Musings from the CU Suite

Written by Anthony Demangone

A Washington Post article recently discussed introverts, extroverts and leadership.  It is a worthwhile read, if only to teach one about colors.  I'll get back to that in a moment.

The article argues that leadership is a sales job. Leaders may pitch a product to high level clients, or ideas to a group of colleagues.  Persuasion is an important attribute of leadership.   Following that train of logic, the article looks at a study of sales professionals who were measured along an introvert to extrovert scale. What did the study uncover?

He began by giving reps an often-used personality assessment that measures introversion and extroversion on a 1-to-7 scale, with 1 being most introverted and 7 being most extroverted.

Then he tracked their performance over the next three months. The introverts fared worst; they earned average revenue of $120 per hour. The extroverts performed slightly better, pulling in $125 per hour. But neither did nearly as well as a third group: the ambiverts.

Ambi-whats?

Ambiverts, a term coined by social scientists in the 1920s, are people who are neither extremely introverted nor extremely extroverted. Think back to that 1-to-7 scale that Grant used. Ambiverts aren’t 1s or 2s, but they’re not 6s or 7s either. They’re 3s, 4s and 5s. They’re not quiet, but they’re not loud. They know how to assert themselves, but they’re not pushy.

In Grant’s study, ambiverts earned average hourly revenues of $155, beating extroverts by a healthy 24 percent. In fact, the salespeople who did the best of all, earning an average of $208 per hour, had scores of 4.0, smack in the middle of the introversion-extroversion scale.

Ambivert. Now that's a term I hadn't heard before.

The article implies that most in society mistakenly believe that extroverts are the best leaders, and that this research proves otherwise.  I'm not sure that I agree that society only desires extroverts as leaders.

Perhaps when given a choice between a pure introvert and a pure extrovert, most would choose the latter when it comes to leadership.  But the world rarely offers choices in black and white. Effective leadership involves balance.  Knowing when to command the podium, and knowing when to listen. 

Whether you call those folks ambiverts, balanced, or reasonable, I don't think it really matters. The world isn't black and white. And neither is leadership. 

Have a great week, guys. 

If you enjoyed this, you might be interested in an earlier post of mine, The Power of the Introvert.