belt in Six Sigma whatever that means and he's also you know an introvert and I think sometimes he wishes he had my extrovert personality and I sure wish I had his in from MIT but you know your voice has given your book has given voice to my brother he's read it several times and he brought it to me and thought I might benefit as well as he has but it's kind of like his second Bible why do you think quiet has touched so many lives both those who are extroverts and introverts yeah I think it's because this question of whether we're introverted or extroverted or somewhere in between it's not just like an interesting parlor game type of cover it's not just like an interesting conversation for a parlor game it's really fundamental this is one of the first things that I learned when I started researching my book that most personality psychologists who agree on nothing else agree on this point that that introversion and extraversion are the most fundamental aspect of personality and they govern so much about who we are and how do we relate to the world and how do we relate to each other and how do we do our best work and how do we show up in relationships all of it so this is really core fundamental stuff and now you take this fundamental step and and put it alongside this massive cultural bias that has been telling us for a century really that the 50% of us were more introverted that there's something wrong with that core fundamental way of being you know and that's that's pretty big really and and so if you if you were to look at all the thousands of letters that I get and I'm sure if you did a search in my inbox for what is the most commonly used word that shows up in those letters where do you would see is permission because what I hear from people all the time is that until recently they have not felt that they had the permission to be their true selves and to use their true gifts and so that's what we're in the process of undoing as a culture right now you know your books had a massive impact on me and I think by every standard my book would be called loud if I wrote one I'm I think by every standard I'm an extrovert but it's also kind of rocked my world because I'm trying to figure out so you know do I like Who I am and is it working and how does it cloud my view of others and I've had some own introspection on how did I become this I keep using the term raging extrovert and as I've thought about it and something you just said is I think in many ways I've adopted that persona which may or may not be my natural persona I can remember back as an early kid you know before teens I was happy and bubbly but I was also kind of retiring and shy and it wasn't until my teen years when a lady moved across the street from me in my neighborhood I grew up in Central Florida and she was very successful professionally socially had a fairly loud outgoing almost brash personality got what she wanted kind of steamrolled over people and I saw her as sort of the the icon of success you know fancy home and big cars and vacations and I'll be honest I think in many ways I chose subconsciously consciously to adopt some of her personality you know loud gregarious outgoing people get what they want and those who are shy retiring don't and so I think in some ways perhaps I need therapy different webcasts but I'm guessing I hear that's not so uncommon that we sent in to adopt sometime identities that we think work for us when in fact they're not our natural selves I think I did the same yeah Wow and so I mean I'm gonna turn around and ask you a question which is if you had the ability pretend you've got all day on a Saturday and you have no social family professional obligations how would you understand your time definitely alone no no question the fact most of my friends will say Scott you're so good at working a room or at a dinner party and I say no I mean I have to like gird my loins and go do it I'm not natural I would absolutely like to be reading these books perhaps with my kids or my wife at my home but I prefer to eat meals alone in restaurants as opposed to when other people yeah Wow and so I mean is it taking my toll and you just spend so much of your time and doing your behaving in a way that isn't natural to you well I think it's a therapy session now it's your question yes it's very taxing absolutely and I think I tend to over commit and overcompensate by committing to more social obligations to keep it going I think I need therapy yeah and what might be happening to you - there's this term that the psychologist Brian little uses reputational confusion which is like once you start behaving in a certain way as you're describing you get a reputation for being that guy right like the really social out there guy and so then more and more not only opportunities that expectations come to your way to act like that guy and it becomes harder and harder to get off of that um but I don't know I mean I was struck by so many things when you were describing your story because you're talking about the I guess the the houses and cars or whatever markers of success that this woman had but I okay and the following thing is gonna sound possibly cliched possibly hokey but I would say the biggest marker of success we can all have is the ability to be ourselves in our own skin as for as much of our days as possible and and as I say that I want to say there it's a little more complicated than that because it's also true and here I'm going back to Professor Brian little again it's also true that in some ways what matters most for a really good life is to identify what your most core most passionate projects are in this world the things you most care about and they usually have to do with questions of love and questions of work and and you kind of do what it takes in a good life to make sure that those personal projects actually get done and in order to make our personal projects happen usually you do have the act out of characters some of the time and you do have to sometimes step outside your comfort zone so I'm not saying that the best life is the one where you know if you're an introvert let's say that you're always behaving in an introverted way but I would say the best life is one where you know what you're you're passionate your core projects are you you go outside your comfort zone in kind of small doses to make those projects happen but the rest of the time you get to be you and even