Quiet the power of introverts in a world that can t stop talking
Quiet the power of introverts in a world that can t stop talking
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain – review
Early learning … most modern classrooms are designed for extroverts. Photograph: © Stephanie Kuykendal/Corbis
Early learning … most modern classrooms are designed for extroverts. Photograph: © Stephanie Kuykendal/Corbis
W hen you’re at a party, do you suddenly feel the desperate urge to escape somewhere quiet such as a toilet cubicle and just sit there? Until I read Quiet, I thought it was just me. I’d see other partygoers grow increasingly effervescent as the night wore on and wonder why I felt so compelled to go home. I put it down to perhaps there not being enough iron in my diet. But it’s not just me. It’s a trait shared by introverts the world over. We feel this way because our brains are sensitive to overstimulation. I am genuinely astonished by this news. In fact, I read much of Susan Cain’s book shaking my head in wonder and thinking: «So that’s why I’m like that! It’s because I’m an introvert! Now it’s fine for me to turn down party invitations. I never have to go to another party again!»
Cain is an introvert. It has always been, she writes, «private occasions that make me feel connected to the joys and sorrows of the world, often in the form of communication with writers and musicians I’ll never meet in person». She’s an introvert in a world that, she argues, excessively and misguidedly respects extroverts. We make them our bosses and our political leaders. We foolishly admire their self-help books, such as How to Win Friends and Influence People. Before the industrial revolution, she writes, American self-help books extolled character. Nowadays it’s personality. We introverts attempt to emulate extroverts, and the stress of not being «true to ourselves» can make us physically and mentally ill. One introvert Cain knew spent so much of his adult life trying to adhere to the extrovert ideal he ended up catching double pneumonia. This would have been avoided if he’d spent time recharging his batteries in toilet cubicles, and so on.
At the Harvard Business School, socialising is «an extreme sport». Extroverts are more likely to get book deals and art exhibitions than their introverted counterparts. Cain had to persuade a publisher she could conquer her stage fright and promote herself at book festivals before they agreed to take her on. In America, extroverted parents have been known to send their introverted children to psychiatrists to have their introversion «treated» out of them. We think extroverts are great because they’re charismatic and chatty and self-assured, but in fact they’re comparatively narcissistic and unthoughtful and we’re committing a grave error structuring our society around their garrulous blah.
Most egregiously, we form our workplaces around the extrovert ideal. I like her nightmare descriptions of open-plan offices where group brainstorming sessions descend on the startled introvert like flash-storms. Group-think favours the dominant extrovert. The loudest, most socially confident and quickest on their feet win the day, whereas the contemplative and quietly well-informed tend not to get a word in. School classrooms are increasingly designed to reflect this flawed environment. Children sit in pods facing each other and are rewarded for being outgoing rather than original. «You Can’t Ask a Teacher for Help Unless Everyone in Your Group Has the Same Question» read a sign in one New York classroom she visited. All this even though Gandhi and Rosa Parks and Steve Wozniak and JK Rowling and Eleanor Roosevelt have described themselves as introverts, at their best when solitary.
I finished Quiet a month ago and I can’t get it out of my head. It is in many ways an important book – so persuasive and timely and heartfelt it should inevitably effect change in schools and offices. It’s also a genius idea to write a book that tells introverts – a vast proportion of the reading public – how awesome and undervalued we are. I’m thrilled to discover that some of the personality traits I had found shameful are actually indicators that I’m amazing. It’s a Female Eunuch for anxious nerds. I’m not surprised it shot straight to the top of the New York Times bestsellers list.
Cain says we’re «especially empathic». We think in an «unusually complex fashion». We prefer discussing «values and morality» to small talk about the weather. We «desire peace». We’re «modest». The introvert child is an «orchid – who wilts easily», is prone to «depression, anxiety and shyness, but under the right conditions can grow strong and magnificent».
