2015-03-17 07:22:06
Francesca Gino
March 16, 2015
Let s start with a short personality test. For each of the following
dimensions, indicate the extent to which each of the following words describes
you, with a 5 indicating very much so and a 1 indicating not at all :
assertive, talkative, bold, not reserved, and energetic. Now sum up your
scores. What s the total?
If you scored under 10 points, you are likely to have an introverted
personality rather than an extroverted one. If that is the case, you are
certainly not alone. Studies find that introverts make up one-third to one-half
of the population. Yet most workplaces are set up exclusively with extroverts
in mind, a fact that becomes clear when you look at traits associated with the
two personality types.
Extroverts gravitate toward groups and constant action, and they tend to think
out loud. They are energized and recharged by external stimuli, such as
personal interactions, social gatherings, and shared ideas. Being around other
people gives them energy. In contrast, introverts typically dislike noise,
interruptions, and big group settings. They instead tend to prefer quiet
solitude, time to think before speaking (or acting), and building relationships
and trust one-on-one. Introverts recharge with reflection, deep dives into
their inner landscape to research ideas, and focus deeply on work.
What do these tendencies mean for the ability of extroverts and introverts to
succeed in team settings, where they must interact and sometimes lead others?
My research suggests that the answer depends on the types of team members being
led.
Team leaders who are extroverted can be highly effective leaders when the
members of their team are dutiful followers looking for guidance from above.
Extroverts bring the vision, assertiveness, energy, and networks necessary to
give them direction.
By contrast, when team members are proactive and take the initiative to
introduce changes, champion new visions, and promote better strategies it is
introverted leaders who have the advantage. Extroverted leaders are more likely
to feel threatened, I ve found. When employees champion new visions,
strategies, and work processes, they often steal the spotlight, challenging
leaders dominance, authority, and status. As a result, extroverted leaders
tend to be less receptive: They shoot down suggestions and discourage employees
from contributing. By comparison, an introverted leader might be comfortable
listening and carefully considering suggestions from below. This finding is
consistent with a wealth of research on what is known as dominance
complementarity: the tendency of groups to be more cohesive and effective when
they have a balance of dominant and submissive members.
The intuition here is that extroverted leadership may drive higher performance
when employees are passive but lower performance when employees are proactive.
To test this idea, my colleagues Adam Grant of Wharton, Dave Hofmann of the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and I studied a U.S.
pizza-delivery chain. Since the stores in the chain were highly similar, they
offered a natural opportunity to track whether their success varied as a
function of extroverted leadership and employee proactivity.
With the goal of isolating the influence of extroverted leadership, we compared
the profitability of 57 different stores. We assessed each store leader s
levels of extraversion how assertive, talkative, bold, and energetic he or
she was. In addition, an average of six to seven employees per store completed
surveys about how proactive their store was as a group: to what extent did they
voice suggestions for improvement, attempt to influence the store s strategy,
and create better work processes?
Then, for the following seven weeks, we tracked each store s profits. We
statistically adjusted for factors beyond the leader s control, such as the
average price of pizza orders and the total number of employee labor hours. We
found that extroverted leadership was linked to significantly higher store
profits when employees were passive but significantly lower store profits when
employees were proactive. In stores with passive employees, those led by
extroverts achieved 16% higher profits than those led by introverts. However,
in stores with proactive employees, those led by extroverts achieved 14% lower
profits. As expected, extroverted leadership was an advantage with passive
groups, but a disadvantage with proactive groups.
These results suggest that introverts can use their strengths to bring out the
best in others. Yet introverts strengths are often locked up because of the
way work is structured. Take meetings. In a culture where the typical meeting
resembles a competition for loudest and most talkative, where the workspace is
open and desks are practically touching, and where high levels of confidence,
charisma, and sociability are the gold standard, introverts often feel they
have to adjust who they are to pass. But they do so at a price, one that has
ramifications for the company as well.
How can you get the best from deep, quiet team members during meetings? A look
at practices used in some organizations points to an answer. At Amazon, every
meeting begins in total silence. Before any conversation can occur, everyone
must quietly read a six-page memo about the meeting s agenda for 20 to 30
minutes. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos instituted this process after recognizing that
employees rarely read meeting materials sent in advance. Reading together
focuses everyone s attention on the issues at hand.
The real magic happens before the meeting ever starts, when the author is
writing one of these six-page memos, which are called narratives. The memos
must tell a story: They have a conflict to resolve and should conclude with
solutions, innovation, and happy customers a structure that provides the
meeting with direction. Writing forces memo authors to reason through what they
want to present, spend time puzzling through tough questions, and formulate
clear, if not persuasive, arguments. It s no surprise that Bezos also banned
PowerPoint presentations in meetings, thus doing away with simplistic and fuzzy
bullet-point logic.
The type of clear thinking that these structured memos require also serves the
purpose of leveling the playing field for team members who differ in their
level of introversion and extroversion. The imposition of writing as a medium
turns self-discipline and personal reflection into effective meetings and
participative decision making. After devoting time to reading, the group can
then focus on engaging in a valuable discourse: reaching shared understandings,
digging deeper into data and insights, and perhaps most importantly, having a
meaningful debate. The process gives introverted team members the time they
need to formulate their thoughts and, for some, build up the courage to share
them with the rest of the team. It also encourages the extroverted to listen,
reflect, and become more open to the perspectives of their more silent peers.
Thinking more carefully about how to structure meetings can be very helpful to
make sure they produce good outcomes. And it can also assure management can get
the best out of the introverted members, in addition to the more extroverted
ones.
Francesca Gino is a professor of business administration at Harvard Business
School. She is the author of the book Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get
Derailed, and How We Can Stick to the Plan.