Quiet: The Power Of Introverts In A World That Can't Stop Talking Part 34

The star system dominated Christianity long before the concept of movie stars even existed. The dominant evangelist of the First Great Awakening was a British showman named George Whitefield who drew standing-room-only crowds with his dramatic impersonations of biblical figures and unabashed weeping, shouting, and crying out. But where the First Great Awakening balanced drama with intellect and gave birth to universities like Princeton and Dartmouth, the Second Great Awakening was even more personality-driven; its leaders focused purely on drawing crowds. Believing, as many megachurch pastors do today, that too academic an approach would fail to pack tents, many evangelical leaders gave up on intellectual values altogether and embraced their roles as salesmen and entertainers. "My theology! I didn't know I had any!" exclaimed the nineteenth-century evangelist D. L. Moody.

This kind of oratory affected not only styles of wors.h.i.+p, but also people's ideas of who Jesus was. A 1925 advertising executive named Bruce Fairchild Barton published a book called The Man n.o.body Knows. It presented Jesus as a superstar sales guy who "forged twelve men from the bottom ranks of business into an organization that conquered the world." This Jesus was no lamb; this was "the world's greatest business executive" and "The Founder of Modern Business." The notion of Jesus as a role model for business leaders.h.i.+p fell on extraordinarily receptive ears. The Man n.o.body Knows became one of the best-selling nonfiction books of the twentieth century, according to Powell's Books. See Adam S. McHugh, Introverts in the Church: Finding Our Place in an Extroverted Culture (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2009), 2325. See also Neal Gabler, Life: The Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 2526.

42. early Americans revered action: Richard Hofstadter, Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (New York: Vintage Books, 1962); see, for example, pp. 51 and 25657.

43. The 1828 presidential campaign: Neal Gabler, Life: The Movie, 28.

44. John Quincy Adams, incidentally: Steven J. Rubenzer et al., "a.s.sessing the U.S. Presidents Using the Revised NEO Personality Inventory," a.s.sessment 7, no. 4 (2000): 40320.

45. "Respect for individual human personality": Harold Stearns, America and the Young Intellectual (New York: George H. Duran Co., 1921).

46. "It is remarkable how much attention": Henderson, "Media and the Rise of Celebrity Culture."

47. wandered lonely as a cloud: William Wordsworth, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," 1802.

48. repaired in solitude to Walden Pond: Henry David Th.o.r.eau, Walden, 1854.

49. Americans who considered themselves shy: Bernardo Carducci and Philip G. Zimbardo, "Are You Shy?" Psychology Today, November 1, 1995.

50. "Social anxiety disorder" ... one in five of us: M. B. Stein, J. R. Walker, and D. R. Forde, "Setting Diagnostic Thresholds for Social Phobia: Considerations from a Community Survey of Social Anxiety," American Journal of Psychiatry 151 (1994): 40842.

51. The most recent version of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual: American Psychiatric a.s.sociation, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed. (DSM-IV), 2000. See 300.23, "Social Phobia (Social Anxiety Disorder)": "The diagnosis is appropriate only if the avoidance, fear, or anxious antic.i.p.ation of encountering the social or performance situation interferes significantly with the person's daily routine, occupational functioning, or social life, or if the person is markedly distressed about having the phobia.... In feared social or performance situations, individuals with Social Phobia experience concerns about embarra.s.sment and are afraid that others will judge them to be anxious, weak, 'crazy,' or stupid. They may fear public speaking because of concern that others will notice their trembling hands or voice or they may experience extreme anxiety when conversing with others because of fear that they will appear inarticulate.... The fear or avoidance must interfere significantly with the person's normal routine, occupational or academic functioning, or social activities or relations.h.i.+ps, or the person must experience marked distress about having the phobia. For example, a person who is afraid of speaking in public would not receive a diagnosis of Social Phobia if this activity is not routinely encountered on the job or in the cla.s.sroom and the person is not particularly distressed about it."

52. "It's not enough ... to be able to sit at your computer": Daniel Goleman, Working with Emotional Intelligence (New York: Bantam, 2000), 32.

53. a staple of airport bookshelves and business best-seller lists: See, for example, http://www.nationalpost.com/Business+Bestsellers/3927572/story.html.

