16 ms·

You can be shy and still be a CEO

133 points by stonlyb 5y ago

ALotOfBees 5y ago
I am a shy CEO and can confirm. It can be difficult but definitely doable. We currently have one employee, myself, and although I sometimes have difficulty confronting him we mostly get our work done.
- shreyshnaccount 5y ago
  your username seems like a reference I know but am missing....
  - k__ 5y ago
    Wicker Man?
    - uvatbc 5y ago
      That's what I thought of as well, but then realized it was "Bees! Not the bees!" and not "A lot of bees"
  - bitwize 5y ago
    Ilovebees?
  - zepto 5y ago
    A can of bees
    - adtac 5y ago
      BEADS?!
  - echelon 5y ago
    Maybe they just like hymenoptera?
- haram_masala 5y ago
  You should probably offer him sexual favors in exchange for excellent performance. I’m sure your HR department will be fine with it.
- burnt_toast 5y ago
  I run a one man business and love to blame things on someone else. Scheduled too many jobs this week? Friggen boss is overworking me again. New business cards have too small of a font? Ugh, I need to have a talk with my designer.
slap_shot 5y ago
puff piece. unrelated to the article, but im curious if this business can sustain itself to another round of funding. it has been tried before and does not work. ecommerce stores do well when they run an ad or email promoting a product that they can sell 1k/10k/100k times over. a market place like this has no such inventory.
zapstar 5y ago
I think the return of introvert CEOs and other executives and leaders is coming. Remote work has turned down the “impact” (or presence) of the extroverted leader. The thoughtful and reflective qualities of introverts are well suited for leading others and making the big decisions.
- GuB-42 5y ago
  Physical presence is orthogonal to extroversion. An extrovert can manifest himself in video/voice calls and even email. He will be the one to contact people, plan meetings, ask how everyone is doing,... An introvert can be on site and not leave his office except to walk around see how things are going, not talking to anyone. There was a study that extroverts actually did better under lockdown than introverts, because extroverts quickly found alternative ways of socializing. Introverts still needed to socialize, even if not as much, but after lockdowns cut the few ties they had, they had more trouble remaking them, being less experienced with social tools.
  - jdavis703 5y ago
    I don’t doubt this, but would be interested in reading the study. Would you mind sharing the link? Edit: here’s the study: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.561609/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.5616...
MomoXenosaga 5y ago
Depends on the culture. People like Musk or Jobs wouldn't last 5 minutes as CEO in my country. Everyone will just move to a non toxic workplace.
- abz10 5y ago
  You mean Germany?
- dQw4w9WgXcQ 5y ago
  > Everyone will just move to a non toxic workplace. This is a silly notion that ignores the fact that there are plenty of people who are both capable and want to work for leaders like Jobs/Musk. Nobody forces anyone to work the hard hours at these companies, and the complainers who don't make it are usually all you hear about since the individuals driving toward the mission are busy doing just that. It's like Navy SEALS, you take any random selection of 1000 people, ask them how much they believe in the mission, and then put them into the sieve and see which ones have the chops to make it. Drill instructors would be called "toxic" too, but that's the entire point of the filtering function.
  - ajcp 5y ago
    I remember when the WashPo was publishing all the articles about Amazon workers pulling 12 hour days and crying at their desks. All I could think of at the time was "wow, sounds like a mission oriented place, I would love to work there." Of course Amazon has made it their mission to not hire me, but still.
  - tluyben2 5y ago
    Not sure if it is binary as the gp says, but it seems people do take more shit in the US for a shot at wealth. In NL at least, I know that most people I know (and most are well off, but not millionairs) will and have walked if their manager talks to them in the wrong tone of voice. In the 80s you still had hard ass vs empathic managers : it now shifted very much to the latter and the former is generally considered strange and indeed toxic. I guess this has less to do with the culture (the culture was more or less the same in the 80s and 90s in many countries when I did work for hard ass drill sergeant shouters as CEOs in both NL and DE: I even was one for 5 years until I noticed that it pained me as much as it did the people working for me) than with the realization, which seems to be in a large part of the EU now, that you basically do not have to do any of it: the social net allows to do mostly whatever you want. Sure you will not be able to drive lambos, but that is also considered silly (and a bit sad) in most places here anyway. But you won't starve here if you do not bend over and take it. Covid sped up this realization again: what are you doing it all for if you lose your good years working like an animal and take abuse to boot?