during the times when you're not exactly you you're doing it in the service of something that really really matters to you so I mean just give you an example I was actually one when literally on stage giving a keynote talk to a company and talking about what I just said and as I was speaking I was thinking oh my gosh my husband's 50th birthday is coming up and I really need to make a big party for him and I'm not really a natural party thriller but my look came off the stage and a few days later started planning this gigantic surprise party which ended up being really lovely and so that was kind of acting out of character but you're doing it for for a great purpose right and you're not and you're not out of character all the time that's really the key so you're spending as many Saturday afternoons as you can where you have no obligations and you're doing things the way you'd want to do them so beyond being horrified that in the first five minutes you gave me a diagnosis of reputational confusion as an introvert susan is this type of interview difficult for you I mean I know you speak in front of you know hundreds of audiences a year keynotes thousands of people how do you find your own kind of congruence in that as a self-described introvert yeah it's a good question it's actually really no longer difficult for me um when my book first came out this kind of thing was really hard and you know in the first day that came out I think it gave 31 interviews in one day so it was like you know I kind of went from seven years of splendid solitude and sitting at home and writing my book just suddenly you know being out there and away so at the beginning it was hard but after a while it stopped being partly cuz you get used to things even if they're hurt at the beginning and partly because I am doing work that I'm so passionate about and that really carries me forward and I think that's a huge thing that we all forget so you know like even if you're sitting at your company and your next big public outing is I don't know what reporting on sales figures like there's always some way of digging into that thing that you're out there talking about that feels it feels to you like a source of a core conviction and I think that's really the best place to live and I guess I'd say if you're listening to this and thinking gosh that the things that I'm called upon to speak about publicly I can't find the way to any passion or conviction about them and that's probably a sign that you might want to make some kind of shift because no one should be living that way Susan you talked in your book in chapter 2 which by my favorite chapter is the myth of charismatic leadership talk a bit about your research that led to that and give some context for that for people who may not have read the book yet yeah sure I mean it's the idea that I think if most of us are honest with ourselves when we think of the person who would make a good leader we're imagining somebody who's charismatic is quite type-a extroverted bold I mean you know the type of person that I'm talking about and and those indeed can be amazing qualities for leadership for sure but leaving a lot of great leadership talents on the table when we look at it in in such a narrow way and there's a lot of interesting studies about this that are out there so one of my favorites comes from Jim Collins and I'm sure many of the people listening today have read his book good to great and so you know that he he he looked at the top 11 best performing companies in the country and he wanted to figure out what set these companies apart and he found that every single one of these come was led by a CEO who had two main characteristics um the first one was that they were the first one was that they had a kind of fierce sense of will and dedication to the company and the second one was that they are described by their peers with this whole constellation of adjectives like shy quiet unassuming soft-spoken so it's this whole group of adjectives that we would tend to think of as having nothing to do with leadership but if you have been doing this as long as I have it this data is not as surprising as it would first seem because what happens with introverts is that they tend to go really deep in their lives into one or two areas of passion and so in the service of those those passions like if you have someone who's really into their job let's say they're gonna end up acquiring expertise and building up networks and and so they end up kind of ascending to leadership positions not because they're so-called natural leader but because they have this deep well of commitment to what they're doing and and that ends up being a really potent channel to leadership so how does someone fundamentally recognize whether they're an introvert or an extrovert and you you call kind of a middle term in your book is it an ant via vert or well what's the word middle yeah yeah yeah so I mean well there's two quick testing yeah you can give yourself the first responder is the one that I asked to you Scott like imagine that you have a day to yourself no obligations be truthful about how would you want to spend it you can also ask yourself how you feel when you show up at a party that you're truly enjoying with company that you truly enjoy and how do you feel at the end of two hours of that party so for if you're more of an extrovert it's as if you have an internal battery that is getting charged by being at that party and so you're going to emerge from the two hours full of energy and if you're an introvert it doesn't matter how socially skilled you might be you're kernel battery is probably dreaming during those two hours and so you're starting to you know can get antsy in which you could go home and and that that feeling of that internal battery and what does it tend to do in which kinds of circumstances can tell you so much about who you are do you think people change over their lives and careers for the EDD back and forth should they what's been your experience and research around it was someone kind of born an introvert and stays that way for life or what are your thoughts on that yeah I mean it's complicated because these are some of the most heritable personality traits so you can actually trace them in in babies as young as four days old but at the same time all of us can and should develop all kinds of skills as as we move on in our lives so you know if you're born were