Celebrating Introversion
I remember the moment with pure clarity. She was running down this path that led to the beach. On one side of the path, little places were tucked into dark corners where I imagined lovers would retreat to sneak in some romantic nuzzling. On the other side of the path, street lamps lit the walkway, which dropped off to the beach. The lights offered an allusion of safety along the walkway, allowing my on-alert protective part of me to remain calm in the moment. You could hear the waves lapping the shore. No one else was around. She was yelling, “She’s my best friend! Whoo Hoo!! She LOVESSSSS me!!” I followed her; somewhat baffled by her exhibitionism and enthusiasm for my earlier response to her repeated, drunkenly slurred questions as to whether or not I was her best friend. For me, her response to my somewhat hesitant reply of, “well, sure, we are friends,” seemed out of sorts. A little over the top. Fake even.
We’d only been friends a few weeks really. I was coming out of an arduous and painful divorce when I finally noticed her as a new employee. She was tall, blonde, voluptuous and loud. I am not as tall, brunet, unassuming and discreet. She was new to town and didn’t know that many people. I lived in town a long time and didn’t know that many people. We agreed to spend the holidays together because neither one of us wanted to spend it with our families.
I was, conveniently for her, the butt of her jokes. She was, conveniently for me, a replacement part for my broken down marriage. As our friendship waned in the following years, I began to see myself as an outcast; like someone who was rejected by and ultimately vilified by her. To be honest, she reminds me that we humans really are just animals, yet we dress ourselves up in clothes to somehow proclaim we more than just animals. Like how a peacock struts and displays their flamboyant feathers, or a gorilla beats their fists on their chest or crows squawk irrepressibly to show their dominance: she dressed provocatively, would shake her chest right in the face of other colleagues and was constantly cackling with others in the office corridors. Her Facebook is littered with images of her at various events, galas and meetings. She’s certainly got more friends than I do by now, for sure.
There was a moment when I realized we were no longer on the same side of things. I felt the ugly pierce of competition prick my senses. Very soon after I found myself quietly holding in my ideas for fear she’d laugh or criticize them. I more than one time noticed that something I was already doing quietly seemed to somehow become her new moment to shine. The vulnerability was too much to bear. I retreated to the proverbial sidelines and licked my open wounds.
There is something to be said for magnanimous personalities with natural leadership abilities. We’ve certainly shifted from the “culture of character” where people expect others to conduct themselves with quiet integrity and are rewarded as such, to a “culture of personality” that celebrates bravado and activates the “herd mentality.” I feel really silly that I believed that I would be rewarded and recognized for my integrity, hard-work and loyalty.
It was Carl Jung who devised the terms extrovert and introvert in the 1920’s. Afterward, Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers brought them mainstream and offer an online test, MBTI. They identified 16 personality types with the goal to help others have a better understanding of life and how to make clear decisions based upon one’s own individuality. There is a common misconception that introverts are boring, incapable of fulfilling, creative leadership roles in society. However, the opposite seems actually true. When researching “famous extroverts” on Google, I found no real stories or sites of value, but, what was interesting is that a whole host of sites and articles revealed a quiet fascination with the introvert.
In fact, some really amazing people are identified as introverts, including Oprah Winfrey, Gandhi, Albert Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton, and Rosa Parks. Famous extroverts? Donald Trump for one. And Newt Gingrich too. Enough said.
There is growing evidence that extroverts don’t necessarily make good leaders. They tend to want to dominate the landscape and rarely have capacity to give others a voice. In fact, according to a study by researchers at Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, while extroverts represent nearly 96% of the leadership positions in the workforce, they only represent 50% of the population. They go on to say that representation in leadership roles, bullies on the playground, popular public figures and numbers of “likes” in social networks tends to be skewed because extroverts hang out with other extroverts and are therefore overrepresented compared to the general population.
Another study from University of Leeds, revealed that it takes just a minority of five percent to influence a crowd’s direction when moving through public spaces and that the ninety-five remaining percent often follow without realizing it. Why is this important? Think of disaster scenarios? If one person, who is bold, loud and easily recognizable takes the wrong turn and the herd essentially follows, there is greater risk for casualty. As this scenario plays out in our schools, in our universities and work places, we are faced with the growing understanding that we are headed in the wrong direction.
