Introverted Leaders Have Some Surprising Advantages
One of the most cliched leadership attributes is that of the extroverted, eloquent, take-charge executive. There are innumerable images of CEOs commanding a stage with throngs of employees and customers hanging on their every word.
Yet, while the extroverted executive is a pillar of business lore, the reality is that, sometimes, introverted executives deliver better performance.
In one study of 130 franchises of a U.S. pizza delivery company, in stores where employees weren't very proactive (e.g., they didn't try to bring about improved procedures), extroverted leaders delivered 16% higher profits than average. But, and this is critical, in franchises where workers were proactive and offered lots of ideas, extroverted leaders had 14% lower profits.
Extroverted leaders might feel challenged by proactive and equally assertive employees, and in those cases, their likely defensiveness could lead to decreased performance. By contrast, a leader who's more introverted and thus more likely to listen to their proactive employees is more likely to bring out stellar performance from extroverted employees.
Neither extroverted nor introverted leaders universally outperform the other, but when you mix the right leaders with the right type of employees, magic can happen.
The trick, of course, is to figure out whether you've got the right or wrong mix of leaders and employees. For example, in the Leadership IQ study, The State Of Leadership Development, we discovered that only 27% of employees say their leader always encourages and recognizes suggestions for improvement. And this lack of idea solicitation has a strongly negative impact on employee engagement. So it's clear that, in a great many cases, there is not a good mix of extroverts and introverts among leaders and their employees.
This is where we might have some important lessons to learn from introverted leaders. I recently spoke with Thanos Papangelis, the Co-founder & CEO at Epignosis, a leading software house in learning tech and trusted by over 70,000 teams worldwide.
Papangelis is a self-described introvert, and he practices the kind of leadership referenced in the study above. He told me, "I'm an introvert, so I mostly like to hear people. For example, when I have to make a decision, the way I handle that is I hear people, I let them speak, and I speak less than them. At the end of the day, I internalize all the conversations, and for truly critical decisions, I try to make my own decision using all the input I've heard. But whenever possible, I let our key people make the decision by themselves. It's a more efficient way to run the company, when the decisions come from the people directly."
Not only does his introversion allow for greater independence among his direct reports, but it also allows them to take on tasks and projects that they'll find incredibly motivating. Papangelis shared, "I believe that there are better people within our organization to do various things, like public speaking, for example. And as an introvert, I'm happy to give them that role. They're very happy with being able to do what they love, so it's truly a win-win for everyone."
Another benefit of introverted leaders, which rarely gets discussed, is they're likely to develop deeper relationships with their employees. It sounds counterintuitive, as it's usually the extrovert that gets associated with personal relationships. But this is the way that Papangelis described it to me; "I find that introverted leaders value their employee relationships more. Why? Because as an introvert, it's harder to create a new relationship, so I'll spend more time with the relationships which I've already created."
As noted earlier, neither extroverted nor introverted leaders are universally better. But given that the extroverted executive is a well-worn business trope, it's worth pausing to consider all the benefits that an introverted leader could deliver.