minikites 5y ago
It's technically possible for most people to "be" anything, i.e. to succeed in an unusual way, but I don't think that's the right way to look at it. Why is our current economic environment not optimized for this behavior? Why is our economy set up to disproportionately reward ruthless behaviors and predatory personalities?
- BLKNSLVR 5y ago
  It's not necessarily the economy that's setup this way, it's more basic than that, it's human behaviour. The psychological reaction to the power of hierarchy and the difficulty in questioning that power and the inherent internal-monologue questioning of 'what could I have done better?' to satisfy those to whom I report. Sometimes it's you, sometimes it's them, but like with domestic violence, the victims sometimes / often will, confusingly, go back to their aggressors, further enabling the toxic, and sometimes criminal, behaviour. There's a fine line between being a 'snowflake' and allowing yourself to be repeatedly victimised, and it's entirely dependent on each individuals "transaction value". Where the economy comes into it is in the lifestyle impact of changing jobs: in an employers market, ruthless behaviour probably has fewer repercussions.
- megameter 5y ago
  The economy nominally runs on money and productivity, but human beings run on emotions, credit and blame. So everywhere you look, if there is an opportunity to gain credit for something (even if financial incentive isn't there, like most of the arts) there is some cutthroat competition to have that credit reassigned to you, by fair means or foul. The ticket out of this - in an individual sense - mostly comes through following well-worn ancient wisdom around virtue - humility, integrity, diligence, etc. That gives you an edge over the long run because the virtuous stuff enables sharing and therefore access to a trusted network studying the most interesting problems available(and from there, higher-profile life opportunities), while someone who is out to "make a name for themselves" is spending all their time looking over their shoulder trying to push down the competition and toot the horn on their own work(which is tailored to min/max credibility, not to study anything in particular). Our economy is perpetually in a state of having the two outlooks overlap each other which accounts for the mixed messages - as soon as a good idea gets popular it gets gamed and gatekept. Keep in mind that we have only grudgingly managed to accept - within the last few centuries - that good economies are not premised on simple conquest and exploitation. We still have a long way to go.
duxup 5y ago
As an employee. I really don't care if the CEO is outgoing. Honestly it is a relief when the CEO isn't trying to sell me on some vision (with the exception of one CEO who was a legit magical salesman) or whatever it is. Just give me my orders so I can get on with it, I don't need a show / extrovert at the helm. Maybe other people do and maybe the article is wrong, but at least for leadership, I don't need a super outgoing guy. I just want to know what he needs done / and let's go make the thing. Now if the CEO is a guy who is gonna come running out onto a stage screamming at a presentation, like that is who he is ... that's cool too.
- chadanon 5y ago
  "A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves." -Lao Tzu
  - adventured 5y ago
    Entirely depends on the work that needs to be done. That quote will implode at times when actually applied in reality. Sometimes you need to marshal the soldiers to victory, and you're not typically going to do that by your soldiers barely knowing you exist. You're going to have to inspire them actively, so they better know you exist, and they better believe what you're saying, they better believe in the mission. There is also a valuable spot in some parts of the business world for the Barnum & Bailey promoter. It can be extraordinarily difficult to stand out from the crowd, often while competing against far larger companies, even if you have a superior product. If you can't be outgoing and draw attention to your superior product (get in front of a major tv audience and nail it, present effectively to audiences on stage at COMDEX, etc), perhaps against far larger ad budgets, your great product may be doomed.
    - foerbert 5y ago
      To be fair, I don't think your soldier example is a counterexample. You would have created a better army if you could sufficiently motivate them without using yourself. If you do use yourself, you suddenly become an even bigger vulnerability for the army. If you end up getting killed, the entire motivation leaves the army right in the middle of the battle. It doesn't mean you are a bad leader if you do it, merely that a better leader might have seen a different path and gotten a better result.
cryptica 5y ago
