The conference is geared to people who enjoy meaningful discussions and sometimes move a conversation to a deeper level, only to find out we are the only ones there. . . . When it's my turn, I talk ab...
The Subarctic Survival Situation may sound like a harmless game played inside the ivory tower, but if you think of meetings you’ve attended, you can probably recall a time—plenty of times—when the opi...
Soon after being appointed CEO, Smith made a dramatic decision to sell the mills that produced the company’s core business of coated paper and invest instead in the consumer-paper-products industry, w...
Social anxiety disorder—which essentially means pathological shyness—is now thought to afflict nearly one in five of us. The most recent version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-IV), the...
Shyness is the fear of social disapproval or humiliation, while introversion is a preference for environments that are not overstimulating.
Probably the most common—and damaging—misunderstanding about personality type is that introverts are antisocial and extroverts are pro-social.
Parks herself seemed aware of this paradox, calling her autobiography Quiet Strength—a title that challenges us to question our assumptions. Why shouldn’t quiet be strong? And what else can quiet do t...
Montgomery, Alabama. December 1, 1955. Early evening. A public bus pulls to a stop and a sensibly dressed woman in her forties gets on. She carries herself erectly, despite having spent the day bent o...
Mark Twain once told a story about a man who scoured the planet looking for the greatest general who ever lived. When the man was informed that the person he sought had already died and gone to heaven...
Many Introverts are also highly sensitive, which sounds poetic, but is actually a technical term in psychology. If you are a sensitive sort, then you're more apt than the average person to feel pleasa...
Love is essential; gregariousness is optional. Cherish your nearest and dearest. Work with colleagues you like and respect.
LET YOUR FACE REFLECT CONFIDENCE, NOT WORRY! IT’S THE ‘LOOK’ OF YOU BY WHICH YOU ARE JUDGED MOST OFTEN.
It’s so easy to confuse schmoozing ability with talent. Someone seems like a good presenter, easy to get along with, and those traits are rewarded. Well, why is that? They’re valuable traits, but we p...
It’s also important for companies to groom listeners
It makes sense, then, that Westerners value boldness and verbal skill, traits that promote individuality, while Asians prize quiet, humility, and sensitivity, which foster group cohesion. If you live...
It makes sense that so many introverts hide even from themselves. We live with a value system that I call the Extrovert Ideal—the omnipresent belief that the ideal self is gregarious, alpha, and comfo...
It can be hard for extroverts to understand how badly introverts need to recharge at the end of a busy day. We all empathize with a sleep-deprived mate who comes home from work too tired to talk, but...
Introverts recharge their batteries by being alone; extroverts need to recharge when they don’t socialize enough. If
Introverts need to trust their gut and share their ideas as powerfully as they can. This does not mean aping extroverts; ideas can be shared quietly, they can be communicated in writing, they can be p...
Introverts living under the Extrovert Ideal are like women in a man’s world,