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1-Page Summary of The Introverted Leader

Overview

This book looks at cutting-edge research about positive leadership and organizational behavior. It also provides examples of real companies that are using these ideas to improve their work environments.

Leaders need to be coaches, convince others and direct their team. They also need to negotiate with business partners and represent the company in a positive way. This sounds like an ideal job for extroverts because they are naturally eloquent, assertive and enjoy working with people.

Many highly successful leaders are introverts. They have particular strengths that extroverts don’t have, but they had to work extra hard to succeed because of the bias against them in society.

Jennifer Kahnweiler interviewed more than 100 introverted professionals to learn how they overcome challenges and succeed in an extroverted business culture. The results are summarized in these key points:

Keep reading and you’ll learn how to deal with cocktail parties. You’ll also find out why introverts are often seen as slow thinkers even if they have the best ideas in the world. Finally, you will discover how to use your introversion for personal success.

Big Idea #1: Although people think that introverts are rare, they’re actually quite common. There are more introverts than you think, even among highly influential people.

In any group of people, you’ll often find that there are more extroverts than introverts. However, this doesn’t mean that introverts don’t exist at all. In fact, they make up half the population. The terms “extrovert” and “introvert” were first introduced by the psychologist C.G. Jung to describe two different personality types: Introverts tend to focus on their own thoughts while extroverts seek out social situations and enjoy interacting with other people. They also differ in how they recharge their mental batteries: Extroverts get energy from talking to others, whereas introverts need time alone in order to feel refreshed. Finally, their communication styles are different: Extroverted people prefer speaking over listening, whereas introverted individuals like listening but hate interrupting or speaking too much.

So, how many people in the world are introverts? Scientists interviewed groups of people about their personalities and found that a lot of them have certain traits associated with introversion.

According to a study, about 47-55% of the US population are introverts.

But what about business and politics? Surely, there’s only room for extroverts in those fields. Extroverted traits like socializing, decisiveness and gregariousness are emphasized over introvert traits like reflectiveness or conscientousness. Yet 40% of executives describe themselves as introverts. The most famous one was probably President Abraham Lincoln, known to frequently withdraw into himself: he would often be found alone in his library reading law books instead of socializing.

Big Idea #2:

Introverts often miss out on opportunities because they’re not comfortable in the spotlight.

Imagine a situation where you’re in a meeting with your boss and many other employees. Everyone is trying to talk about the company’s marketing problem, which could be very stressful for introverts.

What?

If you don’t speak up during meetings, your ideas may never get heard. People who are loud and outspoken tend to be rewarded with the projects and assignments they want. It’s important for extroverts to speak up in order to share their ideas.

For instance, maybe you have a great idea for marketing that could solve your problem. However, before you share it with others, you might hesitate because of the setting. If this happens, even if your idea is great and can help people out in the long run, it won’t do any good unless someone takes action on it.