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There s like an overlap between introversion and shyness.
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So some introverted people are also shy and then some are not.
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And then you have extroverts who are shy.
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So it s kind of complex.
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Welcome to the Art of Charm.
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I m your host, Jordan Harbinger.
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Today we re talking with author and entrepreneur Susan Cain, author of Quiet, The Power of Introverts in a World That Can t Stop Talking.
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Sound familiar?
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You should listen to this show if you re interested in better ways to understand our introverted friends or our introverted selves.
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There s action steps for introverts to become more social and a list of reasons as to why being an introvert might actually be an advantage socially or in negotiation and in many other areas, especially creative and artistic pursuits.
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We re glad to have you here with us today at AOC, so enjoy this one with Susan Cain.
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By the way, if you re new to the show, we d love to send you some top episodes and the AOC toolbox where we discuss things like reading body language and nonverbal communication, the science of attraction, negotiation techniques, networking, mentorship, influence, persuasion tactics, and everything else we teach here at the Art of Charm.
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In the US, just text charmed to 33444, that s C-H-A-R-M-E-D,
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to 33444, and everywhere else, you can go to theartofcharm.com.
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Also at theartofcharm.com slash podcast, you can find the full show notes for this and all previous episodes of the show.
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Alright, here s Susan Cain.
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So when I was a kid, I was really, really quiet.
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Then it s culturally looked down upon to be quiet, especially when you re a kid in this day and age.
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So I started to get louder and be more outgoing, and I got in trouble for that too.
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So it was really annoying for me growing up being a quote-unquote quiet person because it was almost like that wasn t a good thing.
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I noticed in your book, you do mention America basically started valuing extroversion when we started to urbanize, and quiet is pejorative now.
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Why is that, what s going on here?
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Oh gosh, yeah, it s a huge problem.
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And it s really not random that you started out asking that question by talking about your experience as a kid, because that really is when most quiet people become aware that there s somehow something wrong with the way they tend to be naturally.
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You get sent that message very early on in life.
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Yeah, this started about 100 years ago or so, as you were suggesting with urbanization.
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So it was basically like, all of a sudden, people started moving out of their small towns that they had once lived in alongside people they had known all their lives.
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And they started moving out into big cities and trying to ingratiate themselves for prospective corporate employers for the first time.
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And so it suddenly became very important what kind of first impression you could make, how good a salesperson you were, how much charisma you had.
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And we moved from what historians call the culture of character, where people were valued more on, were you a good person inside, to a culture of personality.
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To me, a really fascinating aspect of this is you can literally read the self-help books that were written in the 19th century, and they would talk about how do you become a person of good character.
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But then in the 20th century, the self-help books suddenly start shifting and it all becomes
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about how do you cultivate charisma, and magnetism, and dominance, and those kinds of qualities.
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And we re really still living with that heritage today.
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So we shift from character to personality, and speaking of personality, by the way, I went to, I checked out a Tony Robbins event, which I ended up leaving early this past week, and there were a lot of implications here that to meet social fear, we gotta be hyper-social, and that everything is kind of,
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You re selling whether you know it or not, which is a concept we re very familiar with, but there was a lot of leaning in on that.
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And we see the sales skillset as a virtue to share our gifts with others, right?
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So we have to work on that because if we don t, we re kind of sheltering ourselves in the world and we re not giving the world the gift of us and all this stuff.
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And additionally, as you mentioned in your book, extraversion is something that companies have started to hire for as well, and people even started selecting
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mates based on this quality.
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I mean, it s become something that s so pervasive that if you re quiet now, it s like, oh, you re defective, man.
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You got to get on that.
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Yeah.
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I find in particular, the whole metaphor of sales is the way we think about human interaction.
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I find that to be so deeply problematic because I m not talking about or advocating for people turning into hermits.
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Although I do think there s actually a small
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portion of the population for whom that really is the way they want to live, and they should be blessed to live that way.
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But I think for most people who one would describe as introverts, it s not about being a hermit so much, but it is about choosing the way you connect with people.
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And I think for everybody, introverts and extroverts are much better off just thinking of other people in terms of like, okay, who is a kindred spirit here?
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Who do I truly want to connect with?
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Who do I truly have something to share with?
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And let that be the MO, as opposed to
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I m gonna sell someone the gift of my thoughts and ideas.
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That s just all wrong.
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We ll get into why that s wrong, but I will say that I developed this performance and sales skill set myself, and it has made my life quite a bit better, but I can say pretty definitively, because I haven t gotten rid of my reflective and introverted tendencies, that the reason that it has improved my life is because otherwise,
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I don t think I d be able to fit in well in current times, which, as you say, value personality over character.
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This, for me, had evolved out of necessity and the pain I went through as an introvert as a kid, especially.
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Not out of some love for the process of becoming an extrovert.
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That was a distant second to just make the pain stop.
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I don t wanna be around people, this is painful, I can t deal with this, I m gonna end up playing video games in my underwear for my whole life, I better fix it.
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That s what prompted the changes for me.
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It wasn t because, oh, I just love
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going out and being social all the time.
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I mean, it was like, if I d known what your book was saying now, I probably wouldn t have put so much freaking pressure on myself in every area of extroversion, which made me feel like there was something wrong with me.
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Yeah, and I get what you re saying.
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And so just to be clear, I actually am a big believer in everyone, introverts and extroverts alike, cultivating the social skills that you need to be able to work in this world and to be able to make connections and so on.
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So I m not talking about
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saying, oh, in some perfect world, you don t need social skills.
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I don t mean that at all.
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I m saying rather that the social skills that we adopt should be ones that are based on trying to form genuine connections with people as opposed to selling things to people.
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So I talked to a lot of young people who have gone through the evolution that you were talking about.
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And what ends up happening is they re so understandably
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desperate to not be alone playing video games for all their lives, that they adopt a completely false persona that they re in effect selling every weekend at their frat party or wherever it is, and they end up feeling like it s not them, and they can t keep it up.
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Brian Little, this amazing personality psychologist, calls reputational confusion, where you develop a reputation for being personality X, but that s not really who you are.
