THE MYTH ABOUT INTROVERTS, LEADERSHIP IMPLICATIONS, AND IMPACT ON OUR TIMES

THE MYTH ABOUT INTROVERTS, LEADERSHIP IMPLICATIONS, AND IMPACT ON OUR TIMES

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© February 11, 2012

A NOVEL IDEA

A reader of the prologue of A GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA sees the protagonist's (Seamus "Dirk" Devlin) pensive introspection as that of a clinically quasi-scientific inauthentic personality.  

He suggests Devlin should be more the observer than the analyst, more the extrovert.  He would have him less obtuse, more comfortable to the senses, more consistent with the 70 percent designated as extroverts in the population.

Extroverts are inclined to be impulsive, reactive, crisis managers, proud of their multitasking, but unaware of its pusillanimous flippancy.  The cumulative effect of this orientation is the colossal failure in leadership evident across the spectrum of society. 

The year of this novel is 1968, or “the end of the American century” a little early. 

In 1968, everything was unraveling for the United States as it assumed policeman of the world with its new mantle of hegemony.  Devlin strides into that future, inexperienced and xenophobic as is typical of his class.  His toolkit is one of introspection with cutting edge training in science and engineering.  Otherwise, he is as ill equipped as his American masters to assume a leadership role in another's culture  

It is easy to forget that a half century ago, when the novel takes place, we were far less distracted by machines and more empowered with creative engagement as amateurs.  We had no choice but to be patient with process in the spiraling madness that always follows great wars. 

Imagine a man of good mind but humble heritage being segued into the status, wealth, and lifestyle of hedonistic colonialists against the injustice of South African apartheid.  An introvert does not assume new identity because it is expected.  Nor does an introvert reconcile his imagination to fit the situation to satisfy his masters.  Instead, he submerges himself in the culture in an attempt to understand it from the ground up, and not the top down.  This is why the novel was written. 

The genius of Devlin is that he is successful because of his introversion, not despite it.  He is a leader who appreciates the wisdom of insecurity, the pain of sensitivity, of living in the constant fear that he is a fraud.  He is aware of his feelings and uses them to unmask the masqueraders.  Yet, he fakes extroversion when it serves him, but then retreats into interior dialogue with himself that only his Maker comprehends. 

TIME MAGAZINE

In Time’s article (February 6, 2012), “The Upside of being an Introvert,” it makes the point that only 30 percent of all people fall on the introvert end of the temperament spectrum.  This should come as no surprise as we are regimented from cradle to grave by constructs of extroverts. 

Introverts, Time describes, as people who prefer to be alone and are quickly exhausted by the company of others as others suck them of their energy.  Time fails to mention that introverts are primarily libertarians who find it easier to ask forgiveness than permission, who are individualistic in a society that has become increasingly collectivistic (reference: “Occupy Wall Street”), who care little with what others think of them, and therefore are less guided by stereotypical fads (e.g., body tattoos).  

Introverts are bemused by a society of extroverts always talking, never listening, never observing, always looking for causes bigger than themselves, finding life boring if not true believers in a religion, ideal, cause or movement.  Extroverts need to be engaged in constant texting, surfacing the Internet, talking on cell phones, playing games on laptops, terrified by sixty seconds of silence. 

Introverts avoid meetings if they can, would never think of calling up a friend and studying together preferring their own company, find group learning stultifying, but realize these are the ground rules of the classroom and workplace. 

Don’t expect to find introverts among the “Occupy Wall Street” crowd, or camping out on public or private property.  Introverts are highly individualistic and entrepreneurial, and therefore most likely employed as they match job requirements to their interests and qualifications.  If it doesn’t work out, they don’t stay.  Moreover, they vote their conscience with their feet not on what media polls tell them.

The prevailing wisdom of our times is that sociability is good for our health; that aloneness is not.  Yet the word “alone” is actually “al one,” that one’s company energizes one’s moral compass and center.  Most societal and institutional change is achieved, not in the body of a crowd, but in the crystallization of an individual's thought that has relevance to the many. 

