8 ms·

Leadership as a Type B Introvert (2018)

96 points by rzk 5y ago

nunez 5y ago
> Imagine I have 100 Energy Points that keep me going. I might start the day with 100 points and as I go about my day, I’ll start to feel pretty drained and unproductive once I’m below 50. To make matters more challenging, if I haven’t slept well or if I’m stressed out about other things, I might not even start the workday at 100 Energy Points! This and the paragraphs thereafter are the most succinct description of how I feel on a daily basis that I’ve ever read. I’m really good at being fun and high energy, so many are normally very surprised to learn that I need as much alone time as I can possibly gather to recoup. This is why me being a traveling consultant was amazing. I could pair and present all day and recharge with a dinner by myself and some progress on side projects. That went out the window after COVID and has caused problems.
napsy 5y ago
I'm a lead that's an introvert as well. I've figured out what really drains me are any meetings that I'm not in charge of (or haven't initiated the meeting). It probably has something to do with self-confidence and I will speak rarely or if I'm called upon. Also for me it's hard to be energetic at the start of the day when meetings slowly appear on the daily agenda. The more I speak, the more confidence I get. But this is only in the case with a meet with many participants. I have no problems with 1:1 meetings.
- lostcolony 5y ago
  Question for you - are meetings others initiate/are in charge of, but which nevertheless serve a clear point that necessitates your presence as draining? Because that's the differentiator for me. If I have a goal I'm trying to achieve there, and the meeting is focused on that goal, it doesn't matter if I'm just a participant or not. If their isn't a clear goal, or I'm expected to be there despite not being involved in that goal (if it's an informational meeting I don't care about the information; if it's a decisional meeting I don't care or can't influence the decision; if it's a brainstorming meeting it's about something that doesn't affect me or a problem I'm not responsible to solve), it's massively draining.
  - napsy 5y ago
    Yes, some meetings don't really require my presence. Many times, for me it's more like: "hey, anything to add here?".
- toisanji 5y ago
  describes me as well!
Tomis02 5y ago
Seems a very popular thing to put labels on people's personalities. "He's a leader", "she's an introvert", "they are artsy". Feels very similar to astrology - "he's a Lion", "she's a Taurus". Or the "alpha male" and "beta male" nonsense.
- nineteen999 5y ago
  Or "Type A" or "Type B". Sometimes I think a large part of HN readers think everything about human nature and personality can be classified, as if ready to be replaced with software in the future. Our understanding of the human mind is nowhere near that place now, and may never be.
  - marginalia_nu 5y ago
    It's important to keep in mind that all of these things, not just personality traits, but even concepts such as "human" are artifacts of our modelling of the world. The things in themselves do not know of these distinctions, and you can draw them fairly arbitrarily in ways that may or may not be helpful in making sense of the world. Saying that there are some things that are alive, an others that are inert; and that some alive things are animalia, and others are not, and that some animalia are humans and others are not, and that some humans are Type A, and others are not. Really, none of those distinctions are more justified than the other. It's even hard to motivate that there are things as separate. We have matter constantly moving through us, the air we breathe and the water we drink and the food we eat. We aren't strictly speaking entirely made of the same stuff we were yesterday. It's like a wave across the water, the wave persists but the pieces of water it's made of changes over time. A bit in the same way our hands are features of our bodies, we are features on the universe. You can make the delineation to say we are separate, but only as a mental model.
    - khimaros 5y ago
      Robert Anton Wilson would be proud
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
mgh2 5y ago
If "software is eating the world" and most technical people (in average) are introverts, then they will eventually dominate. Tech company CEOs are mostly engineers who switched to management. Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29722441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29722441 Recommended book: Quiet by Susan Cain
- mpol 5y ago
  Can I mention that I found that the most horrible book I have read in years? The first 50 pages were doable when scrolling through. But soon it dived into how introvert people can be successful, while that success is measured in extravert ways. Like the introvert guy giving presentations about how to be successful. For me everything was "feet on top", "upsidedown". And all very much about looking successful and making an impression. It didn't do any justice to what I would want from my life, more like the opposite. I don't want to be like Bill Gates. The only thing I took from that book was the description of three personality traits; shyness, introversion and HSP. They seem the same to other people but are very different. Shyness is about fear something might happen in response to what you do. Introversion is that you mostly gain energy in quietness, less in social situations. And HSP means that someone is sensitive and everything comes in quite hard.
  - mgh2 5y ago
    Humans are social creatures, just because we were predisposed in a certain way does not mean that there are not great skills to learn from the other side, which can improve our health and social status - COVID and remote work is an example.
DoreenMichele 5y ago