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So eventually, you kind of
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you sort of run out of steam, and you have to rework it anyway.
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My feeling is that if you start from a place of feeling entitled to be who you are, and I m a quiet, reflective person, and that s cool, and now I m gonna figure out how to make genuine connections with people from that place, you re much better off.
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I think I agree with that, in that I missed the boat on that, but it sounds like it would ve ended up a little bit better for me, right?
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I mean, what happened in your case?
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You developed all these skills because you were feeling uncomfortable
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what your true self was like.
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And then what happened?
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Were you happy?
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So what happened was, when I was a kid, like I said, I was really quiet, and then it was like, oh, he s so quiet, but I noticed all the people that were well-liked were not quiet, so I became loud, so I got in trouble a bunch, and then I noticed I was getting bored in school, so I was really introverted, and I started getting in trouble for computer hacking and wiretapping when I was like 13, and my parents were like, go out and play with your friends, you re not allowed to sit in the house and do all this internet stuff, because you re just gonna get in trouble, and we can t keep an eye on you, so it was like,
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all right, I can t even hang out in my own house now, so I gotta go out and figure this out.
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And then I joined athletic teams, and that s not really conducive to being an introvert a lot of the time, so I was getting a lot of attention that way.
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And then I started to get attention from the opposite sex, and that was terrifying, so I worked on being comfortable or pretending I was comfortable in those situations.
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I noticed, wow, high school s more fun when I m confident.
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So I worked on that, and then I went to college and I worked on that, and then I went to law school and I worked on that, and then I realized, oh, I m starting to get the hang of this.
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It was very helpful for me and a lot of other people who are going through something similar, and that was the origin of this show in itself, which was
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teach people how to be more extroverted and be more confident and gain some life skills.
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And so it was really rewarding for that reason.
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But what we kind of didn t realize was, okay, you can get these extroverted skills, you can get these sales skills, you can get these life skills and confidence, but you don t have to get rid of everything else.
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You don t have to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
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And now that I live in Silicon Valley, I see that companies are doing this too.
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You have guys like Steve Wozniak,
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who designed things alone and said nothing good has ever been created by a committee.
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Then you ve got this kind of new group think that says, well, creativity is inherently social, so no more cubicles or offices.
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We re all in an open floor plan, which is like the introverted engineer s worst nightmare.
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Yeah, you know, the funny thing is when I first started researching my book, so this was back in like 2006, I live in New York, but I went out to Silicon Valley and plopped myself down there.
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And I thought that I was arriving at this place that was going to be a nirvana for introverts because I knew there were so many of them there, you know, contributing so much.
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But what I found instead, and I m still finding to this day,
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is that you have company after company that s chock full of introverted engineers and other people, and they re contributing massive amounts, and they all feel as if they re being told to be someone they re not.
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And so it s actually a huge problem, which to their credit, I have found many companies to be really receptive to thinking about and addressing, because it doesn t make sense for anybody.
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It just ends up being a waste of people s energy and talent to always be trying to go against the grain of who they actually are.
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And yet we re trained to do that as much as possible.
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And it s our right to learn and grow.
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I want to be really specific here because it s great to learn and grow.
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It s great to push the edges of your comfort zone and things like that.
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But this is something that may be a little bit more ingrained.
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And you mentioned this in the book as well.
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There s two sort of different personality paths, if you will, or character paths.
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There s temperament, which is inborn, and personality, which is a mix of what happens later.
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Can you explain the difference between these two things?
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I mean, are we born with a certain personality, introvert versus extrovert?
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What is nature and what is nurture?
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Yeah, I mean, so there s no human being who s not a mishmash of nature and nurture, for one thing.
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So personality psychologists do believe that introversion and extroversion are among the most heritable of
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personality traits, but even there, there s still a gigantic component of environmental factors.
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Temperament, as you just said, is kind of like about a baby s born and what are the behavioral and emotional profiles that that baby tends to have.
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So we do know that certain babies are born with more reactive nervous systems, which means they just kind of like startle more and react more in response to any kind of stimulation, like anything from drinking some sugar water to being
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kids when they re a little bit older.
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So the babies who have these more reactive nervous systems are the ones who are more likely to grow up to be introverts.
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And that s pretty well documented.
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But that said, you know, people go through tremendous shifts throughout their lives.
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So you can have a kid who, let s say, has this kind of reactive nervous system and is therefore, let s say, pretty shy at a birthday party or something.
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But over time, they will develop
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the skills and the comfort level where that shyness can go away almost completely.
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But at the same time, one of the scientists, Jerry Kagan at Harvard is one of the leaders in this field.
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And he says, it s very unlikely somebody who s born with the temperament of a Bill Gates, they re not going to turn into a Bill Clinton.
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You stretch, you develop, you acquire all kinds of skills.
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People shift all through their lives, but you kind of shift only so much.
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So I m all for people acquiring the skills they need,
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and stepping outside their comfort zones when they need to for the service of the goals they have in life, for sure.
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I would just caution not to attribute all such skills and call those extroverted skills, because I don t think that s really how it works.
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I think if you look more closely, you see that there are some people who tend to connect with others, and sometimes in a really skillful way, but they re doing it in a more quiet style.
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and that could be every bit as effective or more, you know, depending on the context.
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Absolutely.
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I think it can be better to be an introvert in certain social situations.
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We ll talk about that in a bit.
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I wanna say one thing, though.
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You are really good at not being talked over or interrupted.
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Does that come from being talked over and interrupted a lot when you were younger and figuring, like, no longer am I gonna deal with that, I m gonna plow forward?
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Because you do it in a way that s not bull in a china shop, but you definitely don t let people talk over you, and I notice that sometimes
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Introverted people will just kind of let that happen a lot.
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I used to do that a lot as well I think I m pretty Confident even though I think of myself like I ll sort of always be a shy person even though I ve gotten over a lot of my shyness there, but I m also confident at the same time, but I also think
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You know, we were talking before about how we both used to be corporate lawyers in our old life.
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When I stopped practicing corporate law, I actually started training people in negotiation skills.
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It was actually how I made my living for a while, while I was learning how to become a writer.