Extroverts are obsessed with being in vogue in the flow of what’s current.  They know the buzzwords, what’s trendy in music, behavior, dress and decorum, and whatever else is appropriate to being “in.”  God help them if they are out of step with the times 

Introverts couldn’t be bothered with this triviality.  Devlin takes the reader through his utopian colonial prism where everyone has everything but is consumed with boredom.  He makes people uncomfortable with his intensity fearing he is on a crusade when his drive is only to get inside apartheid to understand why it exists. 

Not only is an introvert's best company when he is alone, he gravitates to the city to find anonymity.  Devlin finds solace in the city, but cannot escape his provincial roots.

EXTROVERTS ON THE RAMPAGE

The 70 percent extroverts who inevitably dominate our corporate society often exhibit gamesmanship that teeters on reckless abandon as we have seen from the collapse of Wall Street and the real estate fiasco.

In SIX SILENT KILLERS (1998), the individual temperament of emerging professionals was the focus.   Extroverts may dominate society, but introverts as professionals dominate the high tech corporation.  Despite this, the corporation remains designed to facilitate the personality traits of a shrinking world of extroverts.  This often results in a massive retreat of sitting professionals into six passive behaviors, “six silent killers,” behaviors that cost the economy literally $ billions.  Passive workers operate undetected as if social termites, destroying the corporation from within, the damage noted when it is too late for damage control.

Decades earlier, we saw extroverts such as Martin Siegel and Ivan Boesky of Wall Street use inside trading as if a game of monopoly, John DeLorean take General Motors then Northern Ireland to the cleaners, former U.S. Senator Gary Hart flaunt his lifestyle as he ran for the presidency as if no one could touch him, Dr. John Darsee, the darling of Ivy League medicine, create bogus scientific works with celebrated co-authors who lent their integrity without checking his “findings,” television evangelist Jim Bakker who preached like Dr. Jekyll and lived like Mr. Hyde with impunity, and John Dean, consul to President Nixon, who justified “making it” as not only the rule of convenience, but a necessity.

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The corporate landscape is equally vulnerable to extroversion as illustrated by the malfeasance of Johns Manville Corporation concealing x-rays results of employees suffering from mesothelioma from asbestos exposure. 

The Continental Illinois Bank mania to climb into the top seven of American banks found it investing heavily in Oklahoma oil producers to accelerate the climb, only to have oil prices plummet and oil producers come up with dry holes.  A frenzied cover up followed, which of course was eventually uncovered.

E. F. Hutton & Company, once the symbol of quintessential trust, bilked 400 of its banks by drawing against uncollected funds, or in some cases non-existent funds.  It was a scam treated as normal conduct of business with a slap on the wrists of a $2 million fine plus court costs of $750,000.  A quarter century later, the 2007 – 2008 collapse of Wall Street would be society’s punishment for this lapse.

Chrysler Corporation was again competitive, thanks largely to Lee Iacocca.  Once on the upside, salesmen started to play foot lose and fancy free, leading to an odometer scandal.  During an 18-month period in the 1980s, Chrysler sold as new 60,000 vehicles that had been driven by managers 400 or more miles, some badly damaged then repaired and treated as new, rolling back the odometers to single digits, hiding body work repairs. When caught in the scam, the Chrysler sales chorus sang, “What’s the big deal, everybody does it?”

The five CEOs of the major tobacco companies of the United States appeared before Congress, and to a man, stated that smoking was not injurious to a smoker’s health, when each of them had at lease a quarter century of research on file that indicated that it was.

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Extroverts on the rampage take comfort in that everybody does it, then and now!  All you have to do is substitute current individual and corporate names to the excess.

GAME CHANGERS: INTROVERTS

Introverts are not necessarily more moral than extroverts, but they are less likely to engage in reckless abandon enterprise.  This is due in no small measure to the fact that introverts are cautious by nature and always cognizant of consequences.  Whimsical is not in their temperament.