Makes me think of the phrase servant leadership that was batted about at my corporate job. Not everyone in charge has to be some hard charging loudmouth. That's basically style, not substance.
- mise_en_place 5y ago
  The VP of engineering I work for is very much a servant leader. He is always around to support the team, unblock people, and makes sure things are moving along smoothly. As opposed to previous leaders I've had who were aloof/absent and typically not available after 4 pm. As an aside, I am deeply suspicious of people who assign letters to their personality or pronouns to themselves. We are all humans first and foremost.
  - vba616 5y ago
    >I am deeply suspicious of people who assign letters to their personality "Professor Evelyn Algernon Valentine Ebsworth CBE, PhD, MA, ScD, DCL hc, FRSC, FRSE" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-nominal_letters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-nominal_letters
    - OJFord 5y ago
      I think GP meant more like 'I am a Type A' and similar (cf. OP). Might be wrong though.
      - JackFr 5y ago
        Ordo Praedicatorum?
        OJFord 5y ago
        'OP'? No - the 'Original Post', i.e. the submission title is also an example: 'as a Type B Introvert' https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/OP#Noun https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/OP#Noun (def 4 at time of writing)
deltaonefour 5y ago
"The only people who I saw running “successful” companies (a word which, I now realize, is very open to interpretation) were stern, if not iron-fisted, managers. They made the rules and set the goals with confidence. They weren’t afraid to yell to get their point across, " The above is not an example of a good leader. People only obey this type of leader because they are paid to obey. A true leader is someone people obey because they believe in him. The previous sentences describe leadership in an idealistic way. In reality most leaders are sort of hybrids. Yes you work for you boss because of the pay, but if that's the only reason why you work for your boss, than your boss is an not a good leader.
- sz4kerto 5y ago
  > A true leader is someone people obey because they believe in him. No true scotsman? There are multiple ways to reach your goals, I don't think that one of them is 'truer'than the other.
  - deltaonefour 5y ago
    No but, let me put it this way. If you're yelling at me, than I hate you. I have no loyalty to you.. and the next time I see an opening, I'm fucking you over first thing. Everyone who follows you, is pretending to do so. No one is on your team. They may even secretly be fucking you over while pretending to bend over backwards for you. You've reached your goal yes. But you've made enemies. and your overarching goals are at risk.
  - atoav 5y ago
    I think they refer to the meaning of the word "leading" as opposed to meanings like "commanding" or "bossing around". While agreeably there might be no "true" leader to be found on this world, the words mentioned above still differ in meaning and definition. Someone who leads does something else than someone who commands or bosses around. This discussion here is about that difference. Of course you can also reach goals by just yelling and punishing people, but that would hardly qualify as leadership.
- atoav 5y ago
awinter-py 5y ago
re personalities and leadership, loved this thread on selecting lead dogs on husky sled teams https://twitter.com/BlairBraverman/status/1222217236045234177 https://twitter.com/BlairBraverman/status/122221723604523417... tldr is that it's not about aggression but rather motivation, ability to operate without someone else forging a path + initiative in strange situations
tluyben2 5y ago
I turned into a type A/introvert to a type B/extrovert-ish and lead people in both situations; give me the latter any time. I didn't like my former self much and I apologised to many of my 'minions' (as I called them back then) on how I treated them. Type B/introvert works better, but I'm still trying to get more extrovert as it opens a lot of doors with people.
JackFr 5y ago
Type A/Type B isn’t a thing. It is a fake latent variable cardiologists (who were being paid by tobacco companies) came up with to distinguish between people who had heart attacks and those who didn’t to mask the effect of smoking. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3477961/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3477961/ It’s not surprising that this vocabulary persists - it’s a nice shorthand to casually describe personality. But the idea that it represents anything objective, measurable or scientific needs to be stamped out.
- vkk8 5y ago
  Neither is being introverted/extroverted. Our mind is more complex than simple dichotomies like this assume. We all behave like "introverts" in some situations and like "extroverts" in some situations. We constantly adapt to our environment and our responses to external stimuli are not stable in time. They also depend on our internal state like hunger, tiredness, etc. much more than these sort of classification schemes would have you believe.
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    > We constantly adapt to our environment and our responses to external stimuli are not stable in time This is true, but it's also true that peoples' average preferred amounts of stimulation are very different to other people's. And those averages often are quite stable.
  - mgh2 5y ago
    The OP statement is very interesting, will need more resources to confirm. Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30010119 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30010119 As for introvert/extroversion: On Susan Cain's book "Quiet" The "Galen’s Prophesy" reveals certain behavioral predispositions of children within four months old: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVJBzvaylH8&ab_channel=JillBowers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVJBzvaylH8&ab_channel=JillB...

