315. Quietly Powerful: How Introverts Can Communicate With Confidence & Impact

[00:00:00] Matt Abrahams: Introversion is an asset. Quiet leaders bring tremendous value. My name's Matt Abrahams, and I teach Strategic Communication at Stanford Graduate School of Business. Welcome to Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. Today, I really look forward to speaking with Susan Cain. Susan is a former Wall Street lawyer and negotiation consultant. She has spent years researching how society's extrovert ideal dramatically shapes our workplaces, schools, and daily communication. Susan is a New York Times bestselling author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking, and Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole. She also writes The Quiet Life Substack. Well, welcome, Susan. I have looked forward to this conversation for so long. I really appreciate you being here and the work that you've done. 

[00:00:51] Susan Cain: Oh my gosh. I appreciate your work so much. There's so much overlap between what we do, so I'm really glad that we got to make this happen. 

[00:00:58] Matt Abrahams: Well, thank you. Uh, shall we get started?

[00:01:01] Susan Cain: Let's do. 

[00:01:01] Matt Abrahams: All right. I'd love to start with one of your foundational principles, and that is how people show up in terms of extroversion and introversion, and I'd love for you to talk about what those are and also to walk us through what you mean by the extrovert ideal. 

[00:01:17] Susan Cain: Well, introversion and extroversion, your listeners have probably heard before of the idea of it being kind of a question of where do you get your energy, that introverts derive energy from a more internal source, and therefore like quieter settings, and extroverts are kind of the opposite. And there's so much we could say about what these terms really mean, but I think that's as good a definition as any. And the way I think to really ask yourself which one am I really, because people lose sight of it, especially many introverts do because there's so much pressure from the time we're very small to act extroverted that many introverts come to believe they actually are extroverted until they think about it.

[00:02:00] So a couple of questions you could ask yourself. One would be, imagine that you have a weekend or a vacation and you have no social or professional obligations. How do you spend that time? Who do you spend it with? How many people do you spend it with? And what kinds of relationships are those people? Like, are you choosing to spend it with the people you know really well, or do you prefer the novelty of meeting new people? So all these things, when you really lift the obligations, tell you a lot about who you are. So the extroverted ideal is basically the cultural norm, which by the way, we see all over the world.

[00:02:37] There are national and cultural differences we can talk about, but still, I haven't really yet encountered a country where it isn't so, that there is a norm for people to be bold, assertive, talkative, and socially dominant. And it is important to say that especially in many Confucian societies, in China, Korea, and so on, there are great variations to this because in a society where social life is organized more around group harmony, there's kind of like equally an imperative for people not to stand out too much and not to talk too much nonsense is a phrase that I often hear from these cultures.

[00:03:24] And so I often find in those cultures you have a kind of double consciousness of, on the one hand, wanting not to talk too much, and on the other hand, feeling that you're supposed to. Whereas in the United States, I think it's much more like, yeah, we all feel that we're supposed to be uber comfortable in social settings and so on. And that can really work against introverts. And in fact, there are all kinds of studies showing that, like there's one from 2024 that showed that introverts are often sort of outperforming on actual productivity measures, but then not doing as well because they're seen as less visible. So one of the things we should actually really talk about is how do you become more visible as an introvert while still being yourself?

[00:04:08] Matt Abrahams: Absolutely. There's a whole bunch of research that says many of the characteristics associated with people who are more introverted actually are critically essential to how we work, how we relate, et cetera. The ability to do deep thinking, to have higher emotional intelligence about what's going on, to be able to listen deeply, those are all useful skills.

[00:04:28] Before we get into the actions that more introverted people can take, I, given the work that I do around helping people feel more comfortable and confident in communication, to my mind, there's a confusing of having anxiety in speaking and being introverted, and I'd love to hear your take on it. I know what I say, and I'm happy to share that with you, but I'd love to hear your approach to it because I believe fully it's possible to be a very confident introvert and to be a very anxious extrovert.

[00:04:56] Susan Cain: Absolutely. I think what you're getting at is the overlap and the confusion between the difference between shyness and introversion. My work actually touches on both. Both are relevant, but shyness is much more what you were just describing. It's a kind of excessive social anxiety that tends to come out in situations where people are judged, whether that's a work meeting or a job interview or giving a speech, or could be going on a date. And many people will experience shyness and social anxiety in one of those settings, but not in another, so it really varies. And as you say, you could be an extrovert who has that kind of anxiety, and you could be an introvert who really doesn't.