Introverts are committed to process.  This finds them thinking things through, weighing variables, sorting out the perturbations that stymie progress, going back and starting over if necessary until satisfied they have nailed it. 

Introverts operate like smart machines with all their antennae sensitive to sights, sounds, fixed and moving objects as no data are irrelevant to process.  Listening is a weapon to consensus, and why introverts often gravitate to leadership roles.  They don’t talk empowerment they leverage people to take the initiative. 

Despite evidence to the contrary, my experience is that most people fall into three quadrants in a bell curve with the tails holding 15 percent at each extreme of introversion and extroversion while the center of 70 percent is occupied by ambiverts demonstrating personality traits of both temperaments. 

Steve Wozniak is a classical introvert, while Steven Jobs a classical extrovert.  This winning combination launched Apple Computer into its prominence.  Evidence of these complementary temperaments is that Wozniak was prepared to sell the computer grids he developed at cost, while salesman Jobs was set on charging what the market would bear. 

Novelist John LeCarre’s “Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy” (1974) captures the quintessential introvert in his portrayal of George Smiley, the improbable spy in the British Secret Service known as the Company.  Smiley is constantly called out of retirement to solve problems created by extroverts in the agency.  Smiley’s wife, Lady Anne, extrovert extraordinary, tells her husband, “George, you are such a puzzle to yourself.”  This is often how extroverts see introverts, while mystified by their problem solving skills.  Novelists seem to have a better gauge of temperament than psychologists.

INTROVERTS AND THE SELLING PROFESSION

It isn’t an easy life for introverts in a society of extroverts.  To survive in this competitive climate, especially as it relates to jobs, introverts often fake being extroverts.  When it comes to doing the job, however, whatever the job may be, they invariably revert back to their normal temperament of introversion, but at some cost.

Whereas extroverts can suck the oxygen out of a room and leave bursting with energy to go on, introverts feel totally depleted of oxygen when leaving a cocktail party, family outing, meeting or speaking engagement.  Paradoxically, the focus of introverts is on the audience, and therefore they are quite effective, whereas the focus of extroverts is often on themselves as they need an audience, introverts do not. 

You might think introverts poor candidates for management, sales, stand up comedy, or leadership roles, but you would be wrong.  Time magazine identifies leaders such as Mohandas Gandhi, Moses, Hillary Clinton, Warren Buffett, India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Bill Gates, Mother Teresa, President Barak Obama, and aspiring presidential candidates Ron Paul and Mitt Romney as introverts.

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As a chemical sales engineer in the field of Nalco Chemical Company, I was catapulted into the executive ranks, and I got there as an introvert as few could understand my success in the field, but couldn’t deny the results.  Readers can probably think of many others with similar temperaments and success records.

My first reaction to new people is always the same: tentative and cautious.  Introverts quickly retreat to process and that is where they find the gold.  This is illustrated in “Confident Selling” (1970), and “Confident Selling for the 90s”(1992). 

Preparation is crucial to introverts.  It involves studying everything in the environment from where the prospect’s office is located, to its accoutrements, including furnishings, pictures, diplomas and art work, as well as people traffic, and how this traffic is handled, or other interruptions such as phone calls.  Studied also are how words are used, pictures made with words, concrete and abstract replies, and how values, beliefs, and biases surface in the conversation. 

Open-ended questions require replies that cannot be answered with yes or no.  The idea here is to perceive need.  It is a qualitative approach to assess the prospect’s quantitative mind.

Once the call is completed, the introvert records impressions including the temper as well as facts glean from the call in the interest of establishing a pattern. 

After the third call, an obvious pattern emerges with regard to needs and wants.  The idea is to persuade the prospect to want what he needs, a strategy that usually finds the sale made on the third to fifth call.  Circumstances occasionally find this strategy abandoned and going for the jugular, as in the case of Thayer Maxwell, who said, “What do you have for me, sport?”  I answered, “I’m here to save your job.”  And I did (See “Confident Selling for the 90s”).