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And I did a lot of work training women.
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And also, I didn t think of it at the time as training introverts.
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I didn t really have the language for it, but that was what I was doing.
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I was training people who were the kind who wouldn t have thought of themselves as being good negotiators.
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So I thought a lot during that time about how to be assertive or be able to interrupt or not be interrupted while still feeling like you re your own self.
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It just, it felt to me like the advice people are always getting was like, you know, speak up and be this very dominant person, and if you re not that person, feel on some level like it s kind of wrong to be that person.
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I mean, on some deep, instinctual level.
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Then it s never gonna work.
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Despite having so many introverted tendencies, you wrote the book in a cafe, you mentioned.
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Why did you do that?
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That seems like the opposite type of environment that somebody who s a classic introvert would want to be in when they re doing deep work, like writing, creating.
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Yeah, I don t know.
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You know, I lived in Manhattan for 17 years, and I was living there when I wrote the book and wrote it in this amazing cachet in Greenwich Village.
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I often think of Manhattan in general as a kind of introvert s nirvana, because
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It s a really great feeling to be around other people and feel like you re picking up all their creative energy at the same time when there s not a social expectation that you have to be on and talk to them.
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So like the cafe where I did all my work was frequented by a lot of writers and other creative people.
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And there s just something about that.
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I really believe that all humans are pretty porous, you know, and you pick stuff up without even being conscious of it.
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And it feeds you in a really good way.
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You re like feeding each other.
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But yeah, but you re still kind of free in terms of the social norms of a cafe to be looking down at your laptop and sipping your coffee and kind of be happily in your own state of deep flow.
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I work from home, so I m out of luck, but I definitely agree with you.
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I definitely agree with you for the most part, especially if I ve gotta do hours and hours of some writing task, like I m replying to 300 pieces of fan mail or something like that, I will go to a coffee shop, in part because I don t wanna be distracted by something that might be more fun at the time than plowing through my entire inbox, but also just because there s so much energy and activity going on there, I don t get tired as I go, I get more energized as I go.
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Exactly, exactly.
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I do find it s such a delicate balance.
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You know, in the decibel level in the cafe, it has to be just right.
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And if it s an iota too loud, then you stop being able to focus.
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I agree, yeah.
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It s gotta be white noise buzz.
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It can t be like, there s a kid who keeps yelling and throwing things.
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It s like, it can t creep into my consciousness.
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It s gotta remain subconscious, otherwise it is distracting.
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You mention in the book as well that
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Extroverts tend to attain leadership in the public domain.
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So you mentioned Bill Clinton as well, and introverts tend to attain leadership in theoretical and aesthetic fields.
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Why is that?
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I mean, that must have to do with the advantages of being an introvert at some point.
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Yeah, okay.
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So first of all, I don t want to overstate that point because you do see introverts, you know, being CEOs and all kinds of things where you might not exactly expect to find them, but there they are.
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Same for extroverts.
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I think it s really just that there s only so many hours in the day.
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I think it s nothing more exciting.
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Um, that explains it than that.
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There s only so many hours in the day.
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And if you re the person who s drawn to going and painting in your studio or, or like sitting and thinking about science, let s say you might just get a little more done in that field than somebody who s equally talented at it, but who s drawn to be spending their time in other places.
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The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi talks about this, that there are some teenagers who are really talented in various domains, but they don t have the ability or the interest to sit in a room by themselves for the period of time that s required to really deepen their craft or their talent, and so they may not end up going as far with it.
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Do you think Tim Cook is an introverted CEO, just random tangent?
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I do.
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I do think so.
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Yeah, because he s an engineer as well.
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I see that a lot all over Silicon Valley.
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I think you see introverted CEOs.
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And I think what explains it is that a lot of these people would not be CEOs of something else.
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Like these aren t necessarily people who, you know, destined to become a leader and
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almost didn t matter what they became a leader of.
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It s rather people who got really into what they were doing, and that thing was technology, and because they were really good at it and really into it, they ended up acquiring all kinds of expertise and networks and so on, and they end up becoming leaders, and often very good ones.
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But it s a different pathway from a Bill Clinton who, I m sure, from the time he was a little kid, you just knew he was going to grow up and lead something.
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Right, of course, yeah, you just, you see the naturals in there.
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And by the way, congratulations on being the one in 500.
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who can say Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi without saying, you know, it s a really complicated last name, I just give up before trying.
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SPEAKER_03
So props to you on that as well.
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SPEAKER_00
That s really funny, I love him so much.
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One of the things that struck me, and I believe you may mention this in your book, or maybe this is my own note, but one of the reasons that a lot of introverts tend to attain leadership slash mastery in theoretical fields, aesthetic fields, is because oftentimes deliberate practice happens alone.
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And we did a show with Dr. Anders Ericsson who kind of, I think he coined the term deliberate practice as well.
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It happens when you re by yourself much of the time, and so,
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If you re by nature spending a lot of your time alone working on something, especially if you have a high level of intelligence or maybe an obsessive personality like some of these guys and girls who get really good at particular industries, sports, writing, and cultural pursuits, you tend to get in a lot of deliberate practice, which tends to lead to mastery that much quicker.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, exactly.
2
SPEAKER_00
It was Anders Ericsson who told me about that.
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SPEAKER_00
And it s so interesting because there s been all this talk about deliberate practice and the 10,000 hour rule.
2
SPEAKER_00
I think it was ever since Malcolm Gladwell wrote about it in his book, Outliers.
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SPEAKER_00
But nobody talks about this aspect of it.
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SPEAKER_00
You know, the way Anders Ericsson explains it is,
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If you re trying to work on your craft and you re doing it in the context of a group, you re going to end up spending so much time working on things that other people need to focus on that are either too hard for you, too easy for you, not of interest to you, just not where you need to be for your practice.
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SPEAKER_00
So the best way to do the practice is either by yourself,
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in drills and that kind of thing, or working one-on-one with a coach who s tailoring everything to exactly where you need to be.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that gets lost along the way, but it s true not only, actually, of people in theoretical fields, like a chess player, let s say.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s also true of even elite athletes in team sports, they say.