96 points by rzk 5y ago

> Imagine I have 100 Energy Points that keep me going. I might start the day with 100 points and as I go about my day, I’ll start to feel pretty drained and unproductive once I’m below 50. To make matters more challenging, if I haven’t slept well or if I’m stressed out about other things, I might not even start the workday at 100 Energy Points! This and the paragraphs thereafter are the most succinct description of how I feel on a daily basis that I’ve ever read. I’m really good at being fun and high energy, so many are normally very surprised to learn that I need as much alone time as I can possibly gather to recoup. This is why me being a traveling consultant was amazing. I could pair and present all day and recharge with a dinner by myself and some progress on side projects. That went out the window after COVID and has caused problems.

napsy 5y ago

I'm a lead that's an introvert as well. I've figured out what really drains me are any meetings that I'm not in charge of (or haven't initiated the meeting). It probably has something to do with self-confidence and I will speak rarely or if I'm called upon. Also for me it's hard to be energetic at the start of the day when meetings slowly appear on the daily agenda. The more I speak, the more confidence I get. But this is only in the case with a meet with many participants. I have no problems with 1:1 meetings.

lostcolony 5y ago
Question for you - are meetings others initiate/are in charge of, but which nevertheless serve a clear point that necessitates your presence as draining? Because that's the differentiator for me. If I have a goal I'm trying to achieve there, and the meeting is focused on that goal, it doesn't matter if I'm just a participant or not. If their isn't a clear goal, or I'm expected to be there despite not being involved in that goal (if it's an informational meeting I don't care about the information; if it's a decisional meeting I don't care or can't influence the decision; if it's a brainstorming meeting it's about something that doesn't affect me or a problem I'm not responsible to solve), it's massively draining.
- napsy 5y ago
  Yes, some meetings don't really require my presence. Many times, for me it's more like: "hey, anything to add here?".
toisanji 5y ago
describes me as well!

Tomis02 5y ago

Seems a very popular thing to put labels on people's personalities. "He's a leader", "she's an introvert", "they are artsy". Feels very similar to astrology - "he's a Lion", "she's a Taurus". Or the "alpha male" and "beta male" nonsense.

nineteen999 5y ago
Or "Type A" or "Type B". Sometimes I think a large part of HN readers think everything about human nature and personality can be classified, as if ready to be replaced with software in the future. Our understanding of the human mind is nowhere near that place now, and may never be.
- marginalia_nu 5y ago
  It's important to keep in mind that all of these things, not just personality traits, but even concepts such as "human" are artifacts of our modelling of the world. The things in themselves do not know of these distinctions, and you can draw them fairly arbitrarily in ways that may or may not be helpful in making sense of the world. Saying that there are some things that are alive, an others that are inert; and that some alive things are animalia, and others are not, and that some animalia are humans and others are not, and that some humans are Type A, and others are not. Really, none of those distinctions are more justified than the other. It's even hard to motivate that there are things as separate. We have matter constantly moving through us, the air we breathe and the water we drink and the food we eat. We aren't strictly speaking entirely made of the same stuff we were yesterday. It's like a wave across the water, the wave persists but the pieces of water it's made of changes over time. A bit in the same way our hands are features of our bodies, we are features on the universe. You can make the delineation to say we are separate, but only as a mental model.
  - khimaros 5y ago
    Robert Anton Wilson would be proud
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

mgh2 5y ago

If "software is eating the world" and most technical people (in average) are introverts, then they will eventually dominate. Tech company CEOs are mostly engineers who switched to management. Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29722441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29722441 Recommended book: Quiet by Susan Cain

mpol 5y ago
Can I mention that I found that the most horrible book I have read in years? The first 50 pages were doable when scrolling through. But soon it dived into how introvert people can be successful, while that success is measured in extravert ways. Like the introvert guy giving presentations about how to be successful. For me everything was "feet on top", "upsidedown". And all very much about looking successful and making an impression. It didn't do any justice to what I would want from my life, more like the opposite. I don't want to be like Bill Gates. The only thing I took from that book was the description of three personality traits; shyness, introversion and HSP. They seem the same to other people but are very different. Shyness is about fear something might happen in response to what you do. Introversion is that you mostly gain energy in quietness, less in social situations. And HSP means that someone is sensitive and everything comes in quite hard.
- mgh2 5y ago
  Humans are social creatures, just because we were predisposed in a certain way does not mean that there are not great skills to learn from the other side, which can improve our health and social status - COVID and remote work is an example.

