A Widely Held, But Rarely Articulated, Belief

Many Introverts Are Also "highly Sensitive," Which Sounds Poetic, But Is Actually A Technical Term In Psychology. If You Are A Sensitive Sort, Then You're More Apt Than The Average Person To Feel Pleasantly Overwhelmed By Beethoven's "moonlight Sonata" Or A Well-turned Phrase Or An Act Of Extraordinary Kindness. You May Be Quicker Than Others To Feel Sickened By Violence And Ugliness, And You Likely Have A Very Strong Conscience.

In The First Study, Grant And His Colleagues Analyzed Data From One Of The Five Biggest Pizza Chains In The United States. They Discovered That The Weekly Profits Of The Stores Managed By Extroverts Were 16 Percent Higher Than The Profits Of Those Led By Introverts—but Only When The Employees Were Passive Types Who Tended To Do Their Job Without Exercising Initiative. Introverted Leaders Had The Exact Opposite Results. When They Worked With Employees Who Actively Tried To Improve Work Procedures, Their Stores Outperformed Those Led By Extroverts By More Than 14 Percent.

The Pressure To Entertain, To Sell Ourselves, And Never To Be Visibly Anxious Keeps Ratcheting Up.

In A Way, Education By Its Nature Favours The Extrovert Because You Are Taking Kids And Putting Them Into A Big Classroom, Which Is Automatically Going To Be A High-stimulation Environment. Probably The Best Way Of Teaching In General Is One On One, But That's Not Something Everyone Can Afford.

Solitude Is One Of Our Great Superpowers... Solitude Is The Key To Being Able To Make Effective Decisions And Then Having The Courage Of Convictions To Stand Behind Those Decisions.