Spooky tales of dopamine demons + THE bold introverts who slay theM
A quick consult with Dr. Google reveals innumerable articles that claim to teach introverts how to become extroverts. (Which we know doesn’t work.) The article you don’t see is “Extroverts: Ten Ways to Be More Introverted.” (It’s coming. Ohhhhh yes, it’s coming… *laughs like a maniacal hag*) Notice I said “be more introverted,” not “become an introvert.” Because that idea doesn’t work any better in reverse.
Healthy people have both introverted and extroverted facets of their personalities.
Personality—like so many things—exists on a spectrum. No one is fully introverted or extroverted without having serious mental heath challenges. That said, it’s going to appear that I’m clamping my jaws around the extrovert jugular like it’s Taco Tuesday at South Shore Grill on Monsarrat Ave. in Honolulu (my food cravings get very specific). If you hang with me though, you’ll see that is not actually the case!
Looking at the effects of extroverted leadership when it’s not balanced with introverted counter-traits is the goal here. Last time, we saw the differences between introvert and extrovert brains. Now we’re seeing what happens when the Extrovert Ideal pulls an Incredible Hulk and fills up leadership roles like they’re those tiny purple Hulk pants.
The low-hanging fruit on this one is the current-but-hopefully-not-for-long marmalade-hued U.S. presidential administration. I’m going to sidestep that particular RANCID KUMQUAT, however. It’s not that I don’t have thoughts on the topic because, oooooh lordy, I have thoughts. I’m choosing other examples for the simple reason that we’ve had a longer timeline to observe their effects.
These examples were also discussed in Susan Cain’s Quiet. And while they were relevant back in 2012 when the book was published, eight years later we’ve seen their continuing and compounded effects.
This is where we get into The Heavy. But also—hopefully—the hopeful. We’ll see what leadership looks like today and why it’s mission freakin’ critical for bold, thoughtful introverts to step up as leaders.
First, let’s jump back into brain scientist mode and recall the dopamine response.
Extroverts as a group tend to be more responsive to feel-good dopamine. When this response gets reenforced by “proof”—i.e. outer world feedback loops that reward the drooling dopamine demon—the inclination to take risks increases. At the same time, the tolerance of those who poo-poo on the dopamine parade—by tossing candy-coated nuggets of reason and prudence at them—decreases.
If it’s just one person, risky and extreme behaviors might damage their lives. However, the effects of those behaviors on others are limited in scope.
But what happens when the ranks of businesses, institutions, and even governments get filled with this same kind of personality? What happens when the voices of more cautious introvert types are silenced in conversations that are dominated by a broken idea of what leadership is?
Enron happens.
Enron! I know! Everyone’s favorite quirky dinner party topic! Exciting, right?!
Except Enron is actually not a big topic of conversation these days. That’s because an average Tuesday now feels like the entire world is cartwheeling over a waterfall of jagged glass and rubbing alcohol, inside a flaming dumpster filled with syphilitic rats. Even hyperbole is getting out of control!
Also, humans are terrible at looking to the past to avoid repeating their mistakes. Like, really, really terrible. Cognitive dissonance and magical thinking seem to be homosapiens’ primary biological imperative. But I digress. (Not for long though because, ya know, it’s meeeeee.)
Here’s a quick refresher: Enron was an energy company based out of Texas that decided to get a little... *ahem*... creative with their financial practices. Then, when the feds came a-knockin’, it tried to destroy evidence of its shady dealings.
The resulting shitstorm of shredded paper cost investors almost $75 billion, to say nothing of the tens of thousands of employees who lost their jobs, pensions, and retirement. It was a dopamine-fueled clusterfuck.
Other buzz words that might tickle those memory synapses are “Kenneth Lay” and “Jeff Skilling.” These two doucherockets were Enron’s Chairman and CEO.
A name that does not usually pop to mind is Vince Kaminski. Kaminski is a reserved, Polish-born risk management expert who repeatedly raised red flags during his tenure at Enron. Flags that the company’s upper echelons ignored.
While being investigated in the early 2000s, Enron’s emails were made public. Messages addressed to people raising concerns instructed them to, well, shut the hell up because they were killing the vibe, man.
In one email to Kaminski, Enron’s president pinecone, Jeff Skilling, wrote, “There have been some complaints, Vince, that you’re not helping people to do transactions. Instead, you’re spending all your time acting like cops. We don’t need cops, Vince.”
They actually did need cops, Vince. And they got them.
Enron employed Kaminski for the sole purpose of assessing risk. Then told him to stop saying things were risky.
Unfortunately, the trend of too many people with insatiable, rewards-seeking personalities in positions of leadership didn’t end with Enron.
The 2008 financial crisis and underlying sub-prime mortgage fiasco had a lot of factors at play. (If multiple words in that sentence made your brain melt out of your ears, go watch The Big Short. It’s the most entertaining movie about boring words ever made.) One of the most critical and overlooked factors of the crisis was the mindset of the people in charge of the investment institutions.
In the two decades leading up the 2008 collapse, the ranks of the top leadership in banking were filled with a certain type of person. A type whose dopamine response lit up like they were eating cocaine ice cream while boinking under strobe lights at the EDM club every time a quarterly earnings report showed an increase. And the tactics used to do that increasing became increasingly irrelevant.
Here’s an important bit: It’s not that the Kamiski’s weren’t there. At Enron and during the financial crisis, they were there. They were waving their arms and shouting “FIRE!” inside a crowded theater that was 🔥 actually 🔥 on 🔥 fire.
Instead of being listened to, they were told by leadership that they weren’t team players. That they were pessimists. That they weren’t in charge. That they weren’t leaders.
This is where the Extrovert Ideal gets real dangerous.
In cases like Enron and the financial crisis, the extrovert ideal reaffirmed the belief that the amplification of positive emotion was the be all, end all. That to feel good—not contentious, not fastidious, not rational—but good was the entire point.
There are people who lost everything in 2008. There are people who walked—doe-eyed and filled with promise—across their graduation stage and straight into the Great Recession who are still treading water (while desperately trying to locate their bootstraps). There are people who sat powerless while those responsible for the collapse got bailed out. These people may beg to differ about what feels good.
So we’re all having fun now, right?! Oof.
We are starting to see why the strengths of introversion are important. Because—real talk—when we look around right now, it’s very hard to deny that things are broken.
We need to find a better way forward. In the depths of my soul I believe that way involves dynamic leadership from bold introverts.
I’m going to use an introvert power phrase now (seriously, keep this at the very top of your introvert superpower arsenal) and say, “Let’s back up a few steps.”
None of what I’m saying here means introverts are more intelligent or more ethical than extroverts. I’m not saying introverts are better than extroverts. It’s a warning about what happens when the ideas perpetuated by the Extrovert Ideal are taken to their extremes. It’s an explanation for the value of having people who can tap the breaks. That’s where the introvert leaders come in.
This is especially true for those with a preference for Introverted Intuition (those with INxJ MBTI types) because they’re naturally wired to think in terms of timelines. They can zoom out to 30,000 feet to take in the larger picture. Left to their own devices, however, they might prefer to keep floating out there in the ether. Because it’s not just extroversion that yields unsavory results when taken to extremes.
When introverts (and intuitives) partner with extroverts (and sensors), they can create truly amazing things together.
In the time since Enron and the financial crisis, leadership has continued to get louder.
Often it seems like the rules are made up and the facts don’t matter. As natural observers, it can feel alien for introverts to take a stand. But our insights paired with extroverts’ energy provide the opportunity to create something better: leadership that is dynamic, inclusive, and bold as hell.