Introverts make up a third to a half the population, yet
our schools and workplaces are designed for extroverts. This point is driven
home with impact in “Quiet: The power of introverts in a world that can’t stop
talking, where author Susan Cain says: “And we're living with a value system
that I call the New Groupthink, where we believe that all creativity and productivity
comes from an oddly gregarious place.”
“Picture the typical classroom,” she writes on CNN.com. “When
I was a kid, we sat in rows of desks, and we did most of our work autonomously.
But nowadays many students sit in "pods" of desks with four or five
students facing each other, and they work on countless group projects ~ even in
subjects like math and creative writing.
“Kids who prefer to work by themselves don't fit, and
research by educational psychology professor Charles Meisgeier found that the
majority of teachers believe the ideal student is an extrovert ~ even though
introverts tend to get higher grades, according to psychologist Adrian Furnham,”
she continues.
“The same thing happens at work. Many of us now work in
offices without walls, with no respite from the noise and gaze of co-workers,”
Cain writes. “And introverts are routinely passed over for leadership
positions, even though the latest research
by the management professor Adam Grant at Wharton shows that introverted
leaders often deliver better results. They're better at letting proactive
employees run with their creative ideas, while extroverts can unwittingly put
their own stamp on things and not realize that other people's ideas aren't
being heard.”
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