In school, I was so shy, I constantly struggled to initiate conversations and I was always playing back what I said in my mind and feeling bad about how dumb it sounded. I held others to a higher esteem than myself. But as I grew older, the system beat shyness out of me by revealing the ugliness in people. Now I don't care about what people think. I even swore and shouted at my boss when quitting my last job. Eventually, I realized that most people are selfish idiots so it doesn't matter what they think.
- BLKNSLVR 5y ago
  > I even swore and shouted at my boss when quitting my last job That'd be going too far, and is an indication of emotional immaturity. Just leaving the job, and giving a clear indication of the reasons in an exit interview, should be far more of a stab in the guts to your boss. Shouting and swearing allows them to blame your emotional state and justifying a stance of 'better off without you', thus enabling a (potentially) toxic boss to continue to treat the next person the same way. Always consider how to make the greatest positive impact. It can actually be far more long-term therapeutic than shouting and swearing.
  - cryptica 5y ago
    It was a terrible situation, my boss had also been shouting and threatening me with violence previous day so I snapped the next day. It was a mostly normal workplace before that. The stakes were high I guess.
- stevenhuang 5y ago
  > Eventually, I realized that most people are selfish idiots so it doesn't matter what they think. Seems like you've went too far in the other direction.
justinzollars 5y ago
Yes. All you need is product market fit, and ability to execute on your vision.
open-source-ux 5y ago
Being shy and being introverted are not always the same thing. For some people, being introverted and being shy are closely entwined. For others, being an introvert does not always mean being shy or anxious in social situations. For example, an introvert may find giving talks or presentations a stimulating activity. These activities are typically seen as extrovert activities. On a somehwat related note, you can find introverted people in many professions, in roles which might be associated with being extroverted e.g. acting or a movie director. An example: here's an informative video from introvert movie director David Sandberg (director of Shazam!, Lights Out and Annabelle Creation). Can You Be An Introvert Director? Note: there's a very brief horror clip featuring a bit of gore in the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEyFH-uzlGg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEyFH-uzlGg
- cj 5y ago
  I consider myself an introverted CEO and I agree - being shy is not an immutable personality trait. Or maybe a better way to put it is "seeming shy" or "coming across as reserved" is something you can absolutely change with practice.
- wenc 5y ago
  I can relate. I’m very introverted in that I need a lot of time alone to be in my head (the lockdowns this past year were a cakewalk). But I’m not shy at all. I love talking to strangers and have very low anxiety when it comes to public speaking.
- superfrank 5y ago
  > Being shy and being introverted are not always the same thing. Add social anxiety into that mix as well. People tend to use all three interchangeably, and while there is overlap, they are all different things https://verilymag.com/2018/12/signs-of-social-anxiety-social-anxiety-disorder-anxiety-introvert https://verilymag.com/2018/12/signs-of-social-anxiety-social...
sudcha 5y ago
Anyone can be a CEO. All it takes is a registering a business with the govt. The apt title should be: "... and still be a successful CEO". The question is whether people want to be CEO, and is that what their life's calling is.
mgh2 5y ago
This is marketing with a clickbait title
rvn1045 5y ago
The real problem is that we don’t have good examples of leaders. A lot of the examples we look for in terms of whom to emulate comes from the pop culture view of corporate America and startups. At a previous company I worked at far too many people were trying to behave like Steve Jobs and give that as an excuse for being an asshole.
- hodgesrm 5y ago
  Some good examples, at least in my opinion: * Jim Whitehurst (RedHat) * Andy Grove (Intel) * David Packard and Bill Hewlett (HP) There are many more but they don't tend to show up in the news. They are people you meet or work for.
  - 535188B17C93743 5y ago
    I think Bob Iger is also a really great example. Maybe not "super shy," but he's definitely pretty introverted. It's really interesting watching interviews with him.
    - hodgesrm 5y ago
      Thanks, I need to look him up.
browningstreet 5y ago
Recent gig, I was the introverted CEO of a company with 80+ employees on three continents, and I spent time in all our office locations. One of the superpowers of not talking all the time is that you’re listening more often than not. And if you can be judicious with what you say, and confident & persuasive when you do need to use your influence, it can be very effective.

