The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking

Since I saw, for the first time, the Susan Cain’s speech at TED named The power of introverts, I started to look for her book, Quiet. Below, you can see her famous and terrific speech, which has been watched by more than 5 million people.

It has not been an easy task. I currently live in Valencia, Spain, where you can find this book in its Spanish version. Despite of the fact that Spanish is my native tongue, I am trying to read in English as many books as I can, to improve my knowledge of the Shakespeare’s language and, as probably you can see, I need to improve a little bit more. Please be patient if you find grammar mistakes.

My wife has been looking for a copy of the book in its English version in every single bookshop of our city for a long time. The answer was always the same, I have it in Spanish but not in English.

Last summer, we went to London to do an English Course. On my very first day at the city I went to Waterstones in Piccadilly St. (the largest bookshop of Europe) where I bought Quite and other books that I had been looking for them for a long time.

Let me tell you something, I traveled to London with an empty suitcase and I came back to Valencia with this suitcase full of books. Yes, like Susan Cain, reading is one of my passions. Another of my passions is public speaking and, Like Susan Cain, I’m a Toastmasters membership, an organization where we work our social and leadership skills

I have enjoyed reading this book. It is a great job of years of researching in which Susan Cain dismantles the false Western myth that extroverts are better leaders. In Western countries, specially in the United States many introverts try to act as extroverts because these are better considered.

She explains like at Harvard Business School the most important fact is to talk, even when you say something that it doesn’t make sense. If you are a HBS student, you must be an outgoing person.

To be honest, I have a different point of view (than HBS) about what leadership is. In my opinion, a good leader is a good listener who ask for feedback to his or her teammates, is reflexive, takes risks..

Another highlight of the book deals about teamwork. Susan Cain shows that teamwork is not always the best way to get creativity. A new trend at the schools is to prioritize the teamwork. The author shows that this is a mistake. It’s true that children need to learn how to work as a part of a team, but they need to learn how to work by themselves too (specially if they are introverts).

If you want to delve into these and other issues and if you want to know exactly what introversion and extroversion are, I strongly recommend to read this book.

Quiet

Susan Cain

Penguin Books

David Torija