DoreenMichele 5y ago

Makes me think of the phrase servant leadership that was batted about at my corporate job. Not everyone in charge has to be some hard charging loudmouth. That's basically style, not substance.

mise_en_place 5y ago
The VP of engineering I work for is very much a servant leader. He is always around to support the team, unblock people, and makes sure things are moving along smoothly. As opposed to previous leaders I've had who were aloof/absent and typically not available after 4 pm. As an aside, I am deeply suspicious of people who assign letters to their personality or pronouns to themselves. We are all humans first and foremost.
- vba616 5y ago
  >I am deeply suspicious of people who assign letters to their personality "Professor Evelyn Algernon Valentine Ebsworth CBE, PhD, MA, ScD, DCL hc, FRSC, FRSE" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-nominal_letters https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-nominal_letters
  - OJFord 5y ago
    I think GP meant more like 'I am a Type A' and similar (cf. OP). Might be wrong though.
    - JackFr 5y ago
      Ordo Praedicatorum?
      - OJFord 5y ago
        'OP'? No - the 'Original Post', i.e. the submission title is also an example: 'as a Type B Introvert' https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/OP#Noun https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/OP#Noun (def 4 at time of writing)

deltaonefour 5y ago

"The only people who I saw running “successful” companies (a word which, I now realize, is very open to interpretation) were stern, if not iron-fisted, managers. They made the rules and set the goals with confidence. They weren’t afraid to yell to get their point across, " The above is not an example of a good leader. People only obey this type of leader because they are paid to obey. A true leader is someone people obey because they believe in him. The previous sentences describe leadership in an idealistic way. In reality most leaders are sort of hybrids. Yes you work for you boss because of the pay, but if that's the only reason why you work for your boss, than your boss is an not a good leader.

sz4kerto 5y ago
> A true leader is someone people obey because they believe in him. No true scotsman? There are multiple ways to reach your goals, I don't think that one of them is 'truer'than the other.
- deltaonefour 5y ago
  No but, let me put it this way. If you're yelling at me, than I hate you. I have no loyalty to you.. and the next time I see an opening, I'm fucking you over first thing. Everyone who follows you, is pretending to do so. No one is on your team. They may even secretly be fucking you over while pretending to bend over backwards for you. You've reached your goal yes. But you've made enemies. and your overarching goals are at risk.
- atoav 5y ago
  I think they refer to the meaning of the word "leading" as opposed to meanings like "commanding" or "bossing around". While agreeably there might be no "true" leader to be found on this world, the words mentioned above still differ in meaning and definition. Someone who leads does something else than someone who commands or bosses around. This discussion here is about that difference. Of course you can also reach goals by just yelling and punishing people, but that would hardly qualify as leadership.
atoav 5y ago

awinter-py 5y ago

re personalities and leadership, loved this thread on selecting lead dogs on husky sled teams https://twitter.com/BlairBraverman/status/1222217236045234177 https://twitter.com/BlairBraverman/status/122221723604523417... tldr is that it's not about aggression but rather motivation, ability to operate without someone else forging a path + initiative in strange situations

tluyben2 5y ago

I turned into a type A/introvert to a type B/extrovert-ish and lead people in both situations; give me the latter any time. I didn't like my former self much and I apologised to many of my 'minions' (as I called them back then) on how I treated them. Type B/introvert works better, but I'm still trying to get more extrovert as it opens a lot of doors with people.

JackFr 5y ago

Type A/Type B isn’t a thing. It is a fake latent variable cardiologists (who were being paid by tobacco companies) came up with to distinguish between people who had heart attacks and those who didn’t to mask the effect of smoking. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3477961/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3477961/ It’s not surprising that this vocabulary persists - it’s a nice shorthand to casually describe personality. But the idea that it represents anything objective, measurable or scientific needs to be stamped out.

vkk8 5y ago
Neither is being introverted/extroverted. Our mind is more complex than simple dichotomies like this assume. We all behave like "introverts" in some situations and like "extroverts" in some situations. We constantly adapt to our environment and our responses to external stimuli are not stable in time. They also depend on our internal state like hunger, tiredness, etc. much more than these sort of classification schemes would have you believe.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  > We constantly adapt to our environment and our responses to external stimuli are not stable in time This is true, but it's also true that peoples' average preferred amounts of stimulation are very different to other people's. And those averages often are quite stable.
- mgh2 5y ago
  The OP statement is very interesting, will need more resources to confirm. Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30010119 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30010119 As for introvert/extroversion: On Susan Cain's book "Quiet" The "Galen’s Prophesy" reveals certain behavioral predispositions of children within four months old: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVJBzvaylH8&ab_channel=JillBowers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVJBzvaylH8&ab_channel=JillB...