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Often the best athletes are the ones who have the wherewithal to just sit there by themselves on the basketball court and drill over and over again.
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SPEAKER_00
We ve been doing a lot of work at Choir Evolution with schools
2
SPEAKER_00
And although our mission is to help schools harness the talents of introverted students, we also worry a lot about the extroverts because we think that they re the ones who by their nature are not gonna teach themselves how to do that kind of solitary, deep dive, do this over and over till I get it right kind of work because they re so drawn to being with other kids.
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SPEAKER_00
And nowadays, the educational system isn t really giving kids that practice because so much is being done now in group work
2
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that the extroverted kids are starting to miss out.
2
SPEAKER_03
Interesting, I did not realize that.
2
SPEAKER_03
But it does make a lot of sense that we focus and we create workplaces like this, going back to sort of the open office workspace.
2
SPEAKER_03
So I did notice in your book, we ve actually got some really good anecdotes about how when we re in groups, we often give wrong answers more often, and it s not just social pressure, but the peer pressure doesn t just push us to conform, but actually changes our perceptions in our brains, leading to the wrong answer.
2
SPEAKER_03
So you end up with,
2
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a lot of folks that are introverted getting separate answers that might be more correct because they are working alone, which I thought was fascinating.
2
SPEAKER_03
So essentially, if we re managing people and we have some introverted creatives or high reactives, as you mentioned, we might want to leave those people alone because that s how they do their best work, and sometimes their best work might be better than work done by a group of people working together on the same problem.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and I d actually go a step farther and say that you want to do that for the extroverts, too.
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SPEAKER_00
If you have a problem that you want to solve or a creative project and you want everybody rolling up their sleeves and doing a deep think, you want to send the extrovert and the introverts off to do it by themselves because all the research finds that people who brainstorm by themselves will produce more ideas and better ideas than groups of people brainstorming together.
2
SPEAKER_00
And that s just as true of the extroverts as it is of the introverts.
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SPEAKER_00
So, you know, it s easier for the introverts to do the solitary work.
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SPEAKER_00
and the extroverts might resist it at every turn, but really everybody should be doing it.
2
SPEAKER_03
Now, what advantages do introverts have over extroverts?
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SPEAKER_03
Let s talk proper parenting, proper environment.
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SPEAKER_03
Introverts have strengths and advantages.
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SPEAKER_03
Can we list some of those and explain some of these?
2
SPEAKER_03
Because I know that there s a lot of folks listening that are thinking, okay, got it, got it, got it.
2
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, I still want to know why it hasn t been just one painful thing after another and this has all been worth it.
2
SPEAKER_03
Tell me.
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SPEAKER_00
I mean, as we re saying, there s this ability to kind of sit still, focus, go deep, and
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SPEAKER_00
the fruits of that can be incredibly intense.
2
SPEAKER_00
So that s one thing.
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SPEAKER_00
Another thing that gets talked about much less often is that there are a lot of introverts in leadership positions, and not just the theoretical and aesthetic kind, but the conventional kind of leadership, let s say.
2
SPEAKER_00
And there s a growing body of research showing that introverted leaders often deliver better outcomes than extroverted leaders do.
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SPEAKER_00
To some degree, this depends on the situation.
2
SPEAKER_00
So Adam Grant.
2
SPEAKER_03
Had him a few times, yeah.
2
SPEAKER_03
Great dude, great guest as well.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I love Adam.
2
SPEAKER_00
So he did this famous study where he looked at leaders and he found that extroverted leaders delivered better outcomes when they were managing people who were less proactive.
2
SPEAKER_00
So the staff of people who really needed encouragement and they needed kind of rousing,
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An extrovert is better at getting people all jazzed up to go.
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SPEAKER_00
But if you have already a staff who s proactive, it s the introverted leaders who deliver the better outcomes.
2
SPEAKER_00
And this is partly because the introverts are really good at listening and valuing other people s ideas and encouraging people to actually run with those ideas and take them to the next place.
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And that leads to really great results.
2
SPEAKER_03
This spills over socially as well.
2
SPEAKER_03
I noticed you state that introverts may have better social skills because they observe and notice more before diving into social groups.
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I am like this.
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Now I force myself to make a good first impression so that it seems outgoing and charismatic, but then I hang back and observe and get the lay of the land and map the dynamics of the group, and I also try to shape the way that the group works.
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SPEAKER_03
That s learned, and we talk about those types of things, teach those types of skill sets at our boot camps here in LA.
2
SPEAKER_03
And I m wondering, though,
2
SPEAKER_03
Of course we re able to stretch our personalities like I ve done in the past, but probably only up to a point.
2
SPEAKER_03
And you have an interesting rubber band theory of personality.
2
SPEAKER_03
Can you talk about that a little bit?
2
SPEAKER_03
Because it seems like no matter what you do, you re still going to, at times, snap back into your default mode.
2
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, so the idea is that we all can stretch, that we all should stretch.
2
SPEAKER_00
Brian Little, again, my favorite personality psychologist, he talks about how we all have these core personal projects in our lives, and these are either the work projects or the people we love, and for the sake of those people and those projects, we will often step outside our comfort zone, and we should do that.
2
SPEAKER_00
you can only stretch only so far.
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SPEAKER_00
That s my rubber band theory.
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SPEAKER_00
You can stretch, you should stretch, but at a certain point you re going to snap.
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SPEAKER_01
You just can t do it.
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SPEAKER_01
So the key is to be thinking, okay, is this something where it s like worth it?
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You know, is this in the service of my core personal project?
3
SPEAKER_01
So, I mean, I ll just give you an example.
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Like I threw my husband a 50th birthday party, a surprise party for his 50th birthday.
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And that s not like my natural thing to do, to be spending a year of tracking down all his old friends, finding them, coordinating them, organizing the party, presiding over this party.
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But you do that because it s in the service of, in that case, someone you love.
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SPEAKER_01
But the key is that after you do those things, you should then do what Brian Little calls taking a restorative niche, which is
3
SPEAKER_01
saying to yourself, okay, I just spent a weekend planning a surprise party.
