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As adults, many of us work for organizations that insist we work in teams, in offices without walls, for supervisors who value “people skills” above all. To advance our careers, we’re expected to promote ourselves unabashedly.

Teamwork, Workplace Dynamics, Organizational Behavior, People Skills, Career Advancement

As adults many of us work for organizations that insist

As adults many of us work for organizations that insist

As adults many of us work for organizations that insist

Susan Cain’s Quotes On Topics

More Susan Cain Quotes

“Every day, Don wrestles with himself. Should he go back to his apartment and recharge over a quiet lunch, as he longs to do, or join his classmates?”

Personal Conflict, Introversion, Social Fatigue, Decision-making, Balance

“But longing is momentum in disguise: It’s active, not passive; touched with the creative, the tender, and the divine. We long for something, or someone. We reach for it, move toward it. The word longing derives from the Old English langian, meaning “to grow long,” and the German langen – to reach, to extend. The word yearning is linguistically associated with hunger and thirst, but also desire. In Hebrew, it comes from the same root as the word for passion.”

Longing, Passive Versus Active, Desire, Creative Momentum, Yearning And Hunger

“It can be hard for extroverts to understand how badly introverts need to recharge at the end of a busy day. We all empathize with a sleep-deprived mate who comes home from work too tired to talk, but it’s harder to grasp that social overstimulation can be just as exhausting.”

Extroverts, Introverts, Recharging Time, Social Overstimulation, Empathy Challenge

“Whatever the underlying cause, there’s a host of evidence that introverts are more sensitive than extroverts to various kinds of stimulation, from coffee to a loud bang to the dull roar of a networking event – and that introverts and extroverts often need very different levels of stimulation to function at their best.”

Introvert Sensitivity, Extrovert Differences, Stimulation Levels, Networking Events, Personal Thresholds

“Introverts are drawn to the inner world of thought and feeling, said Jung, extroverts to the external life of people and activities.”

Jung, Introversion, Extroversion, Inner World, Outer World

“These findings have enormous implications. They tell us that our impulse to respond to other beings’ sadness sits in the same location as our need to breathe, digest food, reproduce, and protect our babies; in the same place as our desire to be rewarded and to enjoy life’s pleasures. They tell us, as Keltner explained to me, that “caring is right at the heart of human existence. Sadness is about caring. And the mother of sadness is compassion.”

Caring, Emotions, Human Existence, Compassion, Psychological Findings

“Jealousy is an ugly emotion, but it tells the truth. You mostly envy those who have what you desire.”

Jealousy, Emotion, Envy, Truthful Feelings, Desire Fulfillment

“Psychopaths and heroes are twigs on the same genetic branch.”

Psychopathy, Heroism, Genetic Factors, Personality Traits, Moral Psychology

“What is the inner behavior of people whose most visible feature is that when you take them to a party they aren’t very pleased about it?”

Social Discomfort, Introverted Behavior, Party Dynamics, Emotional Responses, Self-awareness

“In most job interviews, people say they are looking for people skills and emotional intelligence. That’s reasonable, but the question is, how do you define what that looks like?”

Job Interviews, Emotional Intelligence, People Skills, Hiring Criteria, Defining Qualities

“Schwartz’s research suggests something important: we can stretch our personalities, but only up to a point. Our inborn temperaments influence us, regardless of the lives we lead. A sizeable part of who we are is ordained by our genes, by our brains, by our nervous systems. And yet the elasticity that Schwartz found in some of the high-reactive teens also suggests the converse: we have free will and can use it to shape our personalities.”

Personality Research, Schwartz, Genetics, Temperament, Free Will

“In our society, the ideal self is bold, gregarious, and comfortable in the spotlight. We like to think that we value individuality, but mostly we admire the type of individual who’s comfortable ’putting himself out there.”

Ideal Self, Societal Values, Individualism, Gregariousness, Cultural Admiration

“If you’re a teacher, enjoy your gregarious and participatory students. But don’t forget to cultivate the shy, the gentle, the autonomous, the ones with single-minded enthusiasms for chemistry sets or parrot taxonomy or nineteenth-century art. They are the artists, engineers, and thinkers of tomorrow.”

Teaching Strategies, Student Diversity, Introverted Learners, Personal Interests, Future Contributions

“The Asians were far more likely to accept a proposal from the friendly business manager than from the hostile one.”

Cultural Preferences, Business Relationships, Social Dynamics, Negotiation Outcomes, Friendliness

“If you had gathered the same people who created Linux, installed them in a giant conference room for a year, and asked them to devise a new operating system, it’s doubtful that anything so revolutionary would have occurred.”

Linux, Group Dynamics, Innovation, Teamwork, Creativity In Tech

“A well-known study out of UC Berkeley by organizational behavior professor Philip Tetlock found that television pundits – that is, people who earn their livings by holding forth confidently on the basis of limited information – make worse predictions about political and economic trends than they would by random chance. And the very worst prognosticators tend to be the most famous and the most confident – the very ones who would be considered natural leaders in an HBS classroom.”

Tetlock Study, Pundits, Prediction Accuracy, Confidence Versus Competence, Leadership Qualities

“Similarly, at Microsoft, many employees enjoy their own private offices, yet they come with sliding doors, movable walls, and other features that allow occupants to decide when they want to collaborate and when they need private time to think. These kinds of diverse workspaces benefit introverts as well as extroverts, the systems design researcher Matt Davis told me, because they offer more spaces to retreat to than traditional open-plan offices.”

Microsoft, Workspace Design, Collaboration, Private Time, Introverted Needs

“Talkative people are rated as smarter, better-looking, more interesting, and more desirable as friends. Velocity of speech counts as well as volume: we rank fast-talkers as more competent and likable than slow ones. The same dynamics apply in groups, where research shows that the voluble are considered smarter than the reticent – even though there’s zero correlation between the gift of gab and good ideas.”

Communication Perception, Talkative Individuals, Social Dynamics, Likability, Competence

“Introverts, in contrast, may have strong social skills and enjoy parties and business meetings, but after a while wish they were home in their pajamas. They prefer to devote their social energies to close friends, colleagues, and family. They listen more than they talk, think before they speak, and often feel as if they express themselves better in writing than in conversation. They tend to dislike conflict. Many have a horror of small talk, but enjoy deep discussions.”

Introverts, Social Skills, Personal Preferences, Communication Styles, Depth In Conversations

“I wonder whether students like the young safety officer would be better off if we appreciated that not everyone aspires to be a leader in the conventional sense of the word – that some people wish to fit harmoniously into the group, and others to be independent of it.”

Leadership, Independence, Social Dynamics, Group Harmony, Education