extroverted and and for you and then for extroverts the liability is more difficulty being in quieter situations your nervous system is primed to make you feel kind of listless and sluggish when you're in a situation like that so but but still you might be born that way but over time you might develop the skill of meditating or just a feeling comfortable in your in your solitude and that's a really important thing so you're still an extrovert but you've got that skill and an introverts do the reverse they they might be born introverts but develop the skill of being really good at a cocktail party like the way you were describing Scott so it so so it ends up being was kind of mishmash but a lot of the time what's not changing your fundamental preference of who you are isn't changing but you develop so many skills that you layer on top of that that you end up a lot more complex than you first started Susan at that point also in your book you talk about the value that's been placed on I think you call it verbal fluency and sociability as two major you know kind of success indicators and I bought into that early in life I felt that some of the most influential successful powerful people you know whether it be you know successful business people or you know politicians had a real strong sense of both of those and I worked myself I mean all these books in the studio I've read all these books and magazines and newspapers to build my own vocabulary and verbal fluency is that a myth do you think that's been perpetuated by schools you've got a point of view on that I'm sorry is what a mess that is that the notion of verbal fluency and socia ability being you know kind of a key indicator of success oh I see um I think those are helpful skills for everyone to develop to some extent I think that we're we're just in a situation in our culture where it's all over exaggerated right so of course it's helpful to be verbally fluent you know and of course it's helpful to be mathematically literate and of course it's helpful to be a deep and thoughtful listener and you know and I could go on with a whole list I think the problem that we've got in our culture is we were we're so over valuing the verbal fluency and so on and under valuing some of these other traits and so I think we just need to get to more of a state of balance so as self-described extrovert but now that you've prescribed me or diagnosed me has reputational confusion I think I'm kind of having identity crisis right now on live on air I I've always been did to believe the adage that people like people like themselves and I tend to like to hire recruit and surround myself with people that are high energy what I would call outgoing energy infusers and I get I get quite frustrated with otherwise very competent people who tend to be more thoughtful more deliberate quiet I find myself often saying to my team can you say it faster and shorter for me right if you find that in organizations extroverted leaders tend to prejudice those who are introverted and more quiet and what are some ways that people like me could be you know better valuers of those who are more introverted huh I mean it's interesting so there is a lot of data showing that introverts tend to go passed over for leadership positions even though once they're in those positions they do they like there was just a recent stat that CEO is what the introverts once they get promoted to CEO tend to slightly outperform extroverts and those rules but bottom line is you know both types can do really well but introverts get passed over but what I what I think the takeaway is for you or for someone in your position is that the the best functioning teams and organizations are the ones who really do have both types in place because it's it's it's actually hard to imagine a complex task getting done if you don't have the kind of quick high-energy people you know seize the day push it forward you've got it you need that and then you need the sort of more thoughtful and deliberate people who will be like okay we into it let's think about this subtlety let's think about this thing that might make a wrong and what could we do to protect against it life nowadays is true and our corporate tasks are too complex to not have both of those inputs coming and when you look at many organizations you see people either consciously or unconsciously aligning themselves in this way so you know for example at Facebook you've got Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg introvert and extrovert and they actually came up with that pairing deliberately no knowing that it would be greater than the sum of its two parts citizen of my experience and I've only worked for two major companies in my you know 25 years so far in my career oh I'm sorry can I say one thing I'm sorry to interrupt you but just one more thing on that point um I wanted to say that it's also the case I I know that Scott you were saying that you see in yourself a kind of bias to hire people like you um but what we often hear from people in their studies along these lines that the introverts and extroverts really tend to like being with their opposite type because I think a lot of us have a feeling of like we know what we're good at we know what our deficits are and we like to be among people who complement them and there's there's a kind of natural admiration and affinity for people who are unlike you in temperament so one of the reasons that teams that have both types work so well is because people tend to be socially happy when they've got that kind of balance you know my experience has been different in that as an extrovert I find myself with introverts it's hard to relate right because I'm super talkative and I'm very expressive and I sort of have an you know an outward frame of mind and I feel like as an extrovert it's my job as my responsibility or burden to sort of pull out from them what they're thinking and and I become frustrated I'm sure they probably feel that I'm being oppressive and wanted to put them on my on my schedule and I'll but I'm not alone in that both on both sides right representing the introvert and the extrovert yeah you know I'm glad that you're being open about this because that is something I hear often from extroverts and I think it's a good thing for introverts to know that I think it often seems to introverts as if extroverts are kind of naturally you know never running at anything