Quiet, by Susan Cain

Sometimes in American culture it seems like the only way to succeed, in school, in business, in life, is to be loud, to be outspoken, to be gregarious.  But what about the introverts?  In Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, Susan Cain writes that not only have many introverts been successful, they have qualities that can give them an edge in creativity and productivity.

Much our our Western conventional wisdom seems to favor the bold.  The picture of a leader, whether in politics, business, education, or social life, is usually the picture of an assertive, outspoken type, charging ahead with confidence.  But Cain cites study after that study to demonstrate that, for example, TV pundits (outspoken extroverts by definition) "make worse predictions about political and economic trends than they would by random chance.  And the very worst prognosticators tend to be the most famous and the most confident."  We fail to "distinguish between good presentation skills and true leadership ability," promoting on the basis of being a good talker, not on the basis of good ideas.  Even in the church, extroversion has come to be a requirement for ministry, so that "many evangelicals come to associate godliness with sociability."

In spite of the evidence that "college students who tend to study alone learn more over time than those who work in groups," that "open-plan office hove been found to reduce productivity and impair memory," and "excessive stimulation seems to impede learning," education and the workplace still tend toward the extrovert.  Classrooms are designed for group learning, with desks set in groups, rather the rows.  (I provoked the ire of my principal when I insisted that my seventh-grade math classroom be arranged in rows, in hopes of promoting more discipline and independent work.  My principal insisted on groups.  I lost that battle, disastrously.)  Schools continue their emphasis on group work because it supposedly prepares student better for the group environments they will encounter in the workplace.

Quiet is a great resource for managers, teachers, parents, and others who lead and work with introverts. It's a simple as recognizing that everyone has different styles of learning and working, and that we ought to be prepared to adapt the way we relate to others.  I have always thought of myself as an extrovert (I was voted "most outgoing" in my senior yearbook), but Cain helped me recognize my introverted side, acknowledging the tremendous value of the introverted life and the contributions introverts have to make.

Thanks to Waterbrook/Multnomah Blogging for Books for the complimentary review copy!