It Turns Out Introverts Are Well-Suited to Disruption: A Conversation with Susan Cain

“I knew from a very early age I wanted to be a writer. I was always creating magazines and selling subscriptions to my family members.”

From the age of four, says Susan Cain.

Four.

Who ends up being what they wanted to be when they were four?

“I actually think part of the reason that it took me so long to become a writer is I didn’t understand until a much later age that there’s such a thing as creative non-fiction and I’m actually not really a fiction writer by nature. Around age 20 or something I was thinking, ‘Oh, I guess that was really just a youthful dream.’”

One of the threads weaving through many of my conversations about personal disruption is the need to play to our distinctive strengths, and how perfect it is when the things we are really good at also allow us to address problems that we feel passionate about solving. This happy alignment of the stars can’t be forced; many of us feel strongly about issues that we have neither the acquired skills nor the native gifts required to make them the focus of our life work.

While we can massage skills side of the equation, our natural talents are a variable that isn’t, well, very variable.

So I was surprised during my recent interview with Susan Cain, my guest on Episode 14 of the Disrupt Yourself Podcast, but better known as the author of the mega-bestselling, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking. The book was the catalyst for the Quiet Revolution, co-founded by Cain on the groundwork laid by the innovative research and ideas of her book, with the mission to actualize those ideas for the improvement of individual lives, but also of the larger society. Cain has a Princeton education and a law degree from Harvard. She practiced law and headed a consulting firm before becoming a full-time writer.

The surprise?

Well, Cain is herself an introvert; thus her initial interest in the subject. And the practice of law is a pursuit that I definitely equate with extroversion, not something I naturally think of in conjunction with the distinctive strengths of a quieter personality. So while I wasn’t surprised by the fact that Cain was an attorney—it’s part of her bio, after all—I was surprised to learn how much she had enjoyed it. “There was some level on which I wanted to prove to myself that I could flourish in a kind of bolder, more alpha world than really came naturally to me. I actually enjoyed [law school] more than almost everyone I knew. All my classmates hated law school and I loved it. I really did.”

Then she disrupted my preconceived notions about studying and practicing law, demonstrating (once again) that most pursuits are, or can be, more nuanced than they often appear in our generalities. I realized I was equating the law with courtroom dramas: confident, often abrasive attorneys badgering witness into submission and shouting objections, activities best suited to the most extroverted extroverts among us. “Most law students are actually introverted,” she said. “Probably way more than 50 percent.”

There are all those law books, after all; all that studying. “Intellectually fascinating,” Cain says.

She practiced law on Wall Street for seven years. “For a lot of that time I loved that too, because now I was in this world of business which was even less likely for me….But I liken it to the feeling of being in a foreign country. I think for many people it’s really enjoyable and exciting to be in a foreign country and then comes the time that you’re longing for home. And that’s how it was with me.” Cain disrupted herself. She took a leave of absence, planning to travel, but within days she had rediscovered her childhood passion—the written word.

This brings us full circle to a compelling piece of the disruption puzzle: we need to find pursuits to which our distinctive strengths are well-suited. Cain’s Quiet Revolution is all about this. “Our mission is to unlock the power of introverts for the benefit of us all; we really do think everybody benefits when we start using peoples’ temperaments wisely.”

Nevertheless, as Cain’s own career trajectory demonstrates, we may be well-suited to perform tasks that initially appear counterintuitive. Cain has given hundreds if not thousands of speeches, something she would never have imagined for herself. Her TED talk has been viewed an enviable three million plus times. If there is something we dream of doing, a passion we would like to pursue, digging deep may help us accomplish it, however unlikely it appears on the surface.

“We want to disrupt ourselves by acquiring skills that are not necessarily in our default skillset. A lot of extroverts come up to me and say, ‘I would really like to be more comfortable with quiet. I’d like to be more comfortable with my own company.’ I think extroverts need to stretch in those ways the same way introverts need to stretch at a cocktail party.”

We are all many things, which means we have many options, though some are more difficult to choose than others. Personal disruption requires us to stretch, sometimes a lot. But if we will make the effort, we may discover our own personal, perfect niche, in some unexpected place or exactly where we hope it will be. We never know until we try.

Whitney Johnson is one of the world's leading management thinkers (Thinkers50), author of the critically acclaimed Disrupt Yourself: Putting the Power of Disruptive Innovation to Work and host of the Disrupt Yourself Podcast. You can sign up for her newsletter here or to receive the transcript here.