Introverts operate on sensitivity not ritualistic practice, on intuition not on formula.  Ergo, extroverts are addicted to formula selling, using some aspect of winning through intimidation, scarcity of supply, penalty of delay, or an assumptive close when the prospect needs are not clearly understood.  Extroverts would be less inclined to take an intuitive leap to the close from the start.

Temperaments of prospects are difficult to assess and impossible to change, but still little problem to introverts who are listeners not talkers, learners not knowers, and all business not gabbers.  Once the language dovetails with the cadence of the prospect, introverts are on the same page, involved in joint problem solving.  All the hard work is done before the call so introverts can be audience to the prospect rather than the other way around. 

“Confident Selling” shows how introverts are focused on process whereas extroverts are on the sale.  Variation of a dopamine-regulating gene prominent in extroverts leads to risk taking and reckless abandon as they are driven by the prize   Paradoxically, introverts tend to be better gamblers, better at assessing the situation in terms of risk-reward as Warren Buffett demonstrated in his long career. 

Introverts excel in professions where there is no partner or teammate such as sales, individual sports, playing a musical instrument, or writing.  These professions require time working or practicing in solitude to develop transcendental skills.  Extroverts in sales like the company of people and often start in a blaze of glory only to tire of the lonely drill seeking company in crowded bars and other well peopled escapes. 

That said the personality traits of new hires in most disciplines are skewed heavily towards extroverts, yet the best performers across the board are workers, alone, or in groups of four or less. 

The irony is that corporate ambience is structured to increase entropy rather than to reduce it. 

(1) The average office worker enjoys no more than three minutes at a time at his or her desk (most likely in an open plan office with little or no separation from other colleagues) without interruption;

(2) The average American spends at least eight hours a day in front of a screen;

(3) The average teenager sends or receives 75 text messages a day.

For 100 years, we have prided ourselves in creating a culture that celebrates spontaneity, but now we are doing everything to kill it. 

Gayety and camaraderie are engaging but not necessarily conducive to spontaneity.  Nor is the collective mindset with the distraction of machines, machines that have made life brighter, quicker, longer, healthier and less dull providing satisfaction   Indeed, a society has been created that has no idea how to remain master of the machine.  .

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If you have or are now working in corporate society, you know personal space has shrunk to nonexistence.  In crowded confinement, social engineers have come up with the idea of groupthink as a methodology to creativity despite the evidence to the contrary.  The founder of Apple Computer, Microsoft and now FaceBook didn’t take that route, yet they have defined the future.  They did it alone in such places as a garage, a dorm room, kibitzing in a fast food restaurant, as college dropouts, not as part of the establishment. 

Some of our most high-powered companies such as Microsoft, Charles Schwab and Google are headed by introverts, as are 40 percent of other Fortune 500 companies.  Bill Gates, Charles Schwab and Larry Page are known as listeners, entertaining ideas from the troops to solve company problems.  They don’t talk about empowering workers; they practice empowerment.  As CEOs, they are facilitators not dominators. 

Time magazine ended its piece with a quiz.  The scores are not fixed and there is no status given to ambiverts (i.e., between extroverts and introverts), yet “yes” answers reflect an inclination to introversion.  Devlin’s and my score are indicated below.  Answer “Yes” or “No” to the following:

(1)      I prefer one-on-one conversation to group activities;

(2)      I often prefer to express myself in writing;

(3)     I enjoy solitude;

(4)     I seem to care less than my peers about wealth, fame and status;

(5)     I dislike small talk, but I enjoy talking in depth about topics that matter to me;

(6)     People tell me that I’m a good listener;

(7)     I’m not a big risk taker;

(8)     I enjoy work that allows me to dive in with few interruptions;

(9)     I like to celebrate birthdays on a small scale with only one or two close friends or family members.

