Introverts: The Hidden Leaders
By: Curtis Crymes
Tags: Leadership Development, Introvert, Leadership, Extrovert

Image credit: LoveTheWind | Getty Images

In education and business, there has been an increasing importance placed on developing leadership in students and prospective and current employees. Numerous colleges cite the demonstration of leadership in and out of school as a key component in a student’s college application. The importance of leadership is also touted ad nauseum in college classes, seminars, and business leadership summits through team-building exercises. Although not everyone will occupy a formal leadership role, everyone possesses leadership potential, and everyone can display qualities of leadership in any position. However, in society’s quest to cultivate the next generation of leaders, research shows that a significant portion of the population is inadvertently excluded: introverts.

Since the Myers-Briggs personality type indicator defined extroversion in the 1940s as one of the “Big Five” components of personality, science and society alike have viewed introversion largely negatively. Introverted individuals prefer to spend time alone or with a few close people, process thoughts internally before sharing, and, more generally, receive energy from within rather than from other people (Dossey). Psychologists initially viewed introversion as detrimental to survival, leadership, and success in a competitive society. For this reason, the American Psychological Association even proposed defining an “introverted personality disorder” in its manual as recently as the 1980s (Dossey). It appears logical to assume that more assertive and outward extroverts naturally emerge from the competition as leaders, and at first glance, the evidence supports this theory. In a 2006 survey of high-level American business executives, a staggering ninety-six percent of respondents self-identified as extroverted (Grant). However, only about half of the general population leans towards extroversion (Crockett). Such a massive discrepancy leads many to believe that introverts are underrepresented in leadership positions because introversion is in direct conflict with those traits that make exceptional leaders. However, leadership extends far beyond the stereotype of the unrelenting, aggressive businessperson. Introverts are mistaken to be unsuitable for leadership because they lead in a different way, one that has often produced spectacular success.

One such introverted leader, Bill Gates, founded the Microsoft Corporation in 1975 as a Harvard undergraduate. With its earliest origins in Gates’s high school company Traf-O-Data, Microsoft is now the third trillion dollar company and is dominating many aspects of the computer processing market (International Directory of Company Histories). While Bill Gates’s leadership was certainly crucial to Microsoft’s unprecedented successes, he did not lead alone. When Microsoft was in the midst of antitrust lawsuits that seriously threatened the rapidly growing company, Gates stepped down as the chief executive, chose to switch roles, and instead lead as chairman together with longtime business partner Steve Ballmer. At first glance, one would predict this Gates-Ballmer leadership duo to end in disaster for Microsoft; many in the business world described Gates and Ballmer as “alter egos” that were essentially “stylistic opposites” regarding their leadership and personal conduct. Few that worked at Microsoft, even when the company had under one hundred employees, ever saw Gates. He calmly pondered in his rocking chair; meanwhile, the extremely extroverted Ballmer bounced erratically from meeting to meeting, sweating profusely. Similarly, although Gates communicated formally via e-mail, Ballmer used text-speak and personally barged into employees’ offices. The differences do not end there, and Ballmer summed it up best when he said life is “rife with shades of gray” for Gates, but, “with me, it’s black or white, on or off” (Leibovich).

While Gates took an introverted approach to leadership by delegating tasks in which he himself was weaker to just the right candidates, Ballmer led through his forceful personality. Gates and Ballmer were in many ways opposites, and their leadership catapulted Microsoft to its current level of success and importance. A risk-taking Ballmer encouraged Gates to double the size of Microsoft’s workforce in the company’s early days, and although Gates tried to reign him in, this decision accelerated Microsoft’s growth. Later, Ballmer’s outgoing personality allowed him to efficiently secure multi-million dollar contracts with IBM and negotiate company buyouts while Gates’s reserved nature proved vital in administrating and cultivating an environment at Microsoft that employees described as “loyal and devoted” (Leibovich). Both men led in opposite manners that complemented rather than conflicted one another and brought the very best out of Microsoft’s business potential.

In Gates’s words, “introverts can do quite well … if you can learn to get the benefits of being an introvert. Hire some extroverts like Steve Ballmer … and tap into both sets of skills to have a company that thrives” (Jager).