to say I'm naturally drawing everybody around them out but many tell me that it's actually a kind of burden that they feel you know it's just the way you you expressed it just now so what really comes to mind as you say that is the importance of teams sitting down and talking about this stuff and how does it play out and I'll take a step back to what I said at the beginning that this is the most fundamental aspect of human nature so it's gonna govern every one of your interactions as a team so looking the workshops that we do or just what we recommend in general I would say sit down with your team you can maybe have everybody take a personality test we have a free and easy one that's on our website acquire evolution and use that as a jumping off point to get people talking about who they are and how they prefer to work and how do they prefer to spend their time and how do they prefer to interact you know and you you want to get down to questions like you know maybe one person does their best work when they feel like their colleagues are checking in on them checking in with them a few times a day and another person might do their best work when they're left alone and they can put their head down for three hours at a time and know that they won't be interrupted and you want to create a space where each of those two people is free to say that that's what they need and then in with mutual respect you can work out how you can accommodate each person's deepest preferences but but none of that can happen until you've got the space where everybody can recognize this and talk about it in a way where it's no big deal Susan it might be unique to my career but a my and my two previous employers which only had two in about 25 years as I look back at the most senior influential people most of them tend to have things in common and perhaps I'm prejudiced but they seem to be you know fairly charismatic and well-spoken and high-energy and at least in formal positions of power not every person obviously and it seems that Western business tends to really reward that any advice you would give and perhaps your experience have been different than mine but that has been my experience even if Franklin Covey you seem that you know some of the more senior people tend to be a little more gregarious and outspoken and and perhaps I don't want to say a contrived sense of confidence but you talk about that in your book a little bit any advice you might give or a comment on that any advice you might give on people who aren't naturally what I just described how they can get noticed and build influence and organizations when they're dealing with a company or employer who does value that for promotion yeah I mean I guess the first thing I would say is I I don't think it's quite as universal as all that um you know if you look around this is especially true in Silicon Valley but really all over there are lots of people in leadership positions are much more let's just say introverted by their nature and so I think one of the most powerful things and can do in that position you just described is to identify people who do have a similar temperament to theirs who are in their fields and who are successful and kind of look at them as a role model and figure out what are they doing and you know where where are they stretching outside their comfort zone where are they figuring out how to draw in their own strengths to to do the work that they're doing so for example one of my favorite examples of this is a guy named Douglas Conan who you may know Scott Burton table soup right okay well soup CEO yeah exactly exactly so he he was the CEO of Campbell Soup for almost ten years and he just retired recently and Doug is a very shy and introverted guy by his own description and when he took over at Camp oh they were at the bottom the fortune 500 in employee engagement by the time you step down they were at the top but again he's not you know kind of back-slapping type of guy and what he used to do was he would identify who were the employees who had really been contributing and he would sit down and write to them personal letters of thanks for all that they had done for Campbell and the thing about Doug is he's a really really sincere authentic person and you feel that the minute that you meet him I'm kind of reminds me of Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life if you've seen that movie so when you get a letter like that from a guy like that it really means a lot and and so yeah sometimes he had to step outside his comfort zone but he was also figuring out ways to draw on who he really was and I think that's the most effective thing that you can be doing and and so for someone in the kind of position you were just talking about I would sit down with trusted colleagues and mentors and ask them what they think your great strengths are and maybe pick like one area to improve on but we all know by now it's better to focus on your strengths and then figure out how do you make those strengths work your story about Doug is great in fact his book touchpoints is on our studio wall it's a great book and ironically his co-author I know metanor Gard she is an outgoing very you know extroverted person so it shows that balance right on both sides of those might pick it up to co-authors book I want to remind all of our viewers we invite you to ask any questions to Susan and our Q&A chat pod I'd love to add them to the list Susan you talk in your book also about the power of brainstorming is some of the mists behind you know brainstorming and how great ideas happened give us some of your thoughts around how great ideas do and don't come alive and what are some good tips in the right setting to get the best ideas in an organizational setting out of both introverts and extroverts yeah so there's a whole really interesting line of studies that look at brainstorming and it's like study after study after study has found that groups of people who brainstorm together produce fewer ideas and less and and lower quality ideas than individuals who brainstorm by themselves so there seems to be something about the process of sitting by yourself I'm kind of going deep into yourself that can really pull out the the really good ideas but of course it's not enough to only do that because the idea is media communicated you need to get thought through and so on by a team so what I recommend is a kind of hybrid process