For example take general consensus on global climate change, the economic conditions, and the most recent, gun violence. And oddly enough, Donald Trump has made it thus far in bid for President of the United States. His racist, misogynistic, homophobic, xenophobic rhetoric has brought about more division than unification.
If you’ve ever watched the children’s movie, “Open Season” the story of the ‘herd’ plays out comically as nerdy and socially awkward Elliot, is outcast from the herd by the self-centered and callous Ian, the herd’s leader. The fate that befalls Elliot is one of exclusion and remorse for somehow not meeting Ian’s and therefore the herd’s expectations. In the end, however, it is Elliot’s savvy, creativity and gentle nature that wins the day and Ian, while he retains his role as herd leader, is exposed for his egotistic and pushy personality. This herd learned to accept each others individual differences and recognized the benefits afforded from each others contributions. It is not always the case unfortunately.
Brené Brown, a popular social scientist, TED Speaker and author, identifies that when the “herd mentality” is allowed to operate with impunity in the workforce, with extroverts at the helm, blame and shame create barriers to creativity and innovation. Because workers are afraid to share their ideas for fear they will be ridiculed or bullied (nearly 37% of American workers have claimed to be bullied), introverts, usually more creative individuals, stifle their contributions.
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd. ~Bertrand Russell
I see it over and over again in the workplace, in our schools, in pop culture, the loud and aggressive win out again and again over the silent and meditative. If you have ever been to a city or community council meeting, invariably there will be one or two regular, outspoken, personalities from the minority which consistently call for policies to be changed, while the silent majority is at home donating to NPR.
My own work environment became toxic and unhealthy. More than once, I was verbally attacked and belittled by a coworker. I could only assume that they were passive-aggressive maneuvers to shame me for my own non-compliance in office politics and conformity. After one particular incident, management did not feel it was appropriate or prudent to reprimand those as fault.
Brown notes that, “When the culture of an organization mandates that it is more important to protect the reputation of a system and those in power than it is to protect the basic human dignity of individuals or communities, you can be certain that shame is systemic, money drives ethics, and accountability is dead.”
While extroverts will continue to seek out and ultimately be more consistently placed in leadership roles in society, perhaps the new fascination in our common dialogue about the quiet virtues and subtle gains made by the remaining 50% or so of the population identifying as introverts, will lead us toward a more honest and empathetic world. Managers, school officials and friends might want to take note at those who surround them; as your mother always said: it really is a reflection of your own projection.
After all of this rumination, what befalls the highly sensitive, intuitive, yet panoramic introvert? Well, I decided to take the MBTI. You can too online here: http://www.mbtionline.com/ or try one of the free versions of the test. It was helpful for me to receive affirmation of things I had intuited. The spirit of the MBTI theory is that behaviors perceived as random and erratic, are often, actually quite orderly and consistent, simply based on the ways individuals chose to use perception and judgment.
“Perception involves all the ways of becoming aware of things, people, happenings, or ideas. Judgment involves all the ways of coming to conclusions about what has been perceived. If people differ systematically in what they perceive and in how they reach conclusions, then it is only reasonable for them to differ correspondingly in their interests, reactions, values, motivations, and skills.”
The test results indicate that I am and INFP, which means, while I am a compassionate, creative, mediator, I tend not to play well with attention-seeking, driven and ingenuous extroverts. And since I didn’t choose the people with whom I work, therefore, I perceive my current work environment to be toxic. All this time I thought it was me; that I was the problem. Or worse, that is was them; that they were the problem. The problem, actually, is that we don’t work well together but we are both equally good at our respective domains. Now, can we somehow learn to accept each others differences, as did Elliot and Ian? Can we learn to celebrate our strengths and weaknesses? This remains to be seen. In the meantime, I keep my career options open.
References
http://www.personalityresearch.org/papers/lumbert.removed
http://www.fastcompany.com/3001239/3-ways-kill-your-companys-idea-stifling-shame-culture
http://brenebrown.com/
http://www.wsj.com/articles/in-popular-vote-your-friends-usually-win-1432891801
http://www.myersbriggs.org/
http://psychcentral.com/news/2008/02/15/herd-mentality-explained/1922.html
