INTROVERTED LEADERSHIP
The Three Principles of Introverted Leadership
They will help you achieve success as a leader without exhausting your social energy
“Now what? We are going to die.”
“Mommy, mommy, where are you? I just wanna go home!”
Neither Gloomy George nor Fearful Phil seem to be able to lead the group out of this situation.
“I knew it! We should have never let Phil follow that squirrel! That’s how we lost track of the group!” — says Brave Ben. If only he had expressed this suggestion earlier, though! “And you? Come on, say something!”
Thoughtful Tim stares at Ben, without uttering a single word. He never responds until he’s able to figure out other people’s intentions, and in order to do that sometimes he asks questions. For him, it’s not enough to know what to answer, he needs to know why the question was asked: “Ben, why do you want me to say anything?”
Brave Ben was not expecting such a response. He reacts in rage. He screams, and he does so in a way that would make Alexander the Great think twice before getting close to this group of boy scouts. Meanwhile, Fearful Phil is crying, Gloomy George stares down at the grass and Thoughtful Tim observes the scene, analysing everything in silence.
One hour has passed, and Brave Ben has recovered from the tantrum. However, he notices that it will not be possible to go back to the camp today. “Listen up, people. We need to build a camp before sunset. Otherwise we’ll have a rough night, and nobody wants that. You, get some sticks. You, get some leaves. And you, look for some stones! I’ll stay here and plan what to do with the materials.”
Gloomy George shrugs with his shoulders and proceeds to search some sticks. Fearful Phil didn’t want to hear that they’ll be spending the night in the wild, away from the safety of the bigger group, so he starts crying again. This irritates Ben, who reacts by calling him a coward, making Phil cry more. “Look, Phil, it’s hard, I know, but there is no choice. We need to get some stuff and build ourselves a hut to spend the night” — This response still doesn’t address the root cause of Phil’s emotional trigger, so he keeps crying.
“Fine! Then just stay here with Lazy Tim while George and I do all the work. You’ll thank us later”. Tim looks at Phil, not really knowing at first what to say to comfort him. Then he walks towards him and sits down next to him. Very carefully, he stretches out his arm and lays it on Phil’s shoulder, then he hugs him. “It’s okay, Phil. It’s okay.” After some minutes, Phil calms down and stops crying.
“Tell me, Phil. What made you feel overwhelmed?”
“It’s just… The thought of not being able to go back home ever again. Tim, it’s horrible!”
“I see. I am also scared of that. Of not going back home. For me it’s the uncertainty of what we are supposed to do to get out of here. Do you mind if I ask you what you’re most afraid of?”
“Not seeing my parents again. Yeah, I think that would be the worst”
“Phil, and what about the feelings of seeing your parents again, of being back home? Can you describe how that feels for you?”
“I cannot express how much joy and happiness I feel when thinking about that, Tim! The hugs, being back home, back in my bedroom” — Phil’s eyes full of tears look up and shine bright.
Both stay in silence for some seconds. Both looking up. Phil pointing his eyes to the majestic crowns of the surrounding pine trees and Tim looking at Phil’s face, attentively looking for cues. Suddenly, Phil reacts in awe to an eagle flying nearby: “Of course, Tim, of course! We need to get as high as we can to see things from above, like the eagle! Then we can find the camp! Come on, let’s go up the hill!”
In that moment, Brave Ben and Gloomy George are back with some sticks and leaves, and it seems to Ben that both Phil and Tim are leaving Ben’s newly established campsite behind. “Hey, you! Where are you going?”.
Tim stops and tells Ben: “Phil has a good idea. We’ll climb up the hill and use the top as a watchpoint. We’ll search the camp and will get there before sunset. We need your help, too”
“Oh yeah? And how do I know that we’ll reach the camp? What if we get lost again and end up sleeping in the wild without resources?”
Tim stops and thinks for a moment. How to persuade Ben? “We all want to get back to the camp safely. When we see the sun slowly go down and our idea doesn’t work, we’ll follow your plan. Until then, we have time to try and find the camp from above. And if something goes wrong, it was my fault.”
“Well… I can’t say ‘no’ to that. Come on, George, let’s help these kids.”
After some hours of climbing, our small group of four reaches the top of a hill. However, nothing is visible from that position, because the view is covered with trees. “Now what? This was useless” — says Gloomy George. Tim thinks, then replies: “We need to find a way to climb up one of these pine trees”.
“Let me do it!” — exclaims Ben. He takes out his neckerchief and binds it around one of the pine trees. Then he moves his way up the tree with boldness and speed. In just a few minutes, he has reached the top and you can hear he’s enjoying the landscape: “Whooooaaaa!!! It’s so beautiful up here, ladies”.
