I see introversion and extroversion in general as just two different kinds of strengths.
The problem in our culture is just that we emphasize one type of strength, the extroverted strength, usually more than we do the introverted strength, but that they're equally valuable.
There's probably not this binary thing, introverted extrovertness, the spectrum of introvertedness, extrovertedness, do people move along the spectrum often?
I feel like I've definitely become more extroverted over time.
I've had the exact same trajectory just described, I used to be terrified of public speaking, Now I do it all the time.
I used to be quite shy.
But that's not really describing, I don't believe, becoming more extroverted.
That's more describing acquiring skills.
As we grow and gain experience, we acquire all kinds of skills.
What people most want is just like, how do I become potentially more extroverted slash less, allow introvertness to hurt me in my career.
This is a paradox that I have observed that the more introverts become like deeply comfortable in their own skin, that's when they start to show up at the job interview or on the stage in a more powerful way because you're now there as your own true being, as opposed to there always being a voice in your head saying, I'm not really supposed to be me.
How can you help people believe this is actually true that you can be just as successful being very true to yourself versus learning to be an extrovert?
One of the most important things you can do...
Today, my guest is Susan Cain.
Susan is the author of the number one New York Times best -seller, Quiet!
The Power of Introverts in a World I Can't Stop Talking.
Her books have been translated into 40 languages, her TED Talks have been viewed over 50 million times, and she basically made me and every other introvert in the world feel okay about being an introvert and showed that actually embracing that about yourself can unlock a ton of opportunity and success in your life.
In her conversation Susan shares a ton of very tangible advice for how to be more successful in business as an introvert, including what skills you should actually be building that don t come naturally to you.
Also, what actually is an introvert, how to raise kids who might be introverted, and so much more.
This was such a wonderful conversation and so much of it resonated with me.
This episode is for anyone who considers themselves an introvert or if you work with people who are introverts and you want to learn how to help them thrive.
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It s the best way to avoid missing future episodes and it helps the podcast tremendously.
With that, I bring you Susan Cain.
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Thank you. Susan, thank you so much for being here.
Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much, Lenny.
It's so exciting to be here.
I just want to start with just from one introvert to another and from someone that would rather be sitting in a corner writing versus being on camera, talking, performing a little bit, I appreciate you extra for doing this and flexing your extroverted energy.
And pick ash, absolutely.
Thank you. And I know you haven't even asked a single question yet, but I just, in response to what you just said, because he just identified yourself as an introvert.
That was actually a question I wanted to ask you.
Because when I look at the work that you do in the world, and the way that you do it, and I had never seen you on video before, I said to myself, I'm sure Lenny is an introvert.
And the reason I thought that is because there's something about the intensity with which you do your work and you're so passionate about your subject and your means of success is by going super deep into your passion and that's such an introvert thing so I was like 95 % sure.
That is so funny. I love that.
I appreciate that. Okay.
Okay, so let me set a little foundation, folks, we kind of dove into stuff, but I think this will be helpful.
We're talking about introvertedness.
What is the clearest sign you an introvert?
Two questions you could ask yourself if you're not really sure how you identify.
So one of them is, you know, how do you feel, like imagine that you are going to a party or networking event that you are truly enjoying with company, you truly enjoy.
If you're an extrovert, you probably find this incredibly energizing, and so after two hours or so, you're looking for more because you're now hyper -energized.
And if you're an introvert, no matter how much you love all those people you were just talking to, your battery's probably way drained.
And so after two hours, you're looking for the escape route.
So that's kind of one question to ask.
And then another one would be, if you imagine a weekend, let's say, where you are totally free of social and professional obligations, how would you choose to spend your time and how many people would be in the picture and how well would you know those people?
Like would you, would you be allocating your social time to just one or two close friends or family members, or would you be excited about a party full of people you don't know that well, those kinds of questions tell you a lot about what your true preferences are and I stress that phrase true preferences, because for introverts and extroverted culture, we spend so much time kind of unconsciously adapting to what we think our preferences are supposed to be that I hear from many that they kind of have lost touch with how they actually prefer to spend their time.
First of all I love the two hour like heuristic as a, I think I could just pay attention to it like after two hours because I could as you were describing initially like no that'd be really cool just like me with bunch of interesting people for like if I'm an extrovert if I enjoy that I'll maybe, but then it's like okay I have two hours okay.
And so clearly to me be like yes I'll be exhausted and want to go do something else.
Yeah and to even the feeling of like you wish you just like push a button and be instantly home when you hit that wall.
I would love that like what i find is i just run out of steam i just can't talk and just like my voice is like i'm pushing it out that's really interesting okay, so another thought I had as you're talking is I know it's probably not this binary thing your introvert -extroverted the spectrum of introvertedness extrovertedness is there anything along those lines that's useful for people to hear just like how to think about the spectrum of introvertedness Oh, yeah, absolutely.
