Making introversion work for you

Susan Cain walked onto the TED stage a decade ago and spoke, quietly but firmly, about the power of introverts. The irony wasn't lost on anyone — an introvert commanding attention on one of the world's biggest stages to explain why we should pay attention to those who don't naturally command attention.

Like Cain, my relationship with introversion comes with its own contradictions.

I was the oldest of three in a family that thrived on bold expression. Our house pulsed with constant music, a fitting prelude to me and my brothers growing up to be artists. Creativity flowed freely in our home, but something shifted when that expression became performance.

I studied piano as a kid, and during my lessons, it was simple with just my teacher and the music. But then came recitals.

I'd get through the piece (not perfectly, just a kid working it out like any other 8-year-old) and find myself in tears. Not because I'd messed up, but because the whole ceremony of it felt so disconnected from why I played in the first place. The formality of it all turned music into theater, and I couldn't understand why we needed all that just to play.

What I didn't realize then was that this discomfort was signaling something important. Those tears weren't just about stage fright—they were marking the edge between private expression and public witnessing, a creative frontier I'd spend years learning to navigate.

This pattern followed me well beyond those early piano days. From the outside, I must have seemed like a textbook extrovert—driving from Indianapolis to Chicago for acting auditions, competing in pageants, performing in show choir. Eventually, I built a career that put me in front of large audiences, shaping public brands. (A far cry from my early days of music making, but that’s a story for another day.)

But these choices reflected something deeper — a learned behavior of pushing against my introverted nature because visibility seemed to equal value.

It’s not that I disliked these experiences. I found myself drawn to the stage, to being witnessed in that particular way. But these choices reflected something deeper—a learned behavior of pushing against my introverted nature because visibility seemed to equal value. As Cain showed, I had mastered the performance of extroversion simply because that's what the world rewarded.

It took years to realize that this constant performance wasn't just exhausting—it was unnecessary. Watching other introverts navigate these extrovert-designed spaces showed me a different way. While everyone else was racing to command attention, another kind of influence was taking shape in the quiet spaces.

This influence emerges through careful observation. An introvert's follow-up after a conversation rarely defaults to "great to meet you." Instead, they might reference your wife’s flower business or a childhood story you shared, calling out a detail that others might miss.

This way of building relationships challenges traditional networking advice that pushes us to maximize every possible connection. But introverts understand something crucial about human connection—it doesn't scale the way we pretend it does. Real influence comes from the depth of our engagement, not the length of our contact list.

I’ve watched this play out in real time as workplaces evolved. Remote work shifted something subtle but significant. Written messages replaced constant meetings. Thoughtful responses outweighed quick reactions. The same qualities that made me pause before performing at recitals turned into quiet advantages in Slack channels.

Of course, old habits die hard. I still catch myself sometimes—heart racing before important meetings, feeling that familiar pressure to command attention, to prove my worth through presence alone. It's like muscle memory from all those recitals. The difference now is that I recognize it for what it is—an echo of old expectations, not a measure of impact.

But perhaps what introverts understand best about relationships is the power of quiet moments. I noticed this at lunch with a customer recently. For two hours at a busy restaurant, I mostly listened as the group discussed business, the noise and conversation competing for attention. (A trademark challenge for introverts.) But when walking back to the office, I hung back as the others chatted ahead. In that quieter space, he shared a story about his mother-in-law who passed and how close she was with his wife. It was such a tender story that likely wouldn’t have been shared earlier.

These unstructured moments, away from the performance of a business lunch, are where meaningful connections take root, much like those piano practice sessions where the music flowed naturally without the weight of an audience.

Looking back at that eight-year-old me crying after piano recitals, I see now what she understood instinctively—that performance and connection are different energies, each valuable in their own way. The years I spent in both worlds taught me to embrace both sides of myself. The real breakthrough came from realizing that introversion itself wasn't something to overcome or extroversion something to perform. They are two sides of the same coin.

Standard work culture hasn't fully grasped this yet, as success is often still measured by how well someone commands a room. But change is coming. The old metrics of success are losing their grip, and something more genuine is taking their place. No hazard pay required.