Research explains this complementary dynamic between Gates and Ballmer by quantitatively measuring the success of introverted and extroverted leaders in different situations. Three professors from Harvard, the Wharton School, and the University of North Carolina conducted a field study in which leaders are evaluated based on their business’s profits. The researchers mailed short questionnaires to fifty-seven restaurants within the same pizza delivery franchise. Each employee and the head manager answered the questionnaire, stylized much like a Myers-Briggs personality type indicator, to give the researchers an indication of employee work habits and the manager’s level of introversion. The professors compiled the questionnaire results for each store and paired them with each store’s profitability over a seven week interval. These results showed no significant difference between the profitability of stores with introverted managers and those with an extroverted one (Gino et al).

However, when the researchers considered employee work habits and attitudes, a clear trend emerged. Stores with an introverted manager and passive workforce performed poorly, as did those stores with an extroverted manager and proactive workforce. Interestingly, stores with opposite levels of introversion and extroversion in management and employees performed the highest, with an average of 15% higher profits over the stores with net introverted management and employees or net extroverted management and employees (Gino et al). This makes intuitive sense. Introverts, marked by an ability to listen to others, may better use the creative suggestions of talkative extroverted teammates than an extroverted leader with a strong-willed nature. Conversely, an extroverted leader can energize and excite more inward and reserved introverted employees. Even though one person may formally occupy a leadership role, all members of a team lead by example. As exemplified by strongly introverted Gates and extroverted Ballmer, a diversity in personalities produces leadership superior to homogeneity, whether introverted or extroverted.

If research suggests teams of people with diverse personalities operate most effectively, extroverted leaders should not be dominating business. Companies should benefit to seek leaders from all over the spectrum, but evidence suggests a strong bias towards extroversion in recruiting and promoting for leadership positions (Spark et al). If introversion does not affect one’s leadership potential or measured performance, the ways in which our culture views leadership may be excluding an entire group of potential leaders.

Ray Williams, a Canadian executive coach and leadership trainer, offers his observations from decades of experience working with business leaders. Popular culture presents a narrow definition of leadership and what successful leaders should look like. “From Clint Eastwood to Jim Carey, Larry Ellison and Donald Trump…” the stereotypical leader is almost exclusively a “charismatic, extroverted individual” (Williams). “The guns blazing, no-holds barred, center-of-attention leader, who is a super-confident if not arrogant and aggressively decisive” is the dominant idea of leadership in Western culture while quiet, introverted leadership is overlooked with a few sparse exceptions (Williams). This psychological prototype is ingrained in everyone’s minds, explaining the bias towards extroverted leadership candidates in business regardless of other qualifications. The idea that leadership is equivalent to extroversion therefore becomes an unwritten rule of our culture, and such rules are difficult to break. Susan Cain, a best-selling author, believes that our culture of extroverted leaders is comparable to sexist culture in many societies. Introverts, while fully capable of leading, shy away from such roles because of the limiting definition of leadership as necessarily extroverted (Tucker). In much the same way, sociologists attribute sexism as an aspect in the continued dominance of one gender in certain careers and studies. Young women and men hesitate to pursue careers traditionally dominated by the opposite sex because they feel they do not fit society’s presentation of successful people in those fields. Those that enter nontraditional fields often feel inauthentic as they attempt to fit the cultural perception. Cain identifies this phenomenon among introverted leaders; an introvert must act like an extrovert — if not become one — to be an effective leader (Cain).

In psychology, the “framing effect” describes how the way in which something is presented, whether it be a problem or role, affects one’s approach (Shpancer). The same research team that conducted the pizza delivery study applied the framing effect to determine the degree to which the societal view of leadership affects one’s natural leadership style. The team split college students into fifty-six random groups, each group with one randomly assigned leader, three followers, and two disguised researchers that were aware of the experiment. Each team had the task of folding a pile of T-shirts and devising a method that would complete the task the quickest. Before the competition began, the researchers debriefed the leaders of each group on the qualities of good leadership. One half received a description claiming that leaders “are extroverted … bold, talkative, energetic, active, assertive, and adventurous … with a strong, dominant vision…” (Gino et al). The researchers told the other group “great leaders are introverted; their behavior is quiet, shy, reserved, and unadventurous,” providing examples of real leaders that exemplified this description and studies supporting each claim (Gino et al).