So first of all, there is a term that psychologists have coined for people who really are kind of neither here nor there.
They're in the middle of the spectrum.
So that term is ambivert, and I think that does describe a fair amount of people.
But then, what's also important to know is that even for people who are quite extroverted or quite introverted like me, we still have our moments when we're acting kind of out of type because humans are incredibly complex beings.
So I feel like it's really important when talking about this topic, it's like two opposite things are true.
On the one hand, I really do believe that this question of how introverted or extroverted we are shapes so much about the way that we work and think and make decisions and love and interact and all the rest of it.
It's like, it's hugely important.
Psychologists have called it the North and South of human temperament.
So that's point one.
But then on the opposite side, humans are gloriously complex and there's always a danger in talking about subjects like this of reducing ourselves and each other to a label and then expecting ourselves and each other to behave according to that label in all circumstances.
and that's of course a mistake.
Do people move along the spectrum often?
And I ask this because I feel like I've definitely become more extroverted over time.
Like I used to be super shy and very very afraid of public speaking and big social things and I've just like learned to not be as much and I still definitely am.
So is it common for people to move along the spectrum and did they move in both directions or is it usually from introvert to extrovert?
Okay, so first of all, I've had the exact same trajectory you just described, like I used to be terrified of public speaking, now I do it all the time.
I used to be quite shy, I would say I am still a shy person, but it's not as much a top -of -mind, everyday type of reality now.
That's not really describing, I don't believe, becoming more extroverted, that's more describing in acquiring skills and also managing fears.
So, and even managing, learning to manage a fear is a type of skill.
So what happens is, as we grow and gain experience, we acquire all kinds of skills of the kind you were just talking about.
But in terms of, but I still come back to that question I asked at the beginning of like, how would you spend your time when you have no obligations?
because on that score most of us actually become more introverted with time.
And I don't know if you would describe yourself this way but, like I remember for me, even though I was a shy person, you know, like in high school I would come home from school and spend my whole evening talking to all my friends on the phone and I would never do that now.
And psychologists have study this so like people tend to mellow out over time.
So if you were let's say the third most extroverted person in your high school and then you go to your high school reunion 40 years later you'll probably still be one of the most extroverted people in your class but all of you will have chilled out and calmed down quite a bit.
And that's a separate dimension from that dimension of learning to be a public speaker and all that kind of stuff that is so interesting i never thought of it this way i've always thought i'm getting more extroverted because i'm doing more of this sort of thing and enjoying things like this board so it's interesting to reframe it into i've just learned how to cope and be successful in these situations but i'm still the same and it's it's funny that you say that because i can't tell you how often people have said to me well they'll either say oh you do public speaking so you never were an introvert
you're actually an extrovert or they'll say, oh, you've gotten more extroverted with time.
And I would say neither of those things is true.
It's just a skill. Okay, this is something I definitely wanted to ask you about.
So people hearing you right now, hearing you be very confident, clear, just like not coming across as an introvert, also watching your TED Talks, probably seeing some of your other talks.
Like, you don't seem like an introvert.
I'm curious just what your experience of being an introvert is that might give people a glimpse into, okay, I didn't realize this about people.
Because I think it's common to a lot of people.
You see a lot of people that are actually super introverted, but they don't seem that way.
So just to give people an example of the stuff you've gone through, the stuff you deal with as an introvert that people may not see.
What are some examples of that?
Oh, yeah. And to your point, I can't even tell you how many people there are out there presenting as quite extroverted.
And then, because I have this funny role in society as the world's confessor of introverts, they all come up to me at conferences and things and tell me what they're really feeling and who they really are.
And it's often people you would never suspect.
Um, but yeah, like, okay, I mean, if you look at the way I just spent my day before recording this with you, and it's now my time, 4 .24 p .m., so it's quite late in the day.
Um, I—I've not really spoken to many people today.
You know, I drove my son to and from school.
My husband's out of town, so I didn't talk to him yet.
Um, and then I've been working on my laptop and walking my dog.
And that's been a really happy day for me.
So, and in general, I'm like, really, really happy, lavishing a lot of social time on my family or close friends, but I don't do that much social, like, you know, technically, social stuff.
And in terms of, I'm not sure if you use the word overcome, but it was some kind of word like that in your question.
And so for things like this, you know, like super public facing stuff, that I really did have to learn how to get comfortable with over time.
And I used to be absolutely terrified of public speaking, like lose five pounds before every speech kind of terrified.
And I want to say this for anybody out there who's listening who has this fear because it's a lot, a lot of people, that The miraculous thing is that this kind of fear, as with any type of fear, is actually overcomeable because there's this miracle kind of phenomenon that psychologists call desensitization.