(10)  People describe me as soft spoken or mellow;

(11)  I prefer not to show my work or discuss it with others until it is finished;

(12)  I dislike conflict;

(13)  I do my best work alone;

(14)  I tend to think before I speak;

(15)  I feel drained after being out and about, even if I’ve enjoyed myself;

(16)  I often let calls go to voice mail;

(17)  If I had to choose, I’d prefer a weekend with nothing to do to one with too many things scheduled;

(18)  I don’t enjoy multitasking;

(19)  I concentrate easily;

(20)  In classrooms, I prefer lectures to seminars.

How did you do?  Devlin got a perfect score of 20 while my score was 18, suggesting we are both introverts to the extreme.

INTROVERSION, IMAGINATION AND LEADERSHIP

After the 1967 devastating fire of Apollo One in which Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chafee were burned alive on the ground in a seemingly routine drill, astronaut Frank Borman told a US Congressional Committee how it could happen.  “Senator, it was a failure of imagination.  No one ever imagined . . . we just didn’t think that such a thing could happen.”

The surprise attack by the Japanese on December 7, 1941 at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands did not seem eminent until it was too late.  No one imagined the Japanese had the cunning and tenacity to attempt such a feat.  Yet, they succeeded because of a failure of imagination on the part of the Washington government.

Carl Jung, the Swiss psychoanalyst and philosopher, fashioned the notion of “synchronicity,” a causal connection between two psycho-physic phenomena.  He claimed events were not only grouped by cause but by meaning as well.  What might, in retrospect, seem coincidental was, in fact, often part of a larger interconnectivity of unfolding events.

FDR initiated both the Lend-Lease Program to Great Britain in 1940 and the Atlantic Charter protecting the interests of the US and her Allies, while launching a blockade of Japan to interdict oil tankers to the island nation threatening to freeze Japan’s assets.

To Jung’s point, all wars of the twentieth century seemed to begin on a Sunday.  The Archduke Franz Ferdinand was shot on a Sunday that kicked off WWI; Germany invaded Belgium and France on a Sunday; Great Britain and France declared war on Germany on a Sunday in September 1939 after Germany invaded Poland.  Greece was invaded by Italy on a Sunday in World War II; and Germany invaded Russia on a Sunday in June 1941.  How surprising should it have been that Japan would attack America on a Sunday when most of the Seventh Fleet was in port while hundreds of planes were clustered tightly together and perfect targets for dive-bombers? 

In 1961, John F. Kennedy ascended to the presidency, a man whose career was choreographed by his father.  This included his son’s Pulitzer Prize winning book, “Profiles in Courage” (1957), ghostwritten by an aide, and his clumsy leadership as a junior officer commanding PT-109 (motor torpedo boat), which sunk but led to his heroic rescue.  His indistinguishable congressional career failed to handicap him as his star rose at the precise moment when television became a major medium.  It was especially receptive to his photogenic and dashing personality, while Vice President Nixon, who opposed him for the presidency in televised debates, sported a demonic five o’clock shadow and a face that looked like a mug shoot on a most wanted poster.  Nixon won the debates but 70 percent of what is retained comes through the eyes only 20 percent through the ears. 

Were it not for this synchronicity JFK might best have been remembered as a rich, philandering playboy.  Instead, he is remembered for his commitment to space and to the United States landing a man on the moon, not for his intervention in Vietnam where 57,000 American would eventually die, and the United States would lose its first war. 

JFK and FDR were extreme extroverts who knew how to make the media slave to their purposes.  On the other hand, President Barak Obama is an introvert and a loner for which he is criticized. 

If ever imagination was needed to come into play, it is now with Iran’s nuclear ambitions, and the pressure building to blockade that country completely from exporting its oil while freezing its financial assets. 

This is reminiscent of December 1941, and how the unexpected and the unimagined happened when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, provoking the United States into World War II, changing the compass of the world forever. 

George W. Bush is an extrovert who with a lack of imagination launched preemptive invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11 with the unintended consequences of those impulsive acts haunting us to this moment.  It is time we give introverts a chance. 

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