[00:05:34] Although in practice, there is some overlap between the two, but yeah, not necessarily. Because introversion is much more about, it's just a preference for being in situations where you're less bombarded by stimulation of all kinds, like, you know, fewer people around, less sound, fewer inputs, and that's where introverts are at their best, at their most creative, at their happiest, and so on. So that ends up translating into the social world because if you are an introvert who prefers fewer inputs coming at you, you're probably not gonna be at your happiest when you're in a big group meeting with multiple social signals coming in all at once. But that's not necessarily shyness, it can be introversion.

[00:06:16] Matt Abrahams: Right. And I really appreciate you separating those two concepts. And again, there are clearly relations, but there are things that people who are shy or people who have anxiety around communication or social anxiety can do that can help them, that may or may not help address some of the issues that they're experiencing with introversion and extroversion. I'm curious, what advice and guidance do you give people to help them feel more confident and calm in those circumstances? 

[00:06:43] Susan Cain: Well, I mean, it depends on the setting, and different settings are challenging for different people. But the core principle that I would say applies to all these settings is the kind of miracle of desensitization, which is an idea well proven in psychology, that if you have a fear of anything, it could be a fear of snakes or elevators or whatever, the best way to overcome the fear is to expose yourself to it in very small and very manageable doses. So, for example, I had a fear, like a really, really deep and grave fear of public speaking. I had it all my life. And the way I overcame that was, it was actually when my book Quiet was coming out, and I didn't want my fear to stand in the way of my ability to communicate about the book.

[00:07:35] So I went to this seminar for people with public speaking anxiety that used these principles of desensitization, so that on the first day, all you had to do was stand up, say your name, sit back down, you were finished, you declare victory. And then you'd come back the next week, and the exercise would be ever so slightly more challenging. Uh, maybe you'd stand up and answer a few questions about yourself and then sit back down. And what you're really doing is little by little, you are rewiring your brain. What happens when you have social anxiety is your brain is basically interpreting the social encounter as an encounter with a saber-toothed tiger, and you're reacting as if that were true. And so you're basically teaching your brain that it's not true, and that this kind of social encounter is actually okay. And if you do that enough times, it actually really works. 

[00:08:31] Matt Abrahams: Yeah, there are many, many techniques. Desensitization is a very powerful one, one that's been studied for a long time. And the cool thing is you don't actually have to do it in a situation like you did, where you're in front of a group of people doing it. You can actually, there's a whole bunch of research on visualization, where you can do it just inside your own head, almost like a flight simulator for pilots. So for some people, it's just too much to go to that initial meeting, so you can do some of that desensitization through visualization, and it helps. I love that technique.

[00:09:00] I want to switch to what we all can do, but leaders play a role in this as well. And you talk about quiet leaders. Can you define what that is? And then I want to ask about how we can set up environments to support people who are more introverted. 

[00:09:15] Susan Cain: I think hopefully many of us can think of quiet leaders we know. They're often people who listen a little bit more than they talk. They maybe reflect a little more than is typical before making a decision. They might lead through asking a lot of questions and understanding inputs from their team and then going off to process and then coming up with their decision. They often are building those deep one-on-one relationships. So quiet leaders show up in these forms, and there's actually quite a bit of data showing that quiet leaders deliver outcomes that are as strong, and in some cases stronger, than those of extroverted leaders. So it's a real paradox because the problem is that people who have these characteristics tend not to be cultivated as much for leadership positions, but that leads to a colossal waste of talent because they actually deliver great results.

[00:10:11] Matt Abrahams: And I think there has to be a, a mindset shift over what good leaders are. As you were describing the characteristics of an effective quiet leader, for me, that was quite aspirational. I would love in the leading I do to exhibit some of those. If you were a manager, leader in an organization and you wanted to build in practices, procedures that would really allow introverts to feel more engaged or more comfortable, what might be some things you would do? I could imagine, for example, having updates where people might write the updates rather than have to stand up and share their updates. I'm just curious if there's some very specific tactics that you would put in place if you could set up an environment in the workplace for introverts. 