133 points by stonlyb 5y ago

I am a shy CEO and can confirm. It can be difficult but definitely doable. We currently have one employee, myself, and although I sometimes have difficulty confronting him we mostly get our work done.

shreyshnaccount 5y ago
your username seems like a reference I know but am missing....
- k__ 5y ago
  Wicker Man?
  - uvatbc 5y ago
    That's what I thought of as well, but then realized it was "Bees! Not the bees!" and not "A lot of bees"
- bitwize 5y ago
  Ilovebees?
- zepto 5y ago
  A can of bees
  - adtac 5y ago
    BEADS?!
- echelon 5y ago
  Maybe they just like hymenoptera?
haram_masala 5y ago
You should probably offer him sexual favors in exchange for excellent performance. I’m sure your HR department will be fine with it.
burnt_toast 5y ago
I run a one man business and love to blame things on someone else. Scheduled too many jobs this week? Friggen boss is overworking me again. New business cards have too small of a font? Ugh, I need to have a talk with my designer.

slap_shot 5y ago

puff piece. unrelated to the article, but im curious if this business can sustain itself to another round of funding. it has been tried before and does not work. ecommerce stores do well when they run an ad or email promoting a product that they can sell 1k/10k/100k times over. a market place like this has no such inventory.

zapstar 5y ago

I think the return of introvert CEOs and other executives and leaders is coming. Remote work has turned down the “impact” (or presence) of the extroverted leader. The thoughtful and reflective qualities of introverts are well suited for leading others and making the big decisions.

GuB-42 5y ago
Physical presence is orthogonal to extroversion. An extrovert can manifest himself in video/voice calls and even email. He will be the one to contact people, plan meetings, ask how everyone is doing,... An introvert can be on site and not leave his office except to walk around see how things are going, not talking to anyone. There was a study that extroverts actually did better under lockdown than introverts, because extroverts quickly found alternative ways of socializing. Introverts still needed to socialize, even if not as much, but after lockdowns cut the few ties they had, they had more trouble remaking them, being less experienced with social tools.
- jdavis703 5y ago
  I don’t doubt this, but would be interested in reading the study. Would you mind sharing the link? Edit: here’s the study: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.561609/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.5616...

MomoXenosaga 5y ago

Depends on the culture. People like Musk or Jobs wouldn't last 5 minutes as CEO in my country. Everyone will just move to a non toxic workplace.

abz10 5y ago
You mean Germany?
dQw4w9WgXcQ 5y ago
> Everyone will just move to a non toxic workplace. This is a silly notion that ignores the fact that there are plenty of people who are both capable and want to work for leaders like Jobs/Musk. Nobody forces anyone to work the hard hours at these companies, and the complainers who don't make it are usually all you hear about since the individuals driving toward the mission are busy doing just that. It's like Navy SEALS, you take any random selection of 1000 people, ask them how much they believe in the mission, and then put them into the sieve and see which ones have the chops to make it. Drill instructors would be called "toxic" too, but that's the entire point of the filtering function.
- ajcp 5y ago
  I remember when the WashPo was publishing all the articles about Amazon workers pulling 12 hour days and crying at their desks. All I could think of at the time was "wow, sounds like a mission oriented place, I would love to work there." Of course Amazon has made it their mission to not hire me, but still.
- tluyben2 5y ago
  Not sure if it is binary as the gp says, but it seems people do take more shit in the US for a shot at wealth. In NL at least, I know that most people I know (and most are well off, but not millionairs) will and have walked if their manager talks to them in the wrong tone of voice. In the 80s you still had hard ass vs empathic managers : it now shifted very much to the latter and the former is generally considered strange and indeed toxic. I guess this has less to do with the culture (the culture was more or less the same in the 80s and 90s in many countries when I did work for hard ass drill sergeant shouters as CEOs in both NL and DE: I even was one for 5 years until I noticed that it pained me as much as it did the people working for me) than with the realization, which seems to be in a large part of the EU now, that you basically do not have to do any of it: the social net allows to do mostly whatever you want. Sure you will not be able to drive lambos, but that is also considered silly (and a bit sad) in most places here anyway. But you won't starve here if you do not bend over and take it. Covid sped up this realization again: what are you doing it all for if you lose your good years working like an animal and take abuse to boot?

minikites 5y ago

It's technically possible for most people to "be" anything, i.e. to succeed in an unusual way, but I don't think that's the right way to look at it. Why is our current economic environment not optimized for this behavior? Why is our economy set up to disproportionately reward ruthless behaviors and predatory personalities?