When I get to this part I think: Yes! We are like orchids! With good parenting we can become «exceedingly kind, conscientious and successful at the things that matter to us». Then I feel embarrassed that I derived pleasure from being compared to an orchid and I realise that sometimes Cain succumbs to the kind of narcissistic rhetoric she eschews in extroverts.
Still: her suggestions on how to redress the balance and make the world a bit more introvert-friendly are charmingly cautious. The way forward, she argues, is to create offices that have open-plan bits for the extroverts and nooks and crannies where the quiet people can be quiet. A bit like the Pixar offices. In this she reminds me of the similarly measured Jonathan Safran Foer, whose anti-meat lectures climax in a suggestion that we should try if possible to eat one or two vegetarian meals a week. Give me this kind of considered good sense over showy radical polemicism any day.
But sometimes her brilliant ideas aren’t written quite so brilliantly. Her book can be a bit of a slog, not always a page turner. I wish she’d spent a bit more time adventuring and a bit less time analysing and philosophising and citing vast armies of psychologists. I love feeling her pain when she journeys out of her comfort zone to «life coaching» conventions. But those adventures vanish as the book wears on, and it starts to drag a little, especially during the many chapters about how brain scans seem to demonstrate neurological differences between extroverts and introverts. I don’t know why popular psychology books feel so compelled these days to cite endless fMRI studies. As any neurologist will tell you, we still have very little idea about why certain bits of our brains light up under various circumstances.
And there’s a bigger nagging thought I couldn’t shake throughout the book. It began during the preface, in which Cain prints an «Are You an Introvert?» checklist. She lists 20 statements. The more we answer «true» the more introverted we are: «I often let calls go through to voice mail. I do my best work on my own. I don’t enjoy multitasking. I seem to care less than my peers about wealth, fame and status …» At the bottom of the quiz she mentions: «If you found yourself with a roughly equal number of true and false answers, then you may be an ambivert – yes, there really is such a word.»
I do the test. I answer «true» to exactly half the questions. Even though I’m in many ways a textbook introvert (my crushing need for «restorative niches» such as toilet cubicles is eerie) I’m actually an ambivert. I do the test on my wife. She answers true to exactly half the questions too. We’re both ambiverts. Then I do the test on my son. I don’t get to the end because to every question – «I prefer one-on-one conversations to group activities. I enjoy solitude …» – he replies: «Sometimes. It depends.» So he’s also an ambivert.
In the Ronson household we’re 100% ambivert. We ambiverts don’t get another mention in the book. Even for a writer like Cain, who is mostly admirably unafraid of grey areas, we ambiverts are too grey. Her thesis – built on the assumption that almost everyone in the world can be squeezed into one of two boxes – may topple if it turns out that loads of us are essentially ambiverts. I suspect there are a lot of ambiverts out there.
Jon Ronson’s The Psychopath Test is published by Picador.
Quiet: The Power of Introverts — Book Summary
If you prefer to listen than talk, don’t like to be the center of attention and prefer to work alone than in groups, you probably are an introvert. At least a third of the population is introverted. Author Susan Cain presents several strategies and ideas for introverts to excel in a world created for extroverts. She explains the challenges and advantages of being an introvert, gives valuable tips on how to behave in certain situations, and how to raise introverted children. Using the result of several types of research on the subject, the author seeks to help introverts understand why they see the world differently. If you are an introvert or know someone like that, this microbook will help you to get the most out of social and professional situations and relationships. Come on!
THE RELATIONSHIP OF INTROVERTS WITH THE WORLD
Susan Cain begins her book with a silent bang — presenting all the achievements and accomplishments reached by introverts. In general terms, introverts are people who prefer to think more than talk. They need to spend time alone, do not seek out loud social gatherings, and usually feel guilty about their less friendly nature. It is true that our Western society is very pro-extroverted. We encourage people to speak, to make their voices heard and to mark their place in history. Meanwhile, introverts have quietly secured their places. The likes of Eleanor Roosevelt, Al Gore, Warren Buffet, Gandhi and Rosa Parks, have achieved tremendous changes while being introverts.