where you're having people sitting down and doing the deep thought first and then they come together to share what they've learned and you might toggle back and forth between those two states and you also want to make sure that when you are at the the part where the group is together you want to make sure that you're actually hearing from everybody there is this the study out of the Kellogg School that found that in your typical meaning meeting you have three people doing 70% of the talking so you want to get around that problem and one of the names Scott was one of those three people named Scott but one way to get around the problem is you can go around the room and ask everybody to contribute and you could do something called brain writing where you have everybody write down their idea and post it and then you've got a facilitator who takes those post-its and puts them at the front of the room for everybody to consider so you're kind of eliminating the whole thing people jockeying for position or some people feeling more entitled to speak than others it can also be really helpful to encourage people to encourage one or two people to take on the role of devil's advocate or just sensing opinion so that you're making sure you get all the ideas out there so I know you're not a psychiatrist but we have a question that's come in from one of the viewers that says you know what is your experience on people who have extreme introversion you know almost sort of maybe social anxiety any sort of social avoidance anxiety any tips you might have on on coaching or dealing with colleagues in your life in the workplace on helping them you know move to a state of may be more comfortable 'ti with them extreme social anxiety yeah sure I mean so first just before talking about what to do about it just kind of definitionally social anxiety is actually different from introversion introversion is much more just you know the preference to operate in these quieter and more deliberate ways and social anxiety is more about extreme shyness or fear of social judgment and in practice like the work that we do at quiet revolution is really about both of these two states even though you could be a really shy extrovert who loves being around people and in high-energy situations once they get over their initial anxiety and you could be an introvert who's not shy at all okay so having said that somebody with high social anxiety or any fear really this one happens to be the fear of people judging you but it could be the fear of heights or anything else the way to address it is you have to expose yourself to the thing that you fear in very small and very manageable doses so I'll give you my own example I used to be terrified of public speaking and the way I overcame this was by going to a seminar for people who were afraid of public speaking and on the first day of the seminar all we had to do is stand up say our names sit back down declare your victory and you're done and then you'd go back the next week and you would just stand up and answer a few questions about yourself where did you grow up where'd you go to school sit back down you're done and you keep going a little by little by little you actually are able to mostly extinguish a fear so if you're talking about a colleague who has pretty severe social anxiety that's standing in their way that's really the pathway for them and it might be joining a group like Toastmasters or it could be joining a group that's explicitly for social anxiety but that's the way forward and it really does work in addition to doing a lot of public speaking and writing you also consult with organizations if and when you go into an organization you meet with perhaps the CHR o or you know learning a development leader what advice do you give them organizationally to help promote and expose it's not expose in a positive way right get exposure for introverts are there any any blanket advice you might give HR leaders on how to help introverts find their voice and you know work well with you know a culture that you say you know primarily rewards extroverted personalities mm well I mean one thing on an organizational level that you can do is identify people in who are influential well respected in the organization and who are introverts and figure out a forum for them to come forward and talk about their temperament and how it has been an asset to them that has get a contribution then everyone's benefiting from and what are the ways that it's been a struggle and that they've been dealing with that struggle you know so really to kind of open up this discussion and as I also suggested to get teams talking to each other about this stuff on a more individual level I we encourage everybody listening today to think of someone you know might be you might be a colleague but someone you know at your company who is very talented and who you think is probably not a natural leader and might get passed over for leadership position and sit down with that person and map out with them their personal plan of ambition because people often assume that a quiet person is less ambitious even though that might not be the case at all so find out from them where do they want to be in one year three years in five years what are the steps that they can take to get there where are the strategic places that they could go outside of their comfort zone little by little what are the strengths that they can draw on you know could they do something like if they've got a particular expertise okay let's sit down and think about what are the ways that you can showcase that expertise so that more people in the company actually know about it could you write a newsletter could you get up and give a five-minute talk about it you look for places that are kind of high bang for the buck places to showcase all that that person has to offer speak right now to VIN to group separately that are joining us today talk for a few minutes to the self-prescribed introverts in today's interview what advice tactically would you give them to help them in their own career so assume they have no one that's their champion or coach they're competent obviously just as competent as any extrovert what advice would you give them when they're working with extroverts to make sure that they're you know their works being valued that they're being promoted that they're not having them people take credit for their work any advice you might