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SPEAKER_01
So the next day I get to, you know, chill out and go get a massage and sit in a cafe with my laptop by myself.
3
SPEAKER_01
So it s a question of having that kind of balance.
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And I don t think that
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people achieve that balance until they really, deep down, feel emotionally entitled to be who they are.
3
SPEAKER_01
I really do think that s the key.
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Because if you don t emotionally feel entitled, then you re just gonna keep on stretching yourself beyond the point of all rationality.
3
SPEAKER_00
Right, at which point, do you experience some sort of stress or some sort of cognitive dissonance or something like that?
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, what happens if you keep trying to stretch yourself?
3
SPEAKER_01
oh my gosh, I mean, for some people, they literally burn out, you know, they get literally physically ill, or they just stop being able or wanting to do the job that they were doing in the first place.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s like that, I think the consequences can be pretty extreme.
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Sometimes it just means that they end up being where they should be in the first place.
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SPEAKER_01
So as young women who sent me a letter,
3
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And she told me that she was at a high school where the most prestigious feather in your cap thing to do was to be the peer leadership counselor.
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SPEAKER_01
You know, there was this program, you had to apply for it.
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SPEAKER_01
So she said she spent like a whole year trying to figure out how to be more of an extrovert.
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SPEAKER_01
And she was finally chosen for this program, twisted herself into a pretzel to do what she was supposed to do.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then she actually got kicked out of it six months later because she really just, she wasn t the extroverted model that the teachers were looking for for this thing.
3
SPEAKER_01
And she was devastated.
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SPEAKER_01
But then after that, she realized that what she really wanted to do and what she really loved to do in the first place was science.
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She hadn t actually really wanted to be a peer leadership person.
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SPEAKER_01
And so she started hanging out with her biology teacher after school.
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And she ended up writing her first scientific paper, publishing it at 17.
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She won a scholarship to university.
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She s now majoring in biomedical engineering.
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SPEAKER_01
And like, she didn t actually need to stretch all that time.
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SPEAKER_01
In her case, the stretching so far that she finally snapped was the blessing that helped her figure out where she was supposed to be in the first place.
3
SPEAKER_00
So in your work, you ve seen certain differences in the brain that showed introverts tend to be more sensitive to input, which makes sense.
3
SPEAKER_00
I think a lot of introverts get overwhelmed with input more easily when there s things that are noisy.
3
SPEAKER_00
In fact, I was playing with my friend s kids the other day.
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They re really young, they re four and five.
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three or two and a half or something like that.
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SPEAKER_00
And the boy was kicking this game that made noise every time you hit it.
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It was like Hungry Hungry Hippos 2.0 type thing.
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And the little girl was sitting there and she goes, no, it s too loud.
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SPEAKER_00
And I thought, what an interesting.
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SPEAKER_00
critique, not stop kicking my toy, and it was just, oh, it s too loud, and I thought, wow, that is exactly what I was thinking, but I figure I m playing with kids, it s gonna be loud, but she also didn t like that, this three-year-old girl, and I realized, uh-oh, this is the one that also tends to be a little bit less rambunctious, and it s probably a little bit too early for me to say what her personality type is, but she might have that inborn temperament that makes her a little bit more,
3
SPEAKER_00
introverted potentially.
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SPEAKER_00
I guess we ll see how that plays out over the next couple of decades, but I just thought, wow, when s the last time you heard a little kid say, no, it s too loud?
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SPEAKER_00
And it s pretty rare, right?
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SPEAKER_00
At least in my experience.
3
SPEAKER_01
No, well, that s the funny thing.
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SPEAKER_01
I actually think you hear it a lot if you re listening for it and if you re giving the kids an environment where they feel like they can say it.
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SPEAKER_01
I mean, once you start looking for this stuff, you actually do see it all over the place.
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SPEAKER_01
And kids really know because
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SPEAKER_01
Well, they kind of have a double consciousness because they are getting from a very young age, the message that they re supposed to be rambunctious and all this stuff, but they re also still kids.
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SPEAKER_01
So they ll tell you what they really think and feel.
3
SPEAKER_00
I definitely think that the input thing could lead to higher levels of perception.
3
SPEAKER_00
Would you agree with that?
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, does being more sensitive to input make us more sensitive to that very same input in terms of being able to think about or process it in some other way that might be advantageous?
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh yeah, absolutely.
3
SPEAKER_01
So it s kind of a double-edged sword because yeah, on the one hand, it s a liability because you kind of reach your overload state faster, but on the other hand,
3
SPEAKER_01
it does do what you re saying.
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SPEAKER_01
So, for example, there s this one study that was done with children where they gave them one of those puzzles where the job is to discern the difference between two pictures that appear to be really similar, and they re just very subtly different.
3
SPEAKER_01
And you find that the kids who are more quiet and cautious tend to be better at a puzzle like that.
3
SPEAKER_01
And in the lab, apparently, you can literally see their eyes moving back and forth more frequently comparing the two pictures.
3
SPEAKER_01
So it really is this way of interacting with reality.
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SPEAKER_01
We tend to think that it s all about, do you put a lampshade on your head at parties or not?
3
SPEAKER_01
Just to be crude about it.
3
SPEAKER_00
If you re an introvert, you put a lampshade on your head at parties so nobody sees you.
3
SPEAKER_01
Right, there s that.
3
SPEAKER_01
But yeah, it really is about how do you take in your information?
3
SPEAKER_01
What information do you notice or not?
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SPEAKER_01
I don t know, with the input thing, even for me, at this stage of life, I still find myself noticing things that I hadn t previously
3
SPEAKER_01
and I, we travel a lot and he s an extrovert.
3
SPEAKER_01
And when we go to airports, what always happens is that he totally speeds up and I slow down and get kind of molasses-like.
3
SPEAKER_01
And we had always noticed that difference, but we hadn t really thought about it until it occurred to us at some point.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s kind of classic.
3
SPEAKER_01
Like I m in an airport and I m just overwhelmed by all the stimuli.
3
SPEAKER_01
So it makes me slow and he gets hyped up from it.