[00:10:56] Susan Cain: Well, I think the first thing that I would do is evaluate the evaluation system to make sure that when hiring and when promoting, when identifying candidates for leadership within the organization, to make sure you're using the right criteria so that you're actually getting in your net the talented, committed introverts, because I can tell you, you're probably not. You're probably letting a lot of talented people slide through if the criteria look like coding for sort of conventional visibility. So that's the first thing. I would give a lot of thought to how do I structure meetings and making sure that there are times within each person's workday where they get to put their head down and enter a state of flow and know that they're not gonna be called into a spontaneous meeting.

[00:11:47] You know, and maybe that looks like setting aside times in the workday where it's head down time. And then within meetings themselves, there are so many different things one can do, like make sure that you hear from everybody when making a group decision, but also building in time for each person to be able to think. And that benefits everybody because what tends to happen in meetings is there's not really much thought given in advance to what you're going to be talking about. And then the loudest or most dominant people come in and hog up the microphone.

[00:12:22] And we know from the Kellogg School that three people do 70% of the talking in your typical meeting. So how do you avoid that? One of my favorite techniques comes from the world of education. It's called think-pair-share. And what you do is you, let's say you're trying to make a decision, you have everybody sit quietly and think about their ideas. Then you have people talk about it in pairs just with one other person, and only then do you start sharing out with a group. And you end up getting not only more participation, not only broader, but also more thoughtful participation from everybody, the extroverts as well as the introverts. 

[00:12:59] Matt Abrahams: Think-pair-share is a technique I have always adored and in my teaching use it repeatedly for all the reasons you talked about. It's also a wonderful tool if you have people who perhaps are newer to a language. It gives that same opportunity. Wonderful specific advice on how to structure the meetings. The point about how we are assessing people and what those criteria are in looking at how they are perhaps negatively impacting introverts and finding the, the talent. Thank you for sharing that.

[00:13:29] I want to switch to your other book, Bittersweet. And in that, you explore the power of embracing emotional complexity, such as longing and sorrow. In a business world that heavily indexes on positivity, crushing it, just moving forward, how can leaders and all of us effectively communicate vulnerability and to be, you know, emotionally whole when we show up at work? Any ideas about how to do that in the way we relate and communicate? 

[00:13:56] Susan Cain: It's a tricky thing because there can be a risk to being too vulnerable, especially if you're in a leadership position, because people want to know that their boss has got it together and that their leader knows what's happening and that they can rely on them. And at the same time, they also want to know the truth. And the truth involves vulnerability because the truth involves, "Well, I don't know if we're going to be able to make our shipment. I don't know if we're going to be able to make our numbers." So you want to find a way to share that information truthfully while at the same time communicating that you have a plan. But kind of the broader perspective for all that, I would offer a, a different example, which is a case study that I wrote about in Bittersweet.

[00:14:40] This is a Harvard business case study of an oil rig off the coast of Texas and the Gulf of Mexico. And they profiled the leader of this oil rig, who was a very classical sort of dominant type of guy. And he started to feel that things were not working the way they should. And he did a really introspective deep dive and realized that the problem was that he wasn't being truthful with the people in his workplace, with members of his family. He wasn't really being truthful about what he was experiencing. And he went through this process of learning to do that and of encouraging other workers to do that as well, to really show up and talk about what was going on in their personal lives.

[00:15:26] And as a result of this, the accident rates at this oil rig went way down because suddenly people were comfortable saying, "You know what? I think this system might not work, and I'm worried that there could be an accident. So how about if we try doing such and such thing?" Whereas before, there had been a culture where it was a quite macho culture, and you never would have wanted to do that because it would have made you look too uncertain. So accident rates went down and their productivity went way up. So the takeaway is there are ways to express what you are truly experiencing. But if you pair it by offering a plan and an idea and a belief of what we can do with this uncertainty, what we can do with this vulnerability, then people will trust it.

[00:16:14] Matt Abrahams: Setting up psychological safety and role modeling, I think are two things I took away from what you said, and the result of it can be really positive. I appreciate that, and clearly there are benefits to that. I see a thread across your work is trying to find ways to bring power and motivation and the full strength of the people in organizations when there might be biases against some of those ways.

[00:16:40] Well, Susan, this has been lovely. I knew that we would learn a lot from you, and I personally am really enjoying the conversation. Before we end, I always ask the guests three questions. One I make up just for you, and the others I've been asking everybody. Are you up for that? 

[00:16:54] Susan Cain: Yes, absolutely. 

[00:16:56] Matt Abrahams: So I was delighted to learn something. As we were arranging for this meeting, I came to learn from your team that you encourage people to take time away from work and technology. Can you share a little bit about what motivates this, and what purpose does it fulfill for you and for those on your team? 

