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I am not much of a talker. I'm not a smooth talker, wind talker, big talker, or close talker. I don't talk fast, furious or frequently. So I couldn't play Susan in the 1938 film Bringing Up Baby. When I hear Cany Grant, as DC David Huxley, say to Catherine Hepburn as the sharp-witted, fast-talking Susan, ‘Now it isn't that I don't like you, Susan, because, after all, in moments of quiet, I'm strangely drawn toward you, but … well, there haven't been any quiet moments’, I cannot help but wonder what others think of me based on how, when, and why I talk (moviequotes, NMD.). Are they drawn to me in my quiet moments? And if they are drawn to me because I'm silent, what does this say about leadership? I never paid much heed to the connection between talking and how women, in particular, are perceived as leaders in their field until I attended a group relations conference. Then I began to see a relationship between talking and silence in the context of exercising leadership.
As an introvert, my first experience in a group relations conference was awkward and unnerving. At the time of the conference, I was a doctoral student in a leadership studies programme and began to seriously contemplate if I had the genetic constitution of a leader. It was the first time in my life that I was forced to examine the implications of my silent nature in the context of exercising leadership. Not one for drawing attention to myself, I was raised to value silence over speaking. Silence was a form of respect, courtesy, and self-restraint. The conference, however, challenged my upbringing and my assumptions about silent leaders.
Although I attended a pre session in advance, the notion of spending a weekend in an experiential learning lab was not one I relished. However, once I arrived for the conference, I soon learned that other