BLKNSLVR 5y ago
It's not necessarily the economy that's setup this way, it's more basic than that, it's human behaviour. The psychological reaction to the power of hierarchy and the difficulty in questioning that power and the inherent internal-monologue questioning of 'what could I have done better?' to satisfy those to whom I report. Sometimes it's you, sometimes it's them, but like with domestic violence, the victims sometimes / often will, confusingly, go back to their aggressors, further enabling the toxic, and sometimes criminal, behaviour. There's a fine line between being a 'snowflake' and allowing yourself to be repeatedly victimised, and it's entirely dependent on each individuals "transaction value". Where the economy comes into it is in the lifestyle impact of changing jobs: in an employers market, ruthless behaviour probably has fewer repercussions.
megameter 5y ago
The economy nominally runs on money and productivity, but human beings run on emotions, credit and blame. So everywhere you look, if there is an opportunity to gain credit for something (even if financial incentive isn't there, like most of the arts) there is some cutthroat competition to have that credit reassigned to you, by fair means or foul. The ticket out of this - in an individual sense - mostly comes through following well-worn ancient wisdom around virtue - humility, integrity, diligence, etc. That gives you an edge over the long run because the virtuous stuff enables sharing and therefore access to a trusted network studying the most interesting problems available(and from there, higher-profile life opportunities), while someone who is out to "make a name for themselves" is spending all their time looking over their shoulder trying to push down the competition and toot the horn on their own work(which is tailored to min/max credibility, not to study anything in particular). Our economy is perpetually in a state of having the two outlooks overlap each other which accounts for the mixed messages - as soon as a good idea gets popular it gets gamed and gatekept. Keep in mind that we have only grudgingly managed to accept - within the last few centuries - that good economies are not premised on simple conquest and exploitation. We still have a long way to go.

duxup 5y ago

As an employee. I really don't care if the CEO is outgoing. Honestly it is a relief when the CEO isn't trying to sell me on some vision (with the exception of one CEO who was a legit magical salesman) or whatever it is. Just give me my orders so I can get on with it, I don't need a show / extrovert at the helm. Maybe other people do and maybe the article is wrong, but at least for leadership, I don't need a super outgoing guy. I just want to know what he needs done / and let's go make the thing. Now if the CEO is a guy who is gonna come running out onto a stage screamming at a presentation, like that is who he is ... that's cool too.

chadanon 5y ago
"A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves." -Lao Tzu
- adventured 5y ago
  Entirely depends on the work that needs to be done. That quote will implode at times when actually applied in reality. Sometimes you need to marshal the soldiers to victory, and you're not typically going to do that by your soldiers barely knowing you exist. You're going to have to inspire them actively, so they better know you exist, and they better believe what you're saying, they better believe in the mission. There is also a valuable spot in some parts of the business world for the Barnum & Bailey promoter. It can be extraordinarily difficult to stand out from the crowd, often while competing against far larger companies, even if you have a superior product. If you can't be outgoing and draw attention to your superior product (get in front of a major tv audience and nail it, present effectively to audiences on stage at COMDEX, etc), perhaps against far larger ad budgets, your great product may be doomed.
  - foerbert 5y ago
    To be fair, I don't think your soldier example is a counterexample. You would have created a better army if you could sufficiently motivate them without using yourself. If you do use yourself, you suddenly become an even bigger vulnerability for the army. If you end up getting killed, the entire motivation leaves the army right in the middle of the battle. It doesn't mean you are a bad leader if you do it, merely that a better leader might have seen a different path and gotten a better result.

cryptica 5y ago

In school, I was so shy, I constantly struggled to initiate conversations and I was always playing back what I said in my mind and feeling bad about how dumb it sounded. I held others to a higher esteem than myself. But as I grew older, the system beat shyness out of me by revealing the ugliness in people. Now I don't care about what people think. I even swore and shouted at my boss when quitting my last job. Eventually, I realized that most people are selfish idiots so it doesn't matter what they think.