[00:17:15] Susan Cain: I guess beyond the obvious answer to that question is the fact that I personally have experienced burnout in my life. I know what it feels like, and I know what causes it. And I've experienced it in situations where I didn't like my job so much, and I've also experienced it with my current work, and I adore my current work. And there's still such a thing as burnout, even with work that you really love. We're especially prone to it in the age of technology, where we are so tethered to our phones and to our laptops. And like now people don't even say, "Let's get on a phone call." They say, "Let's have a Zoom." So, like just to have a conversation, you're often staring into a screen. It's terrible. So I think we really need to be getting away from all that as much as possible, not only to stay sane, but to stay, you know, creative and activated and happy.

[00:18:08] Matt Abrahams: Right. And I just thought it was great to see that it was a policy, and it was a policy that was being dictated from the person running the organization. Question number two, who is a communicator that you admire and why? 

[00:18:20] Susan Cain: Well, you know, my favorite communicator of all time, to whom I dedicated my book Bittersweet, is Leonard Cohen, the musician. And I love him, and many people do, because he is telling the truth, and you know he is. He's not the best singer. He wasn't the best-looking man. He often wasn't happy. He suffered from depression throughout much of his life. And he told the truth about all of it. And in so doing, he became incredibly charismatic in his own way, and you felt like you were getting the real thing.

[00:18:57] Matt Abrahams: Absolutely. That authenticity, that truthfulness, very important, and I appreciate you sharing. Final question for you. What are the first three ingredients that go into a successful communication recipe? 

[00:19:10] Susan Cain: Well, I mean, I guess the first one is what we were just talking about and have been talking about throughout, and I would say sincerity. We are evolutionarily designed to be able to read all kinds of cues from the people we're speaking to and make all kinds of unconscious conclusions about them without even knowing how we got there. And so whatever mode you are speaking in, people are going to know it. And so it is true that there are people like, you know, your classic con man, let's say, who gets by by making people feel really good and believing something that isn't true, by promising things that the people want to hear. But that doesn't work over time. That kind of person is really good in a first meeting, maybe a second meeting, maybe a third. Doesn't work over time.

[00:20:01] Over time, what works is truly showing up in a way where you actually care, you're actually trying to give value. People will know it. So maybe I'm saying two things. One is to attend to your inner state, knowing that it's your inner state that people are going to be reacting to. And number two is to be sincere. And then I would say number three is to find the place in you that truly enjoys other people and enjoys the world, and try to tap into that aspect of yourself when you're going into difficult communication settings. Because we all have the more pessimistic sides or more despairing sides or whatever, and then we have the hopeful and positive energy sides of ourselves. Both those sides are okay and great, but it can be helpful to just sort of mindfully shift from one to the other as you need to. 

[00:20:56] Matt Abrahams: Yeah, and the ability to toggle between those is really important. So understand your inner state, where you're coming from, how you are in the world, be sincere, and look for the external opportunities where you really find joy and connection in others. Those are really powerful and important ingredients. And this has been a really important conversation. I know many people listening and watching to this, and just many people in the world feel in some ways inadequate or deficient because of their introversion or their shyness. And in fact, the contributions and opportunities that they have to help everybody are very positive and strong. And I appreciate you highlighting what those are and ways in which we can enable that. So thank you for your time, and thank you for your insight. 

[00:21:39] Susan Cain: Oh my gosh. Thank you so much for having me and for the work you do in the world. I think it's so, so important, so thank you. 

[00:21:47] Matt Abrahams: Thank you for joining us for another episode of Think Fast, Talk Smart, the podcast. To learn more about confidence building, please listen to episode 69 with Kelly McGonigal. This episode was produced by Katherine Reed, Ryan Campos, and me, Matt Abrahams, with special thanks to the Podium Podcast Company. Our music is by Floyd Wonder. Please find us on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe and rate us. Also follow us on LinkedIn, TikTok, and Instagram. And check out fastersmarter.io for deep dive videos, English language learning content, and our newsletter. Please consider joining our Think Fast, Talk Smart Learning Community at fastersmarter.io/learning. You'll find video lessons, learning quests, discussion boards, an AI coach, and book club opportunities. Again, that's fastersmarter.io/learning to become part of our Think Fast, Talk Smart Learning Community.