Even in adulthood, many feel bruised and embarrassed about having had an introverted childhood. Introverts feel as if they are wrong because they have suppressed feelings. Cain does an excellent job demonstrating that introverts have their place in the world and should not be ashamed.
In general, introverts prefer less external stimuli — noise, interactions, new experiences, social expectations — and extroverts experience as many stimuli as possible. As extroverts delve into problems and tasks, introverts are slower, investigating the situation and expectations before getting involved. Most extroverts prefer to talk; most introverts are excellent listeners. Introverts prefer small social circles of close friends and avoid conflicts and unnecessary conversations. However, it is not correct to relate introversion to shyness. Shyness is the fear of social disapproval or humiliation, while introversion is the preference for environments that are not over-stimulating. A person can be shy and introverted at the same time, but the two characteristics do not always go together. The categories of introversion and extroversion do not have definite limits. You can have traits of both and can respond differently to distinct situations. All of these definitions are useful, but Cain’s focus is on how research on these personalities can help lead a more productive life, regardless of its characteristics.
EXTROVERTED BIAS
At the beginning of the 20th century, experts changed how they studied personality traits. An excellent example of this was Dale Carnegie, who transformed the vision of social expectations with his lectures and books, how to have a winning personality and how to become a successful extrovert. Newspaper columns, advertisements, and government campaigns were created to help develop a ‘healthy personality’ — to become someone who was confident, articulate, and socially engaged. Quiet children were labeled as ‘timid.’ In the 1950s, one of the best-selling drugs in pharmacies promised to solve the problem of ‘anxiety generated by not meeting behavioral standards.’
Even before that, Greeks worshiped great orators, the Romans loved their social lives, and Americans always spoke to audiences about freedom. The reserved facades of the European aristocracy were no longer a trend.
Nowadays, Carnegie’s book is still a bestseller and organizations and help groups everywhere promote ways to speak and be heard. Outgoing personality seems to be what everyone desires. Tony Robbins’ success is the best example of how an outgoing personality can make money. “We should be vibrant and confident; we should not seem hesitant, we should smile so that our interlocutors smile at us.” Being extroverted is associated with success and happiness. For decades the Harvard Business School has built its success upon the image of its confident and outgoing CEO. However, extroversion is not all that we think.
There are numerous successful introverted CEOs. Bill Gates is the best example. We tend to overestimate just how extroverted a leader needs to be. Many quiet leaders built Fortune 500 companies, listening, practicing humility, and making careful decisions. Introverted CEOs speak much less than their extroverted colleagues, but when they do, people pay attention. They are known to build great companies, not big egos. Introverts are the best people to lead creative and innovative employees. Because they prefer to listen to others and because of their lack of interest in mastering social situations, introverts are more likely to listen and implement suggestions. Introverted leaders seek the best from their employees. The exception happens when employees are more passive; in such cases, extroverted leaders do better.
Rosa Parks was introverted. She did not seek out trouble or engage in loud protests and demonstrations. Instead, a quiet ‘no’ when asked to vacate her seat on a bus was an important step for the civil rights movement. Parks did not join Martin Luther King Jr during his demonstrations, but she was silently fighting for her rights in the background. Her quiet, introverted strength had a great impact on the world around her.
These acts of introspective humanitarians are less noticeable but being an extrovert is still revered in every area, from sales to personal development.
FOR AN INTROVERT, THEIR TIME ALONE IS CRUCIAL
Steve Wozniak, the maker of Apple’s computer prototype, did most of his work in his Hewlett-Packard cubicle. He arrived at about 6:30 in the morning and, alone, read engineering magazines, studied the chips manuals and prepared the drawings in his head. After work, he would come home, make a quick bite, and return to the office to work all night. He describes this period of quiet and lonely nights as “his best moment in life.”