Tim urges Ben to leave the pleasure for later: “Ben, it’s important to know this information: Do you see anything on the horizon resembling a camp?”. Brave Ben shortly looks around, without stopping much at the details — “Uhhhh… Nope. Okay, I’m coming down now, there is nothing and we need to set up camp soon”.
Thoughtful Tim needs to react, and he does: “Ben, we are counting on you as our leader. Captain Ben, please report to your sailors what you are seeing, in detail, even if it’s just trees”. Elated by Tim’s words, Ben goes on top again and starts describing the landscape. This makes him pay attention to what he’s seeing, because he hears himself while he speaks. The fact that he keeps correcting himself does not matter. In such a situation, any information is better than none at all.
“So there are some trees. Yeah… Birds, hills. Is that a pine tree? Oh wait, they are all pine trees. And uh, that looks like a squirrel. Oh wait, squirrels are not beige, and they’re small. Maybe… Oh, it’s a car! A car. And there’s a road, leading to a hut. Oh my! There are people, an adult, standing next to the hut! Uniforms, a hat, a car. Over there, northeast.”
“Well done, captain, you may come down now.”
The group sets course to go downhill to the northeast, with Ben leading the pack. Thoughtful Tim is last, following everyone else with some distance and making sure the group keeps going in the same direction. Before setting off to find the hut, Tim checked the position of the sun and the rising moon. It often happens during the hike down the hill that the group is starting to take a different path. Tim notices it on time and tells the group to correct course.
Finally, the group starts hearing human voices nearby and soon reaches its destination. The hut is inhabited by a ranger sheriff and another guard. The sheriff welcomes the scouts and they tell him they are lost. Fortunately the sheriff knows there is a boy camp scout nearby, so he calls them.
The group is rescued and everyone is happy. Even Gloomy George decides to say: “I’m glad everything went okay”.
Let’s break down this story. Who do you think was the true leader here? Ben or Tim? Thoughtful Tim looks dull and aloof. He even calls Ben “captain”, acknowledging he’s leading the group. But when you look closer you notice that Tim is the one who is constantly setting the direction and correcting course when necessary.
Having studied a multitude of introverts in leadership positions who lead successfully, I’ve discovered that there are three timeless principles of introverted leadership: Vision, compassion and perspective. How did Thoughtful Tim do at these in this short story?
Vision
At all times, Thoughtful Tim shows he’s the only one on the team who keeps track of the main goal, the final destination of the team’s shared adventure: Getting back to the camp. Brave Ben gets sidetracked by fears they will not make it back on the same day, so he makes a quick and drastic decision to start collecting materials to set up camp.
He makes use of quick judgment when looking at a static Tim, a crying Phil and a pessimistic George, and believes the team is not ready to gather forces and use the remaining daylight hours to search the camp. Meanwhile, the team member who seemed the most inactive, Tim, was the only one keeping track of the true vision all along, taking his time to evaluate how to get to the final destination.
A good leader keeps track of the vision at all times and prioritises it so that all results work for the vision. They might slow down or take unconventional approaches like climbing up a hill potentially risking not having shelter for the night, but they understand the importance of experimenting and not always judging so quickly.
Compassion
Compassion goes beyond empathy. When you look at the etymological word structure, hence what our ancestors were expressing when they created these words, we can see that both share the same root: “Pati”, which equally means to feel and to suffer. You can imagine Greek and Roman philosophers having a breakthrough moment when thinking about the essence of life: “To feel is to suffer. And life is void without feelings. Fellow thinkers, let’s call this concept ‘pati’”.
But there is a key difference between empathy and compassion, which is that compassion not only involves feeling another person’s pain but also includes a desire to help alleviate that pain. It involves an active component where one feels compelled to take action to relieve the suffering of others. We see this difference play out in Ben vs. Tim, where Ben first rages, then corrects and shows empathy saying he feels the same but is not willing to take it a step further, which is just what Tim does when he comforts Phil. It’s the difference between “I kinda know how it feels” and “I want to feel it with you”.
In the same train of thought, we have a passion when we are ready to suffer through hard times and forego pleasure to attain a higher goal: Our business, our children, our nation. It’s one of the key concepts in Viktor Frankl’s famous book “Man’s search for meaning”: We humans are not meant to have a life full of pleasure. Since the moment of our birth we experience suffering. We reach the highest satisfaction when we find meaning in our suffering. When we reach for a goal higher than ourselves. Purpose is not something you find, it’s something you make.
In a world with growing tensions and divisions, you can make a difference by not only caring to understand but to feel what that fellow human is going through, what made them reach the assumptions and conclusions they carry in their words. Realise that we are all born the same way, and die the same way. We are all affected by emotions, whether we show them or not. That makes us human.