speak to introverts directly yeah well okay one piece of advice and I'd give this to anybody but it's especially true for introverts or for anyone who feels for whatever reason disempowered in their workplaces expertise is huge so like figure out if you're out how you can cultivate a particular area of expertise in your field that is deeply valued and that is gonna be such a source of power for you because everybody's gonna want what you have to offer and what you have to say hey and it's gonna give you a form of confidence that no amount of you know kind of gauzy self-talk could do you but have you really got the substantive goods you're gonna know it and that's gonna convey itself so that's kind of a long-term plan um I'll give you another technique you can use which is when you go into meetings think in advance before you get to the meeting what is the thing you want to contribute or ask or a point you want to make and first of all think okay is there do I have an ally in this meeting is there somebody who I could talk to you beforehand who might feel the same way that I do who might want to back me up or amplify what I'm gonna say and then once you get into the meeting give yourself a push to speak up early because the ideas that get advanced early become kind of anchoring ideas and other people will start directing their comments to you because you were one of the people to speak first and they'll make eye contact with you and so emotionally you'll start to feel more in this things whereas if you wait longer you start to kind of emotionally drift to the margins and it's not that you can't get back from there so you definitely can but it's a lot easier if you start there in the first place so try that it's similarly what advice would you give to our extrovert audience to be more I'm not sure if their word is thoughtful or respectful or accommodating you know as a self you know prescribed extrovert what advice would you give me on how I pull out what I know is the value and the contribution of a introvert and make sure that I or other extroverts aren't dominating the meeting or the project of the conversation so that the other genius and brilliance in the room can come out as much what advice would you give extroverts well I mean I think a lot of it has to do with meeting people where they are and how they want to work so I would take them as individuals and fine from them like how do you like to get your best work done given howdy how do you most like to share your ideas so like a lot of introverts will tell you they get their best work done when they can really sit and focus and know that they won't be interrupted okay so how do you make that happen I don't know it's different in every workplace maybe in one workplace it would be feasible to say every Tuesday and Thursday mornings we will not have meetings you know we're just blocking off that time for deep sink work or maybe it's possible to telecommute some of the time you know that the solution is gonna be different depending on the organization and in terms of actually running meetings some of the time you can get the best of a person's brain by talking to them one-on-one instead of having the All Hands and when you do have the All Hands make sure you're not having too many people in the room because that's that's never effective for anybody and you know I really love it I don't know how many of you have followed what we've learned about the way Jeff Bezos runs meetings at Amazon but I think there's a lot of wisdom in it and so from what I understand he but before a meeting happens whoever's in charge of it has to write out a really well thought through memo describing what the subject at hand is a four or five page memo so that alone takes about a week of preparation but you're really doing deep thinking to get there then everybody shows up the meeting and they spend the first half hour of the meeting reading that memo silently together and only after that process has been gone through and two people start to talk about it and that I I think that's really in general but also though from a temperament point of view because it's making sure that everybody is engaging at a level that's not about performance and and you know dominance displease but just about dealing with what is the subject here and doing it in a really thoughtful way and I'm for introverts it means that they have the time to process what they're looking at before they actually speak about it Susan you'll be delighted to know that one of our viewers just wrote in a question is she works at Amazon and validates your assessment of how effective the meeting structure is there so you're right on target thank you speak to some of the common misconceptions about introverts what are some of the you know wives tales about introverts that just in fact aren't true or just have been you know sort of you know spun wildly I would say the biggest one is that introverts are antisocial don't like people I mean that is huge and what we need to realize is this is in the psychological literature there's no correlation between the traits of warmth and caring about people and the traits of introversion extroversion so you know an extrovert and an introvert are equally likely to be warm and affectionate people the question is how do these traits display themselves so for an extrovert who is defined by needing a lot of stimulation if you're a people liking extrovert you're gonna want to interact with a lot of people at a time and to do it in big and noisy circumstances and if you're a person loving it people loving introvert you're gonna probably want to get together one-on-one in a quieter type of way or maybe socialize around shared interests and and I think that's really the biggest thing so but what introverts also do need to understand is that when you're just feeling quiet or thoughtful other people can interpret that as you not liking them as the thing is because we're such social beings and we're evolutionarily designed to interact with each other and tribes we're all incredibly sensitive to feeling pushed out or disliked in some way so what might feel to you like just a kind of quiet an inwardly directed moment can feel to somebody else like a form of social rejection and I think this is it's a it's something important for introverts to know but it's also just a great it's a great way of turning it around especially for those of you who feel