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My father-in-law is a very amiable and outgoing man. He is, without a doubt, one of the most extraverted people that I know. As a natural extravert he enjoys engaging me in conversation whenever we get together and proceeds to ask me a lot of questions about my work. Often our conversations revolve around the subject of introverts and extraverts. I try to help him understand what, for him, is puzzling behaviour of his many grandchildren, almost all of whom are introverted. It is encouraging to see him begin to understand that this personality trait of his grandchildren is not—as he originally believed—an indication of some terrible flaw, but a natural and normal way of being in the world. At least I thought he understood. When I shared with my father-in-law that I was going to be running a workshop titled ‘Networking for Introverts’ he responded, with his usual enthusiasm, ‘That's great. You'll really be able to help these people correct this thing!’
This story always garners a laugh when I use it to introduce my workshops, and it reassures those present that I have no intention of changing their introverted orientation. The laughter of the workshop participants is, in part, a laugh of recognition, and many share stories of the ways their preference for quiet has been treated like a personality disorder—a point of view that many introverts have painfully internalized. My father-in-law is a very kind man and his perception of introverts does not proceed from any kind of malice. He is, simply, an embodiment of what Susan Cain, in her book Quiet calls ‘The Extrovert Ideal’ of contemporary American culture (Cain uses the popular form of ‘extrovert’, with an ‘o’, instead of the more technical form ‘extravert’, with an ‘a’).
Though it may be lacking in malice, this all-too-common view of introversion has serious consequences. ‘Our lives’, says Cain, ‘are shaped as profoundly by personality as by gender or race. And the single most important aspect of personality… is where w