54. "all talking is selling and all selling involves talking": Michael Erard, Um: Slips, Stumbles, and Verbal Blunders, and What They Mean (New York: Pantheon, 2007), 156.

55. more than 12,500 chapters in 113 countries: http://www.toastmasters.org/MainMenuCategories/WhatisToastmasters.aspx (accessed September 10, 2010).

56. The promotional video: http://www.toastmasters.org/DVDclips.aspx (accessed July 29, 2010). Click on "Welcome to Toastmasters! The entire 15 minute story."

CHAPTER 2: THE MYTH OF CHARISMATIC LEADERs.h.i.+P

1. President Clinton ... 50 million other people: These names and statistics are according to Tony Robbins's website and other promotional materials as of December 19, 2009.

2. some $11 billion a year: Melanie Lindner, "What People Are Still Willing to Pay For," Forbes, January 15, 2009. The $11 billion figure is for 2008 and is, according to Marketdata Enterprises, a research firm. This amount was forecast to grow by 6.2 percent annually through 2012.

3. chairman of seven privately held companies: This figure is according to Robbins's website.

4. "hyperthymic" temperament: Hagop S. Akiskal, "The Evolutionary Significance of Affective Temperaments," Medscape CME, published June 12, 2003, updated June 24, 2003.

5. superhuman physical size: Steve Salerno made this point in his book Sham (New York: Crown Publishers, 2005), 75. He also made the later point about Robbins's remark that he was once so poor that he kept his dishes in the bathtub.

6. Founded in 1908 ... "educating leaders who make a difference in the world": Harvard Business School website, September 11, 2010.

7. President George W. Bush ... were HBS grads: Philip Delves Broughton, Ahead of the Curve: Two Years at Harvard Business School (New York: Penguin, 2008), 2. See also www.reuters.com, Factbox: Jeffrey Skilling, June 24, 2010.

8. will graduate into a business culture: Stanford Business School professor of applied psychology Thomas Harrell tracked Stanford MBAs who graduated between 1961 and 1965, and published a series of studies about them. He found that high earners and general managers tended to be outgoing and extroverted. See, e.g., Thomas W. Harrell and Bernard Alpert, "Attributes of Successful MBAs: A 20-Year Longitudinal Study," Human Performance 2, no. 4 (1989): 301-322.

9. " 'Here everyone knows that it's important to be an extrovert' ": Reggie Garrison et al., "Managing Introversion and Extroversion in the Workplace," Wharton Program for Working Professionals (WPWP) (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, Spring 2006).

10. BOSS TO TED AND ALICE: Here I must apologize: I can't recall the company that ran this ad, and haven't been able to locate it.

11. "DEPART FROM YOUR INHIBITIONS": http://www.advertolog.com/amtrak/print-outdoor/depart-from-your-inhibitions-2110505/ (accessed September 11, 2010).

12. a series of ads for the psychotropic drug Paxil: Christopher Lane, How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 127, 131.

13. We perceive talkers as smarter: Delroy L. Paulhus and Kathy L. Morgan, "Perceptions of Intelligence in Leaderless Groups: The Dynamic Effects of Shyness and Acquaintance," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 72, no. 3 (1997): 58191. See also Cameron Anderson and Gavin Kilduff, "Why Do Dominant Personalities Attain Influence in Face-to-Face Groups? The Competence Signaling Effects of Trait Dominance," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 96, no. 2 (2009): 491503.

14. two strangers met over the phone: William B. Swann Jr. and Peter J. Rentfrow, "Blirtatiousness: Cognitive, Behavioral, and Physiological Consequences of Rapid Responding," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81, no. 6 (2001): 116075.

15. We also see talkers as leaders: Simon Taggar et al., "Leaders.h.i.+p Emergence in Autonomous Work Teams: Antecedents and Outcomes," Personnel Psychology 52, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 899926. ("The person that speaks most is likely to be perceived as the leader.")

16. The more a person talks, the more other group members: James Surowiecki, The Wisdom of Crowds (New York: Doubleday Anchor, 2005), 187.