Many introverts are creative geniuses. Whether writers, scientists, engineers or artists, introverts have produced some of the world’s most spectacular works. Introverts love to work alone, and this ‘solitude can be a catalyst for innovation.’ Many companies are built to ignore the benefits of solitude. Groupthink — the process in which a group follows the ideas of unvoiced extroverted leaders — is a process of group work, and introverts do not do well with it. From schools to corporations, teamwork always takes place. There are benefits to teamwork such as learning to work and communicating with others, but students and adults who do well in this type of work are all outgoing. When they have the chance to work independently, introverts tend to show their leadership with innovation and brilliance.
The transformation of offices — from rooms and cubicles to open work environments — has not been good for introverts. Noises, interruptions, and lack of individual space mean that they are forced to work with constant stimuli — and this does not allow them to stand out. This concept of ‘all working together’ is not supported by research. In fact, the most successful way of developing skills is individual study and practice. When a person is responsible for developing their abilities, they focus more on their weaknesses and improve their qualities.
Successful adults like Steve Wozniak, Madeleine L’Engle, and Charles Darwin spent countless hours of their childhoods in solitary meditation. Recent studies support the idea that loneliness increases creativity and innovation. In corporate environments, workers do better when they have their space, privacy in physical environments, and freedom without interruption.
Offices with an open concept ignore these facts. Constant interruptions — including office noises — hamper productivity and increase errors. Introverts know this intuitively. They expect to work in privacy environments and like to focus on their tasks without being interrupted.
Studies have shown that Groupthink does not just silence opponents — it also prevents people from changing their minds. The key is to have smaller groups and leaders who listen to everyone. Meetings can be more productive when all participants deliver their written ideas before they begin. Virtual collaborations seem to perform better than large, personally functioning collaboration groups.
The ideal work solution for many would be to have open areas for interaction and collaboration and individual private spaces, where employees can find isolation and fewer stimuli when needed.
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking
The book that started the Quiet Revolution
At least one-third of the people we know are introverts. They are the ones who prefer listening to speaking; who innovate and create but dislike self-promotion; who favor working on their own over working in teams. It is to introverts—Rosa Parks, Chopin, Dr. Seuss, Steve Wozniak—that we owe many of the great contributions to society.
In Quiet, Susan Cain argues that we dramatically undervalue introverts and shows how much we lose in doing so. She charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal throughout the twentieth century and explores how deeply it has come to permeate our culture. She also introduces us to successful introverts—from a witty, high-octane public speaker who recharges in solitude after his talks, to a record-breaking salesman who quietly taps into the power of questions. Passionately argued, superbly researched, and filled with indelible stories of real people, Quiet has the power to permanently change how we see introverts and, equally important, how they see themselves.
Now with Extra Libris material, including a reader’s guide and bonus content.
333 pages, Hardcover
First published January 24, 2012
About the author
Susan Cain
“QUIET: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking,” was released in January, 2012, from Crown Publishers in the U.S., and from Viking/Penguin in the U.K. Quiet Power: The Secret Strengths of Introverts was released in May, 2016 from Dial Books in the U.S., and from Penguin Life in the U.K. «BITTERSWEET: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole» has been released in the U.S. and U.K.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
SUSAN CAIN is the author of the bestsellers Quiet Journal, Quiet Power: The Secret Strengths of Introverts, and Quiet: The Power of Introverts in A World That Can’t Stop Talking, which has been translated into 40 languages, is in its seventh year on the New York Times best seller list, and was named the #1 best book of the year by Fast Company magazine, which also named Cain one of its Most Creative People in Business. Her latest masterpiece, BITTERSWEET: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole, was released in the US on April 5, 2022 (international editions are forthcoming).
LinkedIn named her the 6th Top Influencer in the world. Susan has partnered with Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant and Dan Pink to launch the Next Big Idea Book Club and they donate all their proceeds to children’s literacy programs.
Интроверты. Как использовать особенности своего характера
Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking
Аннотация к книге «Интроверты. Как использовать особенности своего характера»
О книге
Привычная для современного человека практика построения карьеры требует коммуникабельности, напора и умения презентовать себя. Общество поощряет проявление этих качеств, способствуя таким образом своеобразному «естественному отбору».