The base of all good communication is based on compassion, since when communicating we are trying to find common ground with another person. Good leaders apply this principle, even if they might not fully understand why it works. In “The Master and His Emissary”, one of the most influential psychiatrists of our era, Iain McGilchrist, argues that our right brain hemisphere is the “Master,” offering a holistic, integrated view of reality, while the left hemisphere is the “Emissary,” focused on analysis, categorisation, and manipulation of isolated components.
In an interview, McGilchrist said the following, based off a book from a widely educated psychologist, Louis A. Sass, titled “Madness and Modernism”: “We are moving into a more schizophrenic world […] People with schizophrenia have an over-reliance on the left hemisphere (the part of the brain we use to rationalise). It’s not that they lose their reason. A man that is mad has lost everything but his reason.” The key is to set the course with the right hemisphere and steer the ship with the left hemisphere.
Our division, woes and faults are therefore caused by us trying to argue and convince with rationalism, which is like trying to ask a train driver why he is driving to Manchester instead of Edinburgh: “Sir, I’m just following the railways”. This reflects in real-life arguments when someone says “How can he not get it?” or “It’s so obvious”. The truth is that we first feel and then rationalise. A good leader, therefore, digs into the motive that started the visible actions by feeling with others instead of making assumptions on the why.
Perspective
It’s not uncommon to see bad leaders lose themselves in a false perspective, thus taking only their own perception into account. We look at everything through our glasses of perception, tainted by our feelings, experiences, familiar culture, inborn middle brain reactivity and plenty of other factors. This perception can get replaced when we change our environment, forcing our brain to change our subconscious behaviour, with our most recent experiences shaping our judgment most. There is an advantage in being the last one to speak during a debate.
Often, we find ourselves rereading our old diaries, rewatching our old videos, and we ask ourselves: “Who was this person?”. We can’t believe that WE were that person and back then we reasoned our actions with the glasses of perception we were wearing, shaped by where we were living, who our friends were, where we were working. And nowadays, it’s not the person who changed, but the glasses the person is wearing.
We need to understand that when someone looks and sounds immensely irrational to us, there’s a big chance that that’s what someone else was thinking when they talked to us in the past. Acknowledging this is crucial in order to gain a higher perspective: “This could have been me”. We start seeing people’s crazy ideas and irrational thoughts as legitimate ideas. We treat them with respect and might find it harder to hold a grudge against them, which only makes cooperation more difficult.
Thoughtful Tim evaluated all of the suggestions proposed by his friends and came to nuanced conclusions. He acknowledges that it’s not that Phil’s idea of searching for the camp from above is better than Ben’s idea of building a camp for the night. He looks at both as being valid, but in the dimension of the available time it was worth it to experiment with Phil’s idea, because in terms of effectiveness it brought them closer to the real goal, which was to go back to the main camp.
Robert Greene, as a self-proclaimed student of human nature, underlines the importance of acquiring perspective in his writings. He claims that perspective is necessary in order to achieve true mastery. With perspective, we can better navigate the complexities of human nature more effectively, make wiser decisions, and build more meaningful connections with others. Perspective and not perception is fundamental for personal development, effective leadership, and successful social interactions.
Introverts have a significant advantage over others when it comes to broadening our perspective. We are conflict-avoidant, preferring to withdraw and reflect. This allows us to look at everything around us with a certain personal detachment. It also quickly becomes a disadvantage when we are too detached and choose never to jump to conclusions. We can avoid this negative effect by combining perspective with vision, allowing ourselves to make temporary conclusions after some study in order to work towards the fulfilment of the vision.
Perspective requires mental openness and allowing ourselves to explore rather than rationalising away everything that happens to us. We should not stop rationalising, but instead we’ll do better if we respond carefully instead of reacting to everything we see or hear. We should define a clear direction in life and business, instead of following every single new trend that might make us rich overnight.
Conclusion
The fact of the matter is that a society that is attracted by quick gains will be plagued by quick, devastating losses. In my career in technology, I’ve seen so-called programming wizards quickly rise through the ranks and become team leads, only to fall even faster when they see themselves incapable of dealing with the unpredictable human nature, that requires patience to develop the necessary perspective.
“Move fast and break things” was once the motto chosen by Mark Zuckerberg to reflect the style of Facebook’s work processes. This fast-paced style of leadership has been adopted by many companies around the world, especially startups. I agree that experimentation is good and we should get rid of unnecessary processes, as suggested by the book “The Lean Startup”.
However, it’s crucial for startup leaders to realise that Facebook’s success couldn’t have happened without the clear vision and mission of its founder. Many startups fail to come up with a strong vision for their core product: “We aim to become the number one leadership consultancy agency” or “We are working on building a great IDE with AI”. Efficient processes only matter if you have impactful ideas. And, let’s not forget, value by itself does not exist. Its impact, then, is a matter of personal perception.
