Another book I'm reading

Another book I have finally started reading is Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain. I’m curious about this power. I was thinking to myself that I am not such a big introvert, but then wondered if that is partly because my life is quite nicely set up at present to cater for an introvert – if I wanted to I could sit at work all day with headphones in working quietly and independently, and when I get home, while I do have a flatmate in a two-bedroom flat, we more or less do our own thing and if I want to go to my room and potter around by myself I do. So it is perhaps little wonder I don’t feel challenged as an introvert.

Then I went through the test at the beginning of the book and I actually answered “true” for every single statement. I guess that makes me well and truly an introvert. But I genuinely like people, I don’t think I am “anti-social” and I don’t think I can be accused of not holding up my end of a conversation (so long as it’s not a large group conversation, in which case I won’t be one of the top contributors).

The book is not quite what I was expecting, and it’s heavily set in America, which despite all the media we get here from the States is still a little different to Australia. I, for one, feel far more affinity for the British than the Americans, and I don’t know that the “Culture of Personality” (which has apparently replaced the “Culture of Character” in the US) is as alive and thriving here. But this paragraph did give me pause. It’s meant as a positive, to show the spheres in which introverts make good leaders, but there’s a yikes factor!

Studies have shown that, indeed, introverts are more likely than extraverts to express intimate facts about themselves online that their family and friends would be surprised to read, to say that they can express the “real me” online, and to spend more time in certain kinds of online discussions. They welcome the chance to communicate digitally. The same person who would never raise his hand in a lecture hall of two hundred people might blog to two thousand, or two million, without thinking twice. The same person who finds it difficult to introduce himself to strangers might establish a presence online and then extend those relationships into the real world.

Interesting. I have certainly made some good friends through blogging, who might know more about me than people I chat to after church (where I do regularly introduce myself to strangers though), but I don’t know if that is ideal. Statement 2 in the introvert test was “I often prefer to express myself in writing”. This is certainly true for me, and I do get frustrated with those people, usually in ministry contexts, who say that you can’t write things, you have to use the phone or say it face to face. (I hate the phone, and would go face to face if there was a choice.) Granted, you shouldn’t fire off nasty emails, in the same way you shouldn’t fire off verbal assaults, but that is not to say there is no place for written communication. I like letters. And one of the difficulties with attempting to say things face to face is that statement 1. in the introvert list is “I prefer one-on-one conversations to group activities”. If I could arrange one-one-one conversations with people to say what I want to say I might not feel the urge to write as strongly, but often that is not so easily done and you can’t escape the “group” scenario.

I'm only in chapter two, The Myth of Charismatic Leadership, so far, so I shall press on.