shy that your job in life is not so much to win the approval of the people around you as to make the other people around you comfortable just remember they're all vulnerable no matter how blustery they appear on the surface they're all vulnerable and so show them that you like them and they'll be happy you'll be happy kind of a virtuous cycle Susan what advice would you give to introverts who are in senior leadership positions that have members of their team that are extroverts is it the same advice you in terms of asking and having them ask extroverts how they want to share their information I guess they know because the extroverts share it any advice you would give you know introverts who are leaders on how to deal with extroverts yeah I mean the introverted leaders I've spoken to you told me they often have to kind of remind themselves to do the outward facing stuff you know because their their inclination would be to focus more on the part where you know you're like sitting at your desk and figuring out what the strategy should be and so on so you might want to do something like schedule two periods of time throughout your day we're gonna make alert those are your time to check in with your team check in with other people and like show your outward facing self or there's one introverted CEO who's an engineer he was talking about when he first started he would walk through the halls of this company I'm often deep inside and kind of looking at the floor and then he realized that he's the CEO now so when he does that people feel like the CEO doesn't like them you know for him he was just being an engineer acting the way engineers do but he had to start kind of managing his self presentation a little bit more and I think that's especially important when you are managing extroverts who really want to have that interaction and want to have that sense of you know back and forth that reminds me of an experience I had once prior to coming to our headquarters job as the chief marketing officer I used to run a large sales division in Chicago and so I had stewardship over about 15 states and maybe 15 or when he salespeople and most of them you know in sales were fairly extroverted outgoing gregarious it was sort of a competition when we would get together for sales meetings as to which one of them could jockey for the best seat and also you know get the boss's attention and I remember one particular meeting we had a client partner who that same of our sales person who you know after two days of meetings this person was very quiet would take notes would rarely speak up and inevitably after sort of the quarterly sales meeting that person would call me and I would be frustrated during the meetings that she was either checked out or not listening and I know she wasn't goofing off I just I would find myself as an extrovert being frustrated that they weren't contributing much and then would inevitably after these quarterly meetings this person would call me and she would say you know Scott on Tuesday in the morning you said this at around 10 o'clock and it kind of has me confused I mean she wouldn't you know recap with exact detail what I had said when I bet you conversely most of the gatah flies in the room are the extroverts you know how'd it be listening at all but it's sat with me to think because her style was quite introverted at least compared to mine had no correlation to her level of engagement or the fact that at the time I thought she was maybe checked out but in fact she proved to me that she was probably more engaged than anybody in the room by the nature of her you know exact recall and for me it's kind of a good memory that you know because you're not talking doesn't mean you're not fully engaged yeah absolutely and you know if you're the one running things like don't you want it here and know and get the best of the brains of the people who aren't necessarily saying as much and so you know what could you do to actually harness what's inside those brains and I always say you know I probably the best thing is not an all-hands meeting like an employee like the kind you were describing if if if you had that person working with you still I would say make sure you're figuring out other ways to know what's inside that brain because she probably has an awful lot to contribute and also figure out what works for her she's in meetings that would get her to contribute and sometimes that can be something as simple as giving that person the floor like you know if you know that she's particularly insightful about topic X say to her in advance you know I I'd love to hear your thoughts today in the meeting on topic X cuz I know you have a lot of insights to share and now she's kind of been invited to take the floor and she'll probably rise to it you're exactly right I mean she had massive contributions and still does I mean you know a significant contributor to our company Susan in our final minutes let's take it personal maybe out of the workplace perhaps as a parent or a sibling or a partner a friend what advice would you give any of us who have discovered or uncovered that perhaps one of our our children is you know more quiet and introverted as you see kind of the future of business and you know and where that's sort of that puck is going what advice would you give to parents who have perhaps some more shy or retiring child I know they're not that's not exclusive with always being introverted any advice you might give us and our personal lives around supporting and nurturing the talents of people who might not be as extroverted as another child come I taking about more of their share of time and attention yeah this is a subject that's really near and dear to my heart and and I know I'm not gonna have time to tell you everything that I wish I could tell you so I'm just gonna tell you some stuff but I'm also gonna say I have a whole chapter of the book that's just about kids and also on our website we've got tons of stuff about kids so if you are parenting such a child there's so much to know but gosh where to start I probably the number one thing is to know that whatever is in your heart and mind about that child the child is gonna pick it up they're gonna know it doesn't matter what you say they'll feel it so you really need to get to a place if you're not there already where you see your child temperament for all the richness and the coolness that it has so your child