17. It also helps to speak fast: Howard Giles and Richard L. Street Jr., "Communicator Characteristics and Behavior," in M. L. Knapp and G. R. Miller, eds., Handbook of Interpersonal Communication, 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1994), 10361.

18. college students were asked to solve math problems: Cameron Anderson and Gavin Kilduff, "Why Do Dominant Personalities Attain Influence in Face-to-Face Groups? The Competence-Signaling Effects of Trait Dominance."

19. A well-known study out of UC Berkeley: Philip Tetlock, Expert Political Judgment (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006).

20. "the Bus to Abilene": Kathrin Day La.s.sila, "A Brief History of Groupthink: Why Two, Three or Many Heads Aren't Always Better Than One," Yale Alumni Magazine, January/February 2008.

21. Schwab ... Tohmatsu: Del Jones, "Not All Successful CEOs Are Extroverts," USA Today, June 7, 2006.

22. "some locked themselves into their office": Peter F. Drucker, The Leader of the Future 2: New Visions, Strategies, and Practices for the Next Era, edited by Frances Hesselbein, Marshall Goldsmith, and Richard Beckhard (San Francisco: Jossey-Ba.s.s, 2006), xixii.

23. those considered charismatic by their top executives: Bradley Agle et al., "Does CEO Charisma Matter? An Empirical a.n.a.lysis of the Relations.h.i.+ps Among Organizational Performance, Environmental Uncertainty, and Top Management Team Perceptions of CEO Charisma," Academy of Management Journal 49, no. 1 (2006): 16174. See also Del Jones, "Not All Successful CEOs Are Extroverts." For an excellent book on this topic, see Rakesh Khurana, Searching for a Corporate Savior: The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002).

24. the influential management theorist Jim Collins: Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap-and Others Don't (New York: HarperCollins, 2001). Note that some have questioned whether the companies Collins profiled are as "great" as he claimed. See Bruce Niendorf and Kristine Beck, "Good to Great, or Just Good?" Academy of Management Perspectives 22, no. 4 (2008): 1320. See also Bruce Resnick and Timothy Smunt, "Good to Great to ...?" Academy of Management Perspectives 22, no. 4 (2008): 612.

25. correlation between extroversion and leaders.h.i.+p: Timothy Judge et al., "Personality and Leaders.h.i.+p: A Qualitative and Quant.i.tative Review," Journal of Applied Psychology 87, no. 4 (2002): 76580. See also David Brooks, "In Praise of Dullness," New York Times, May 18, 2009, citing Steven Kaplan et al., "Which CEO Characteristics and Abilities Matter?" National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 14195, July 2008, a study finding that CEO success is more strongly related to "execution skills" than to "team-related skills." Brooks also cited another study by Murray Barrick, Michael Mount, and Timothy Judge, surveying a century's worth of research into business leaders.h.i.+p and finding that extroversion did not correlate well with CEO success, but that conscientiousness did.

26. In the first study ... fold more s.h.i.+rts: Adam M. Grant et al., "Reversing 57 the Extraverted Leaders.h.i.+p Advantage: The Role of Employee Proactivity," Academy of Management Journal 54, no. 3 (June 2011).

27. "Often the leaders end up doing a lot of the talking": Carmen n.o.bel, "Introverts: The Best Leaders for Proactive Employees," Harvard Business School Working Knowledge: A First Look at Faculty Research, October 4, 2010.

28. For years before the day in December 1955: I drew largely on Douglas Brinkley's excellent biography, Rosa Parks: A Life (New York: Penguin Books, 2000). Note: Unlike King, Parks did come to believe that violence was sometimes a justifiable weapon of the oppressed.

29. Moses, for example, was not: My a.n.a.lysis of Moses is based on my own reading of Exodus, especially 3:11, 4:1, 4:3, 4:10, 4:1217, 6:12, 6:30, and Numbers 12:3. Others have made similar a.n.a.lyses; see, for example, http://www.theologyweb.com/campus/showthread.php?t=50284. See also Doug Ward, "The Meanings of Moses' Meekness," http://G.o.dward.org/Hebrew%20Roots/meanings_of_moses.htm. Also see Marissa Brostoff, "Rabbis Focus on Professional Development," http://www.forward.com/articles/13971/ (accessed August 13, 2008).