BLKNSLVR 5y ago
> I even swore and shouted at my boss when quitting my last job That'd be going too far, and is an indication of emotional immaturity. Just leaving the job, and giving a clear indication of the reasons in an exit interview, should be far more of a stab in the guts to your boss. Shouting and swearing allows them to blame your emotional state and justifying a stance of 'better off without you', thus enabling a (potentially) toxic boss to continue to treat the next person the same way. Always consider how to make the greatest positive impact. It can actually be far more long-term therapeutic than shouting and swearing.
- cryptica 5y ago
  It was a terrible situation, my boss had also been shouting and threatening me with violence previous day so I snapped the next day. It was a mostly normal workplace before that. The stakes were high I guess.
stevenhuang 5y ago
> Eventually, I realized that most people are selfish idiots so it doesn't matter what they think. Seems like you've went too far in the other direction.

justinzollars 5y ago

Yes. All you need is product market fit, and ability to execute on your vision.

open-source-ux 5y ago

Being shy and being introverted are not always the same thing. For some people, being introverted and being shy are closely entwined. For others, being an introvert does not always mean being shy or anxious in social situations. For example, an introvert may find giving talks or presentations a stimulating activity. These activities are typically seen as extrovert activities. On a somehwat related note, you can find introverted people in many professions, in roles which might be associated with being extroverted e.g. acting or a movie director. An example: here's an informative video from introvert movie director David Sandberg (director of Shazam!, Lights Out and Annabelle Creation). Can You Be An Introvert Director? Note: there's a very brief horror clip featuring a bit of gore in the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEyFH-uzlGg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEyFH-uzlGg

cj 5y ago
I consider myself an introverted CEO and I agree - being shy is not an immutable personality trait. Or maybe a better way to put it is "seeming shy" or "coming across as reserved" is something you can absolutely change with practice.
wenc 5y ago
I can relate. I’m very introverted in that I need a lot of time alone to be in my head (the lockdowns this past year were a cakewalk). But I’m not shy at all. I love talking to strangers and have very low anxiety when it comes to public speaking.
superfrank 5y ago
> Being shy and being introverted are not always the same thing. Add social anxiety into that mix as well. People tend to use all three interchangeably, and while there is overlap, they are all different things https://verilymag.com/2018/12/signs-of-social-anxiety-social-anxiety-disorder-anxiety-introvert https://verilymag.com/2018/12/signs-of-social-anxiety-social...

sudcha 5y ago

Anyone can be a CEO. All it takes is a registering a business with the govt. The apt title should be: "... and still be a successful CEO". The question is whether people want to be CEO, and is that what their life's calling is.

mgh2 5y ago

This is marketing with a clickbait title

rvn1045 5y ago

The real problem is that we don’t have good examples of leaders. A lot of the examples we look for in terms of whom to emulate comes from the pop culture view of corporate America and startups. At a previous company I worked at far too many people were trying to behave like Steve Jobs and give that as an excuse for being an asshole.

hodgesrm 5y ago
Some good examples, at least in my opinion: * Jim Whitehurst (RedHat) * Andy Grove (Intel) * David Packard and Bill Hewlett (HP) There are many more but they don't tend to show up in the news. They are people you meet or work for.
- 535188B17C93743 5y ago
  I think Bob Iger is also a really great example. Maybe not "super shy," but he's definitely pretty introverted. It's really interesting watching interviews with him.
  - hodgesrm 5y ago
    Thanks, I need to look him up.

browningstreet 5y ago

Recent gig, I was the introverted CEO of a company with 80+ employees on three continents, and I spent time in all our office locations. One of the superpowers of not talking all the time is that you’re listening more often than not. And if you can be judicious with what you say, and confident & persuasive when you do need to use your influence, it can be very effective.