Many people have asked the question as to whether great leaders are born or made. Certainly, we equate leadership success with the same shallow charisma that we simultaneously loathe and demand from politicians. But can an introvert be a successful leader?
Other than questioning someone’s parentage, is there a faster way to insult someone than calling him an introvert? Isn’t introversion something that we need to quickly cure people of by sending them to the Dale Carnegie Course?
People hear “extrovert”, and they think: outgoing, friendly, social, capable, productive, normal.
People hear “introvert”, and they think: shy, withdrawn, anti-social, elusive, dysfunctional, wall-flower.
In Good to Great, Jim Collins reveals the qualities that his research has shown as effective in running great organizations. Interestingly, many of the qualities of “Level Five Leadership”, are found more naturally in people with Introverted preferences.
You might also be surprised who may be a closet-introvert: High-profile leaders, television personalities, sports stars, maybe even one of your friends, neighbors, or family are introverted. They’re everywhere, so beware – you never know when they’ll want to slink into the back corner of a meeting room, and silently wish everyone would stop talking at once. Or perhaps pray that someone will listen to them for 20 seconds before interrupting them. Worse yet, they may think about something before responding to a question creating that awkward few seconds of silence.
So you may be wondering where I fit on the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Grid.
As someone who spends a lot of time talking to groups of people, and a person who worked in television (for a short and spectacularly unsuccessful period of time), I am rarely accused of being an Introvert.
I prefer to label myself as a Recovering-Extrovert. We might need to create a new scale for measurement.