That basically if you have any kind of fear, you can expose yourself in very small and manageable doses to the thing that you fear, and that's the way to neutralize it.
So, like, I signed up before my book Quiet came out, and I knew I was going to have to really be out there in the spotlight, I signed up for classes for people with public speaking anxiety.
And in these classes, you just had to, like, you'd start out by standing up and saying your name and then sitting down again, and that would be the whole exercise for the class.
And then you'd come back a week later and do a little bit more.
And that's the way to get over it.
So I always encourage people, like sign up for Toastmasters or something like that where you can practice speaking in supportive environments where the stakes are really low until you can retrain your brain that the stage is not actually a saber -toothed tiger, which is what your brain currently believes it to be.
Okay, so let me come back to this because I think that's what people most want is just how do I become potentially more extroverted slash less, allow introvertedness to hurt me in my career?
But let me just ask you this question.
And this, kind of, like, um.
Can I actually stop you right there?
Yes. I would just say, like, I totally get it that that's what people feel that they want.
But what we think we want is not always actually the way to the ultimate goal we want, because I think what we really want is to learn to be completely comfortable as ourselves, and I know that sounds like a, you know, kind of bland or woo -woo thing to say, but this is a paradox that I have observed through all the years that I've been doing this, that...
That the more introverts, or anybody else, become deeply comfortable in their own skin, that's when they start to show up at the job interview, or on the stage, or whatever the venue is in a more powerful way, because you're now there as your own true being, as opposed to there always being a voice in your head saying, I'm not really supposed to be me, so I'm gonna like pretend to be somebody else, and people can pick that up, and you can pick it up.
I think people hear this idea that you teach in your book that you can be very successful as an introvert, and I bet it's intellectually difficult to actually believe you can be as successful as an introvert versus being an extrovert, because you see all these founders.
They're very charismatic, extroverted.
You see people at meetings all too loud.
You know, voices in the room always seem to get what they want.
How do you, how can you help people believe this is actually true?
That you can be just as successful being very true to yourself versus learning to be an extrovert?
One of the most important things you can do, for whoever is listening, in whatever field that you happen to be operating in, is to look for people in your field who have your way of being, who are introverted, and who are Powerful and there are so many of them in every field so Just to go back to the public speaking example for a second, and but then I'm gonna go out from there Like when I was getting started as a public speaker for me my talisman person was Malcolm Gladwell because he's an incredibly captivating speaker he's a self -described introvert and And the power of his speaking is not,
you know, being like the super energized showman, um, but rather he's a pretty cerebral person with a lot of interesting stuff to say.
And I thought, okay, you know, not, not that my personality is exactly like his, but is like, okay, that, that's kind of a way that I could be on stage.
I could have interesting things to say that I'm very passionate about saying.
And this is true, you can look at so many different fields.
So, like, for example, in finance, somebody like Warren Buffett, he's a shy introvert, he has talked about this, and a lot of the engine of his success is that he figured out how to draw on his own introverted strengths.
So for example, he is known for spending hours poring over financial documents, and he is known for saying that what gets people to be really good investor is not so much IQ as having the temperament to control yourself and take prudent bets, which is something that introverts are known for.
There's all kinds of studies documenting this and showing introverted traders being especially successful and so on.
He's also known for selecting managers very wisely and carefully and then really delegating and relying on those people, which again is a hallmark of introverted leadership that we see in various studies and examples.
Now, Warren Buffett was also somebody who started out as a shy public speaker.
And he signed up for one of those Dale Carnegie training classes when he was like 21.
And so he learned how to be this kind of folksy guy out in public.
And so there's nothing I'm saying it's against the idea of, like yes, acquire the skills that you need to acquire to be successful in your given field.
And yes, that might require stepping outside your comfort zone to acquire those skills.
But there's a difference between acquiring skills and trying to be someone who you're not.
Those are really different things.
So yes, acquire the skills, but then like learn how to be you, And whether you are a public speaker or a salesperson or a negotiator or a marketer, whatever it is, there's a way to do that in a kind of more thoughtful, more deliberative, more analytical, more listening oriented style that can be incredibly powerful.
The bottom line of everything I just said is like, look for your role models because they're gonna show you that you can do it.
That's such a powerful point just, instead of kind of assuming what you see in the media of just here's all the successful people and just assuming they're all extroverts, actually find folks that are in your orbit that are successful that are also introverts to kind of show you and give you evidence you can be really successful and not have to become someone else.
Oh yeah. And you know, and if you're talking about the realm of founders and startup people, like there's just so many of them, you know, especially like in the world of Silicon Valley, Um, who comes to mind does examples.
Oh gosh, um, I mean like dating all the way back to you know Bill Gates, and that era, um, there have just been so many.