3
SPEAKER_00
Right, he s energized by it.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, once you start paying attention to this stuff, it sort of shows up in all kinds of interesting ways.
3
SPEAKER_00
Very interesting, yeah, and this sort of touches upon writing your book in a cafe, where we need to find environments with the right level of stimulation to operate at our best, whether or not we re introverted or extroverted.
3
SPEAKER_00
We have to find the right kind of environment to be energized, to be able to do what we are doing.
3
SPEAKER_00
Right now I m in a studio in my house with my show notes, a microphone, some coffee that tastes really, really bad, and my phone facing upside down so I don t get distracted.
3
SPEAKER_00
But on some days, I wish that I had a big window that was
3
SPEAKER_00
looking out onto a Manhattan street or something like that because it would be a little bit more energizing.
3
SPEAKER_00
My mood definitely fluctuates, but I d say my default is I just don t want any distraction whatsoever and I have a recording light outside here that people in my household know that if they walk in while that s on, they re gonna get hung by their ankles out of the second floor window.
3
SPEAKER_00
because I can t handle it, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
I can only do one thing well at a time, and I don t want that extra stimulation.
3
SPEAKER_00
And other times, I have to get that stimulation somehow, even though I m trying to have a conversation, because my brain needs it.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I think that that might have more to do with ambivert-type tendencies that you mentioned later on in the book as well.
3
SPEAKER_00
But I wanted to highlight the input thing, because I know a lot of folks say, well, there s a lot of inhibitions, very introverted.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s not inhibition, it s more sensitivity, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
And there s a distinction there that I think is important.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
3
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
3
SPEAKER_01
Wait.
3
SPEAKER_01
So two things.
3
SPEAKER_01
One is the thing about sometimes you really want lots of stimulation and sometimes you don t at all.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t know that I would say that that comes from being an ambivert.
3
SPEAKER_01
I don t think it s that necessarily because it s really true of everybody.
3
SPEAKER_01
Introverts, extroverts that you re craving for and your tolerance of stimulation really varies throughout the day.
3
SPEAKER_01
And I think one of the best things about becoming mindful about this stuff is you get to know yourself better and you can kind of
3
SPEAKER_01
try to choose your environment as best you can, you know, so that you re in your sweet spot at any given moment.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then the thing about inhibition at bottom, this is more about sensitivity and how are you reacting to stimulation?
3
SPEAKER_01
What ends up happening is there s this whole other layer or component of shyness and shyness is much more about the fear of social judgment.
3
SPEAKER_01
And do you feel excessively self-conscious when you re in a social situation?
3
SPEAKER_01
Do you tend, if you re seeing somebody with a neutral expression on their face, do you tend to attribute disapproval to that person?
3
SPEAKER_01
In practice, there s like an overlap between introversion and shyness.
3
SPEAKER_01
So some introverted people are also shy, and then some are not.
3
SPEAKER_01
And then you have extroverts who are shy.
3
SPEAKER_01
So it s kind of complex.
3
SPEAKER_00
Right, it s not cut and dry.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s not if you do this, you re introverted, and if you do this, you re extroverted.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, and all of this, it s such a mishmash.
3
SPEAKER_01
So an introverted tech person, let s say, will tend to be very different from an introverted actor or an introverted lawyer.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s not like this explains everything.
3
SPEAKER_01
But at the same time, it explains a whole heck of a lot.
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s very tempting to paint ourselves one way
4
SPEAKER_00
or another because in America today, we don t make a whole lot of room for different personality styles, and we see ourselves largely as a nation of extroverts, which may put people at a significant disadvantage.
4
SPEAKER_00
Our lives are shaped as profoundly by personality as by gender or race, and yet not that many people are talking about it because, well, one is considered good and one is considered maybe not as good, especially for different types of jobs and things like that.
4
SPEAKER_00
This is important for people who know already maybe that they re extroverts because if you re not an introvert yourself, you are probably the parent of one, you re managing some, you re married to one, you re dating one.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, this isn t something you can escape just because it doesn t affect you.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, no, that s absolutely true.
4
SPEAKER_01
So it s one out of every two or three people is introverted.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it s funny that you mentioned the workplace side of it, because I actually started thinking about this gazillion years ago when I was a corporate lawyer like you, I was always really interested in gender issues and thinking about how they shaped all the different lawyers experiences.
4
SPEAKER_01
But then I started realizing, like I used to sit around boardroom tables, watch me in negotiation.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I was thinking, you know what, gender is not explaining everything that s going on here.
4
SPEAKER_01
There s like this whole other thing that s happening of some people
4
SPEAKER_01
being more out there and some being more interior.
4
SPEAKER_01
And that s what s really shaping everything.
4
SPEAKER_01
Well, I don t mean genderism, but that s this huge other thing.
4
SPEAKER_01
And no one s talking about it and there s no language for talking about it.
4
SPEAKER_01
So that s what made me think to write the book in the first place.
4
SPEAKER_01
And then years later now to start Choir Evolution, where we re going in and working with companies to help them harness the talents of the introverted part of their workforce.
4
SPEAKER_01
Because I think there s so much being left on the table.
4
SPEAKER_01
We did a study recently through Choir Evolution
4
SPEAKER_01
And we found that the majority of people believe that their companies are not properly harnessing the talents and the value of the introverted half of their population.
4
SPEAKER_01
So that s ridiculous, really.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s such a shame, and you note in your work that one out of every two or three people you know are introverts, and if those numbers are surprising to you, if you re listening to this and you think half the country, almost half the country, this is ridiculous, think about this.
4
SPEAKER_00
How many introverts are pretending to be extroverts so that you don t even know?
4
SPEAKER_00
who s which, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
Because I m one of those people.
4
SPEAKER_00
Most people would never go, well, Jordan Harbinger, he s one quiet guy, that talk show host that puts out four hours of content every week.
4
SPEAKER_00
You know, he s definitely an introvert.
4
SPEAKER_00
But if you go by the tests, and you look at the rest of my life, my fiance s parents, when they met me, they were like, what do you do again?
4
SPEAKER_00
Because I go to their house for dinner, and we go there several times a week, they live really close.
