I Admit It; I Am an Introvert

What are the requirements for effective senior leadership?

Fri, 10/25/2013 - 09:05

I am an introvert; INTJ for those who admire Myers-Briggs indicators. I remember being particularly pleased a few years ago when I read a Harvard Business Review article  that extolled the virtues of introverts as effective leaders. The article stated conventional wisdom and a decade of academic research concluded that extroverts make the best leaders. However, the article continued with an experiment with college students folding T-shirts. Groups with proactive followers and an introverted leader folded on average 28-percent more T-shirts. That made me feel good.

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Comments

Submitted by shrikale on Wed, 10/30/2013 - 08:23

Dear Dr. Hertz,

Living in a world ruled by the extrovert ideal can be rough on those that are introverted. Just consider the title of your post: "I admit it...". It's as if being introverted were something shameful. Susan Cain writes in her book "Quet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking" that a whopping one-third of a group may be made up of introverts. So we're surrounded by them.

It's easy to misinterpret or misunderstand the behavior of an introvert from an extrovert's perspective; and it happens to the norm. But, introverts are not anti-social. They socialize differently. So, it's important for managers to identify such workers and play to their strengths instead of trying to turn them into extroverts.

Best regards, Shrikant Kalegaonkar (Twitter: @shrikale, LinkedIn: shrikale)

This is one of the many bluffs of the present management philosophy, that is meaasurement. As a leader, I don't measure myself: but I have to respond to a key question: am I human?

 

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