This point of becoming more of who you are is connected to something that comes up a lot on this podcast of the power of leaning into your strengths and not trying to focus on your weaknesses of just becoming more of leaning into the you're good at, and doing the things you want to accomplish through that.
For example, in my experience, I'm just like, I'm not, I'm not an amazing speaker.
I'm not an amazing person to run meetings.
But I'm much, I'm really good at, like, after the meeting, here's like the doc of the meeting, here's the next step, here's kind of like async follow -ups and stuff like that.
And I found the writing let me accomplish all the same things without feeling like, oh, I need to become this amazing presenter.
Absolutely. And I would say in addition to that, I don't think that that means that you need to be limited only to writing, because I mean, even just talking to you for 15 minutes or so, like I get a feeling of like, okay, I'm talking to somebody who's extremely authentic, extremely intelligent, extremely knowledgeable.
and those are all incredibly powerful traits that modest introverts tend to discount.
That's a good a good push back and good reminder, but I hear you.
Okay, good. I want to go back to the tactics you started to share of how to be successful in business as an introvert because a lot of times, companies aren't set up to be, to, for the introverts to thrive.
And so I'm curious what either you have done or what you've seen people do as introverts to set themselves up for more success in a business career.
Gosh, there's a lot we could talk about.
I'll give you a few ideas.
I mean, one is to find ways to make sure that other people know how much you know and how much you're contributing.
Because I can't tell you how often company leaders will tell me that they lose valuable people because those people aren't good at self -promotion and then their contributions are undervalued or they feel undervalued so they end up leaving and that is not good for anybody.
Okay, so what can you do to do this?
If you are somebody who is comfortable writing the way you are, you could start a company blog or some other way of disseminating your expertise through writing that will thereby gain attention.
Another thing that you can do if you're either comfortable already with public speaking or are planning to acquire that particular skill.
There's something in our culture where people who put themselves forward on a stage gain disproportionate respect.
So if you can put yourself forward to do, it could be like two minutes, it could be five minutes.
Maybe you start a lecture series at your company where you bring in speakers and you're the one who's always introducing them.
So you're just on stage for like the two minutes that you're introducing them, but you're the one who put the whole thing together.
That's the kind of thing that can bring you a lot of prominence with kind of like disproportionate bang for the buck.
And that kind of thing is also a great way of just practicing these skills and getting more comfortable with them.
Okay, so that's one.
A second one is to, I'm thinking of a woman named Kathy Fish, who, until not long ago, is the head of R &D at Procter & Gamble.
and Kathy is a self -described introvert, and she talked about how her superpower was she was really good at connecting with people one -on -one and building deep connections in that way.
So she wasn't the person who would like sweep charismaticly into the room and everyone would know who she was, but it was like one by one by one by one she was building up all these relationships that as she got more senior in her company, everyone knew who she was, they liked her, they trusted her.
And that turned out to be incredibly powerful.
Third idea, quiet people often are misunderstood to be unambitious.
So if you're an ambitious person, you have to make sure that your colleagues know about that.
So I would look for a mentor and ask if you could have 10 minutes to ask their advice and most people love to be asked for advice and are happy to give it.
And let that person know what your goals and hopes and ambitions actually are for one year, three years, five years from now, and ask for their advice on how you could get there.
And they might come up with one little strategy that will make a huge difference for you.
Or they might start being the one to go to bat for you now that they know that you have the ambition to do XYZ.
This is awesome. Okay, let me summarize some of the stuff you've shared, and this is kind of like a list of things you as an introvert can do to be more successful in your career and probably in your life.
And I'll include all the things you shared because it's all useful.
So one is look for a role model that's really successful that's an introvert to show you you can do this, you don't have to be this extrovert charismatic CEO person.
Two is show your value, make sure people actually see the value you're providing because a lot of introverts don't.
Three is actually lean into public speaking and work on that skill.
To your point it's looked at it very highly if you can do that okay.
And your advice is just like do little bits you don't need to give like a 30 -minute all -hands presentation just like a little bit of time on stage goes a long way.
I'll give one recommendation I had this person on the podcast and I found this public speaking course the most useful of all the things I've done.
It's called ultra -speaking and it's very speak better and it's made up of these very low risk games that you play with other people and you just talk without without much support and it's very like low risk but it's at the edge of scary and keeps kind of leveling up a little bit.
Okay. And then. Okay.
I'll keep it through list four is connect one -on -one with people.
So instead of just like I need to be amazing in this meeting it's like make sure you connect with everyone one -on -one in the company and they understand how awesome you are.
And you end up being more...
look more awesome when you're going one -on -one with people as an introvert.
And then five is kind of make it uh it's the advice here around ambition it's like introverts are