knows that you feel it and then the big question comes up all the time in parenting Shire Piatt children is when should I honor their preference to maybe stay home and chill out and when should I push them or require them to do something that makes them uncomfortable and there's no sure there's no answer to this that's always right or always wrong but I would ask yourself well what are the place what are the the areas that they absolutely have to do either because it's just some kind of social obligation or because you know that once they get to the other side of their fear discomfort they're actually going to shine in that activity and those are the places where it's worth the extra push and you have to understand that these kids have what I call a longer runway before they take off and fly so if you imagine a kid let's say who is uncomfortable swimming you the answer is not to kind of punitive Li say to them you've got to swim you know throw you in the deep end but the answer of course is not will you never need to learn how to swim it's a basic life skill and source of happiness but you take them with you little by little by little so maybe you bring them to the pool on a day when the pool is really quiet you know at the end of the day let's say and maybe they dip their toe in the water and you declare victory and you go home and then you come back on another quiet day and they go in a little bit deeper and like little by little they get there and eventually that kid is gonna love how to is gonna love swimming maybe great at it and you won't be able to tell them apart from the kid who jumped in on day one but for your child they need to know that you were there with them on that long runway that you get with their feeling and you respect it and that you're good with the whole process because that's part of the reality and I don't think you can really do that until you also acknowledge to yourself that that does take extra work it's emotionally harder there are moments where it's embarrassing that friends kids will run and do things in your child won't but that's okay that's just part of the deal and I'm you know your child will be beautiful and great and successful and everything else Susan have you found any of your research and all your discussions and online work that extraverted parents tend to raise extroverted kids or introverted is there any correlation there at all or you know I don't know about that because there well there's a lot of data that shows that about half of half of couples or introvert extrovert or yin-yang couples and so those couples from a genetic point of view tend to produce kids that are all over the map so you you you see all variety it's right I see a lot of extroverted parents raising introverted kids feeling kind of mystified by them and you see the reverse and every other kind of combination yeah you know and I do think the different combinations each have their own set of pros and cons so extroverted parents have more work to do in terms of understanding what their child is thinking and feeling they can also be really beneficial to you know a child who might take things with an extra degree of care and caution can you know borrow a little bit of the more carefree attitude of their extroverted parent and vice versa I ask because yeah III although I have reputational confusion okay my style is extroverted my wife is the opposite very much introverted but we have three sons under 8 and I feel like they absolutely have more of my personality her character but my personality and I wonder if if extroverted parents have a stronger influence on their children's proclivity than an introverted parent oh I wouldn't say that at all no because I mean well partly it's it's a you know inherited temperament and also parents have all kinds of ways of being really close with their children and having an influence on their children it has little to do with how loudly one speaks or how often one speaks it has my I think it's a much more has much more to do with deep emotional connections when you're talking about parents and kids I worry that in a half an hour I'm gonna email from an email from you with the psychiatrist recommendation in Salt Lake City in our final couple of minutes I want to talk a bit about kind of the reach you have across the world so you've been researching and writing and speaking you have a large you know speaking part of your business you keynote conferences you're available to keynote you also have an a web site and workshops and a newsletter take a minute talk about how if a client wants to engage with you that how they can subscribe to your newsletter and how they can even hire you to come in and speak in their organization yeah sure so our newsletter is through quiet revolution so if you go to quiet Rev calm you can sign up for the newsletter and also on quiet Rev comm there's a there are various forms that you can fill out if you're interested in having me come into keynote or if you'd like to do a workshop at your organization's you just fill out the forms and and we go from there thanks Susan I can attest to seeing you you keynote at a conference that I attended a couple years ago in Salt Lake and you brought the house down although from a very quiet sort of way and your delight to have today an interview my brother just emailed in the chat pod and said it's official introverts Rock well tell your brother a big hi for me it was really Susan what an honor thank you for your time massive impact your book is having really giving voice to I'm sure millions of introverts and really having an influence on extroverts and how to you know work well and see that introverts have you know the same impact as extra extroverts so thank you for your time have a great weekend where we're pleased to joined us thank you so much thank you so much Scott I really enjoyed chatting with you thank you so much Susan and everybody thank you for joining us we'll see you again next week with another thought leader we're honored you spoke to us or had time with us for this hour and we'll see you next week thanks so much [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: FranklinCovey

Views: 1,571

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: FranklinCovey, Scott Miller, Susan Cain, Introverts, Introversion, Leadership

Id: un01v9laTjc

Length: 60min 23sec (3623 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 06 2018