Общественное мнение оказывает на нас огромное давление. Что же делать человеку, не соответствующему установленным стандартам? Сьюзан Кейн убеждает нас в том, что интроверты не хуже экстравертов способны справляться со сложными задачами. А иногда, в силу особенностей своего темперамента, им удается сделать это намного лучше.
Почему мы решили издавать эту книгу
Актуальность книги для читателей представляется очевидной. Каждому из нас необходимо научиться.
О книге
Привычная для современного человека практика построения карьеры требует коммуникабельности, напора и умения презентовать себя. Общество поощряет проявление этих качеств, способствуя таким образом своеобразному «естественному отбору».
Общественное мнение оказывает на нас огромное давление. Что же делать человеку, не соответствующему установленным стандартам? Сьюзан Кейн убеждает нас в том, что интроверты не хуже экстравертов способны справляться со сложными задачами. А иногда, в силу особенностей своего темперамента, им удается сделать это намного лучше.
Почему мы решили издавать эту книгу
Актуальность книги для читателей представляется очевидной. Каждому из нас необходимо научиться строить карьеру сегодня, когда в результате развития высоких технологий огромное значение приобрели коммуникации. И делать это нужно, опираясь на свои сильные стороны.
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Самая обсуждаемая книга года в США!
В книге представлен познавательный экскурс в историю становления экстравертированной культуры современного западного общества. На примере многих известных личностей автор убедительно доказывает, что отвергаемая обществом интровертированная природа доброй половины человечества позволяет добиваться успеха там, где экстраверту это не по силам, выбирать правильную линию поведения и совершать решительные, даже героические поступки, способствуя тем самым общественному прогрессу. Познакомьтесь: самые известные интроверты в истории:
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Джордж Оруэлл
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QUIET: The Power of Introverts by Susan Cain (Transcript)
Susan Cain- Author, “QUIET: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking”
When I was nine years old I went off to summer camp for the first time. And my mother packed me a suitcase full of books, which to me seemed like a perfectly natural thing to do. Because in my family, reading was the primary group activity. And this might sound antisocial to you, but for us it was really just a different way of being social. You have the animal warmth of your family sitting right next to you, but you are also free to go roaming around the adventureland inside your own mind. And I had this idea that camp was going to be just like this, but better. I had a vision of 10 girls sitting in a cabin cozily reading books in their matching nightgowns.
Camp was more like a keg party without any alcohol. And on the very first day our counselor gathered us all together and she taught us a cheer that she said we would be doing every day for the rest of the summer to instill camp spirit. And it went like this: “R-O-W-D-I-E, that’s the way we spell rowdie. Rowdie, rowdie, let’s get rowdie.” Yeah. So I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why we were supposed to be so rowdy, or why we had to spell this word incorrectly. But I recited a cheer. I recited a cheer along with everybody else. I did my best. And I just waited for the time that I could go off and read my books.
But the first time that I took my book out of my suitcase, the coolest girl in the bunk came up to me and she asked me, “Why are you being so mellow?” — mellow, of course, being the exact opposite of R-O-W-D-I-E. And then the second time I tried it, the counselor came up to me with a concerned expression on her face and she repeated the point about camp spirit and said we should all work very hard to be outgoing.
And so I put my books away, back in their suitcase, and I put them under my bed, and there they stayed for the rest of the summer. And I felt kind of guilty about this. I felt as if the books needed me somehow, and they were calling out to me and I was forsaking them. But I did forsake them and I didn’t open that suitcase again until I was back home with my family at the end of the summer.
