QUIET - Introverts

The modern Western culture favours outgoing, gregarious, vocal, quick-witted, forceful people - extroverts.  Quick talkers are rated as more capable and appealing than slow talkers.  Being shy, quiet and sensitive - common signs of an introvert - is considered undesirable and practically anti-social.  Children are encouraged, even forced, to “overcome” it.

Time and again, however, research has demonstrated that introverts have their advantages.  Researchers such as Anders Ericsson says that one needs ten thousand hours of Deliberate Practice, almost always in solitude, to gain true expertise.  Too-forceful extrovert leaders can also brush aside cautions from more thoughtful colleagues and lead everyone else into disasters.  Such as the AOL-Time Warner merger which wiped out $200 billion of Time Warner share holder value.

Other researches have demonstrated that introverts are physically more sensitive to stimulus, such as heightened activation in the amygdala, a small organ in the brain associated with upsetting emotions such as the fear of rejection.  When a child is quiet, it may not be that he is passive or insensitive.  On the contrary, it may be because he is too sensitive - hence the need to avoid over-stimulation.  It is not that one is better than the other.  Introverts and extroverts simply work in different ways.

Research on brain-storming also throw up some fascinating results.  Trying to come up with new ideas in a group without preparation does generate a lot of ideas, but not particularly good ones.  It is when people are given the problem, and time to work on the problem separately, and then coming together to compare ideas - that’s when the best ideas are generated.

Introverts can also motivate themselves to overcome their natural aversion - when they are acting on strong convictions.

These are just some of the interesting stuff I found in Susan Cain’s “Quiet”. For those of us who are introverts, or who have loved ones who are introverts, it is highly recommended.