4
SPEAKER_00
I just, I don t talk much.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m reading, I m looking at some researching, I might be chatting with people online, you know, my team here at Art of Charm or Jason or something, or watching something, but very rarely am I showing up to the family event, running the thing like Tom Jones, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I m quiet except when I need to do this particular aspect of the job, which, don t get me wrong, I love, it s my favorite part.
4
SPEAKER_00
However, you know people like this, most likely, that are introverts, but they re the one going up and giving the talk for the morning, or they re your manager, or they re somebody that you manage.
4
SPEAKER_00
We re undercover, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
It s like aliens among us.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yes, absolutely.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, and I can tell you, because of what I talk about, all the introverts who are out there doing what you just described, they all tell me about it.
4
SPEAKER_01
And there are so many of them.
4
SPEAKER_01
Unofficial poll, it just seems to me that most people in the media are introverts.
4
SPEAKER_01
I don t mean necessarily like the cable talk show host people, but most print reporters, for sure.
4
SPEAKER_01
Most radio reporters, I would say.
4
SPEAKER_01
They re exactly the way you describe yourself.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s really common.
4
SPEAKER_01
And it s just people pass, and so we don t realize it.
4
SPEAKER_00
because we re looking at everything through the extrovert ideal, which is that being quiet is a second-class trait, you don t wanna do that, you wanna be somebody who can be outgoing, and on the other hand, introverts are often painting themselves with the other side of the brush, which is, oh, well, since I m not an extrovert, I m an introvert, so now I have a medical excuse for being quiet and not networking and not developing relationships, and there s a lot of confusion as to what being introverted actually means.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I note this when I teach a lot of networking or teach Art of Charm programs here in L.A.
4
SPEAKER_00
or elsewhere, it tends to be, well, you know, I m an introvert, so I can t do the networking thing.
4
SPEAKER_00
And I don t believe that for a second.
4
SPEAKER_00
We look at the extrovert ideal and then we, as introverts, we like to hide behind the other side of that same coin, which is,
4
SPEAKER_00
basically saying, look, I can t do this.
4
SPEAKER_00
Not I don t like to or not I m more comfortable elsewhere, but I can t do it because I took a Myers-Briggs in high school and they said I can t.
4
SPEAKER_00
So we re done working on that skill set now.
4
SPEAKER_01
No, I know.
4
SPEAKER_01
And that is really the problem with any kind of labeling.
4
SPEAKER_01
And so it s something I always try to be really careful about, because I think to the extent one is going to label oneself an introvert, you ve got to do it in an empowering way and not the other way around.
4
SPEAKER_01
Like for example, with networking, I really do believe this, that if you re somebody who s introverted and you re going to a networking event, it s probably not the right goal for you to be like, okay, I m the one who s going to work the room.
4
SPEAKER_01
But you can be the one who s going to go and look for a few kindred spirits, right?
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Connect with those people and then really nurture those connections in an in-depth way.
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You know, I could tell my whole life has been that way where
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I don t think I have the widest network around, but I have a really deep one of people who I love.
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And I feel like every good thing that s happened to me, from meeting my literary agent to meeting my husband, like that, it s all come from this incredibly deep network.
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So I did this really great interview with Arianna Huffington and her daughter Isabella.
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Arianna, she says she s a bit of an introvert, but she s obviously much more out there.
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And her daughter Isabella is truly introverted and an artist.
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And Isabella told me that she s developed this kind of rule of thumb over time, which is that when she has a social event that she s feeling like she doesn t really want to go to, she asks herself, am I staying home out of fear or am I staying home just because
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I really honest to goodness would rather be painting in my studio right now.
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And if the answer is that she just honest to goodness wants to do that, then it s okay.
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But if she s doing it out of fear, then she gives herself a push to go.
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Perfect, I think that s very important because you have to be able to sit down and of course that s a very introverted thing to do.
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Let me examine my emotional state and figure out whether I m doing this because of fear or whether I m doing it because I really want to do something.
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And I find myself doing that a lot.
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That does seem like a very perceptive, intuitive, or whatever label we want to throw on it, speaking of labeling.
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That seems like a very introverted thing to do, which is look at your own motivations and examine those and then make a decision after that instead of just going for whatever.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Now, is it possible, though, that those of us that have been told, oh, you re in your head too much, you re cerebral, you re quiet, is it possible that we would enjoy more professional success by shoring up what might, for some folks, might be weak social skills?
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Because I m not saying introverts have weak social skills.
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I am saying that oftentimes they allow their social skills to get weak or be undeveloped because of what I mentioned earlier, which is this sort of built-in medical excuse for not putting themselves in uncomfortable situations.
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I just want to highlight this because I don t want people to think, well, I have this so I get a pass.
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I think it is important to do what your friend does, which is say, what reason am I doing this?
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Be very honest with yourself and give yourself a push where necessary.
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Absolutely.
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I mean, so one of the things that we try to do, like when we go in and we work with people in companies,
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Our approach is you should be figuring out, don t accept what you probably are hearing if you re hearing it from someone who hasn t given this a lot of thought.
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You ll often be told, be more like your colleague down the hall who s more of an extra.
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Just be like that.
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And that s really not the answer.
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The answer is much more, can you figure out how to draw on your own natural strengths?
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Use what comes naturally to you and do that well.
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And then at the same time, you want to combine that with every so often you just have to push yourself outside of your comfort zone and grit your teeth through it.
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The real key is how can you do it as naturally as possible?
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And I think finding a role model is so huge.
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So somebody who has a temperament like yours, has a style like yours, who s doing the thing you want to be doing, and they re doing it well, and you can channel that person during the moments that feel difficult for you, can be really powerful.
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I think that s very wise.
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I mean, looking at somebody who we can emulate.
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And again, to be clear, introversion is not something where you have weak social skills.
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Introverts might have strong social skills, enjoy parties, business meetings, but after an hour and a half, two hours, I want to be home in my pajamas.
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It doesn t mean antisocial.
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It doesn t mean unable to socialize.
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And I think the confusion often comes from
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being shy versus introverted.
