“In Quiet, Susan Cain argues that we dramatically undervalue introverts and shows how much we lose in doing so. She charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal throughout the twentieth century and explores how deeply it has come to permeate our culture.”
As an introvert myself I’ve been enjoying this terrific book, and I want to particularly recommend it to managers and employers who deal with a variety of personality types. It would be particularly useful to extroverts who want to understand their more silent counterparts.
I’m keenly interested in human interaction and interpersonal dynamics (I attend a lot of business and committee meetings and sit on one board at present) and it’s been my experience that a group benefits by seeking the opinion of the quiet members – who may not have spoken up while the extroverts were carrying the conversation. If we fail to invite everyone into the conversation we lose out on the unique perspectives of the peripheral observers, who often have unexpected insights and ideas.
As my father would say, it takes all kinds to make the world. If we just learn to draw on the strengths of all the kinds, we’ll be in a much better place.