Now, I tell you this story about summer camp. I could have told you 50 others just like it — all the times that I got the message that somehow my quiet and introverted style of being was not necessarily the right way to go, that I should be trying to pass as more of an extrovert. And I always sensed deep down that this was wrong and that introverts were pretty excellent just as they were. But for years I denied this intuition, and so I became a Wall Street lawyer, of all things, instead of the writer that I had always longed to be — partly because I needed to prove to myself that I could be bold and assertive too. And I was always going off to crowded bars when I really would have preferred to just have a nice dinner with friends. And I made these self-negating choices so reflexively, that I wasn’t even aware that I was making them.
Now this is what many introverts do, and it’s our loss for sure, but it is also our colleagues’ loss and our communities’ loss. And at the risk of sounding grandiose, it is the world’s loss. Because when it comes to creativity and to leadership, we need introverts doing what they do best. A third to a half of the population are introverts — a third to a half. So that’s one out of every two or three people you know. So even if you’re an extrovert yourself, I’m talking about your coworkers and your spouses and your children and the person sitting next to you right now — all of them subject to this bias that is pretty deep and real in our society. We all internalize it from a very early age without even having a language for what we’re doing.
Now to see the bias clearly you need to understand what introversion is. It’s different from being shy. Shyness is about fear of social judgment. Introversion is more about, how do you respond to stimulation, including social stimulation. So extroverts really crave large amounts of stimulation, whereas introverts feel at their most alive and their most switched-on and their most capable when they’re in quieter, more low-key environments. Not all the time — these things aren’t absolute — but a lot of the time. So the key then to maximizing our talents is for us all to put ourselves in the zone of stimulation that is right for us.
But now here’s where the bias comes in. Our most important institutions, our schools and our workplaces, they are designed mostly for extroverts and for extroverts’ need for lots of stimulation. And also we have this belief system right now that I call the new groupthink, which holds that all creativity and all productivity comes from a very oddly gregarious place.
So if you picture the typical classroom nowadays: When I was going to school, we sat in rows. We sat in rows of desks like this, and we did most of our work pretty autonomously. But nowadays, your typical classroom has pods of desks — four or five or six or seven kids all facing each other. And kids are working in countless group assignments. Even in subjects like math and creative writing, which you think would depend on solo flights of thought, kids are now expected to act as committee members. And for the kids who prefer to go off by themselves or just to work alone, those kids are seen as outliers often or, worse, as problem cases. And the vast majority of teachers reports believing that the ideal student is an extrovert as opposed to an introvert, even though introverts actually get better grades and are more knowledgeable, according to research.
Okay, same thing is true in our workplaces. Now, most of us work in open plan offices, without walls, where we are subject to the constant noise and gaze of our coworkers. And when it comes to leadership, introverts are routinely passed over for leadership positions, even though introverts tend to be very careful, much less likely to take outsize risks — which is something we might all favor nowadays. And interesting research by Adam Grant at the Wharton School has found that introverted leaders often deliver better outcomes than extroverts do, because when they are managing proactive employees, they’re much more likely to let those employees run with their ideas, whereas an extrovert can, quite unwittingly, get so excited about things that they’re putting their own stamp on things, and other people’s ideas might not as easily then bubble up to the surface.
Now in fact, some of our transformative leaders in history have been introverts. I’ll give you some examples. Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, Gandhi — all these peopled described themselves as quiet and soft-spoken and even shy. And they all took the spotlight, even though every bone in their bodies was telling them not to. And this turns out to have a special power all its own, because people could feel that these leaders were at the helm, not because they enjoyed directing others and not out of the pleasure of being looked at; they were there because they had no choice, because they were driven to do what they thought was right.
Now I think at this point it’s important for me to say that I actually love extroverts. I always like to say some of my best friends are extroverts, including my beloved husband. And we all fall at different points, of course, along the introvert/extrovert spectrum. Even Carl Jung, the psychologist who first popularized these terms, said that there’s no such thing as a pure introvert or a pure extrovert. He said that such a man would be in a lunatic asylum, if he existed at all. And some people fall smack in the middle of the introvert/extrovert spectrum, and we call these people ambiverts. And I often think that they have the best of all worlds. But many of us do recognize ourselves as one type or the other.