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I think a lot of people conflate the two.
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But why do they do that?
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Why do people conflate shyness versus introverted?
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What s going on here?
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Because I think that results in a lot of annoying discomfort in really awkward situations or the labeling that you mentioned earlier.
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The reason they tend to get confused is because shyness and introversion can lead to the same result even though they might be coming from completely different motivations.
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So if you have, for example, somebody being quiet in a meeting
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Maybe they re being quiet because they feel shy and unsure of themselves.
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And maybe it s because they re feeling introverted, meaning sort of overstimulated.
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And by the time they think of the thing they want to say, the conversation s already
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or already moved ahead of them, but it kind of looks the same.
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And so most people don t really think beyond that.
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But having said that, we really think of our work with Quiet Revolution as being about shyness as much as it is about introversion.
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Because 50% of people will tell you that they feel shy, at least for some significant portion of the time.
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And that s real.
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And shyness too tends to be associated with all kinds of pro-social qualities like being
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a loyal and caring friend, being very conscientious.
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It s sometimes associated with forms of aesthetic sensitivity.
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What I really want to say is anytime we find ourselves only privileging the MO that s like, take the bull by its horns and be dominant and be out there, you re probably leaving a lot of emotional and aesthetic value and humanity on the table.
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Well, I dig that.
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I agree at least as much as I can based on having read your book and been an introvert and otherwise have no expertise on the subject.
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This book is really interesting.
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I want to give you some prompts before we wrap here.
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Your work is really interesting.
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I mean, you ve broken down how sensitive people have thinner boundaries, more sensitive to taste, light, and smell, how we, I should say, are often better negotiators,
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closer social groups because they listen more than they talk, they think before they speak.
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There s a lot of expression in writing rather than conversation, which tends to be more well thought out, at least in my opinion.
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And there s just a whole lot here for the introvert or someone who suspects they might be, or for somebody who s close to an introvert, maybe married one, raising one.
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I do have a question though, a couple final questions, which is,
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How can one s culture influence our personalities in terms of introversion and extroversion?
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Because I noticed America, like we said before, a nation of introverts, but I ve also been to places in Asia and even Scandinavia, Finland for example.
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Finns are notoriously introverted as well.
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Does our culture influence this and to what extent?
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Yes, it influences it hugely.
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So, you know, in the book I have a whole chapter where I talk about
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Asia, and particularly Confucian belt societies, where the ethos really is that everything is about group harmony, that s the true value.
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And if you want to have group harmony, you don t want to have any one person who s drawing too much attention to themselves, because that s disruptive to the group.
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In these cultures, it s much more, there s an aphorism, the wind howls, but the mountain remains still.
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So strength is seen as the person who has the ability to not be talking too much and can exercise restraint.
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It s completely the opposite of like the squeaky wheel gets the grease.
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So, you know, you do end up getting a lot of misunderstandings when you have, for example, global business and you have people from a Confucian belt society sitting in a meeting with people from New York society.
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You ll have misunderstandings where let s say people from Japan are maybe not agreeing with an idea that s been put forth in a meeting.
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would have a very different way of expressing that.
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In certain cases in Japan, you wouldn t want to express your disagreement too directly, because that would be disruptive and rude and inappropriate.
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So you can see how that leads to all kinds of misunderstandings.
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Sure, well, that leads to my next question very conveniently, which is, is our cultural preference here in the states, or the West, I should say, for extroversion, is that the natural order of things, or is that socially determined?
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It sounds like it s socially determined, and if you agree with that, then let me ask you this, can introverts be leaders?
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Well, it seems like from an evolutionary perspective, introversion must have survived as a personality trait for a reason.
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What s the reason?
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This is actually one of the first things that I wanted to look at.
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That s exactly the question I asked when I first started researching the book.
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The reason is, I mean, it s actually really interesting.
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You see introversion and extroversion in almost every single species of the animal kingdom, all the way down to fruit flies.
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You know, like there are some fruit flies that biologists call sitters because they tend to kind of sit still or stay in place.
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And then there are others who are rovers because they go out and they re more bold and exploratory.
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So really all the way through you see this, and it s basically just because these are completely different survival strategies.
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And in some cases, when let s say food is scarce, it pays to be more of a quote extrovert because you re
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exploring and you re going to get the far-flung food.
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But then in other cases, for example, when there are lots of predators around, you do much better if you have a more circumspect strategy, like staying behind your rock, let s say, in the pond.
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When you think about it and you start looking at human behavior from that lens, it explains everything.
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And you start realizing you can t even imagine an organization that doesn t have both types of people in it.
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Because you really need the people who are like, let s do this, and they re not really worried too much about the predators who are out there, because they re just gonna go and advance their thing.
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And then you need the people who are like, wait a minute, there might be around that corner some bigger fish that s gonna eat us, and so let s think about this really deeply before we move ahead.
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How could you do anything, really, without those different approaches?
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Well, thank you so much, Susan Cain, and thank you for telling us that it s okay to be quiet.
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I really appreciate you and your work and your time here today.
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Thank you so much for having me on the show.
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I really enjoyed it.
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I enjoyed that one.
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Susan Cain, Quiet, the power of introverts in a world that can t stop talking.
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You can find her at quietrev.com for Quiet Revolution.
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Quiet Revolution, her company, helps companies and schools to harness the talents of the introverted half of the workforce, which is very important, as we now all see.
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And if you enjoyed this one, don t forget to thank Susan on Twitter.
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We ll have that linked in the show notes, as well as all the books and other resources mentioned on the show.
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Remember,
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You can tap the album art in most mobile podcast players to see the show notes for this episode.
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Bootcamp.
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and Art of Charm live program details.
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If you want to learn from us directly, this is the way to do it.
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That s theartofcharm.com slash challenge, or text charmed in the US to 33444.
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For full show notes for this and all previous episodes, head on over to theartofcharm.com slash podcast.
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This episode of AOC was produced by Jason DeFilippo.
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Jason Sanderson is our audio engineer and editor.
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Show notes on the website are by Robert Fogerty, and I m your host, Jordan Harbinger.
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