To measure whether the introductions encouraged an introverted or extroverted leadership type, the hidden researcher in each group approached the group leader during the competition and proposed a folding method that, although would take a minute to teach, would greatly increase the group’s productivity. Results showed a strong correlation between the nature of the statements read to group leaders and those that considered or dismissed the group member’s suggestion. In other words, the leaders were most likely to conform to the leadership qualities the researches told them were most important. This result should be unsurprising; psychologists have long known the power of the framing effect. For example, the ways in which questions are asked affect one’s response. Questions about a politician’s policies, when framed positively or in comparison to someone negative, are more likely to receive more favorable responses (Shpancer). Likewise, the current cultural view that leaders are almost exclusively extroverted causes prospective leaders to direct and speak like an extrovert, rather than listen and consider like an equally effective introverted leader.

These prospective leaders come from all walks of life and areas of society. While Bill Gates is certainly a popular example of a successful introvert in business, he is far removed from a difficult dilemma any one of us may face: balancing work and family as a single parent. Ashley, who became a single mother early in her career, struggled to raise her son while building her leadership confidence at work, a trait she felt needed improvement. She sought coaching, courses, and self-help books to develop this confidence, and she pushed herself to be louder and bolder at work. When a Myers-Briggs test showed she was an introvert, like many in our culture, she “wasn’t at all happy with that outcome” and viewed it as a personal flaw standing in the way of her career aspirations. Ashley was a textbook example of the phenomenon Ray Williams and Susan Cain described; she “had to be an extrovert — or at least act like one” to succeed as a confident leader in the workplace and at home to instill this same confidence in her son. However, when Ashley felt inauthentic in her pursuits, she decided to tackle leadership as her genuine self (“Confessions of an Introverted Leader”).

She began with a situation that frightens many of us: public speaking. Although many of her colleagues took an energetic and gregarious approach to presenting, Ashley spoke calmly and used a question, rather than shouting or jumping around on stage, as her way to engage the audience. This approach worked for both Ashley and many members of her audience who preferred her reserved style of public speaking over that of her co-workers. Ashley then challenged herself to speak up at company meetings. As an introvert, she knew she would likely never be good at, and more importantly never enjoy, speaking up on-the-fly. Like many introverts, she felt discussion moved too quickly for her to formulate and share her thoughts. When she acknowledged this as part of her personality, she prepared notes before meetings to develop her thoughts ahead of time, and this technique made it much easier for her to effectively participate in her company (“Confessions of an Introverted Leader”).

Finally, when her company experienced financial difficulties and cuts, she felt pressured to lead by promoting herself and aggressively advocating within her company. Instead, to help her division of the company perform well through this difficult financial time, Ashley organized a “World Café,” a style of business meeting that involves open conversation in several smaller groups rather than a typical unified, formal board meeting. This idea proved beneficial, so much so that a senior executive at Ashley’s company told her “that she was very impressed with my ‘calm, confident leadership style.’” Not only is Ashley now enjoying her work, she regained the confidence she needs to advance in her career and raise a son that will one day lead himself (“Confessions of an Introverted Leader”).

With the advent of social media, the pressure on introverts to be like extroverts is mounting. This new “culture of connectivity” has created a world so obsessed with constant interaction that reserved leadership is becoming less common, less respected, and less visible within popular culture and the business world (Dossey). Despite this, Susan Cain has some advice for introverted leaders in a “world that can’t stop talking.” While it is necessary to step outside of one’s comforts to grow and achieve, no one should lose their authentic selves in the process. Cain believes introverts must speak with conviction. “Even if you are not the loudest voice or the most dominant voice, it kind of doesn’t matter; it’s the conviction which carries the day” (Tucker). The only way that the extroverted leader myth persists is through introverted individuals believing that they inherently lack the ingredients of successful leadership. Having conviction in one’s strengths and identifying the right people to complement these strengths forms the foundation of leadership, that, like Microsoft, changes the world, or like Ashley, means the world to her son. The truth is introverts and extroverts can both lead, but only in the company of the other.

No one can lead alone … not even an introvert.

Works Cited

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Spark, Andrew, et al. “The Failure of Introverts to Emerge as Leaders: The Role of Forecasted Aﬀect.” Elsevier, 15 Sept. 2017, pp. 84–88, DOI:10.1016/j.paid.2017.09.026. Accessed 31 Mar. 2020.

Tucker, Ian. “Susan Cain: ‘Society Has a Cultural Bias towards Extroverts.’” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 31 Mar. 2012, www.theguardian.com/technology/2012/apr/01/susan-cain-extrovert-introvert-interview. Accessed 31 Mar. 2020.