In praise of quiet thought

Far more of us are introverts than we care to admit. On Myers-Briggs I have always come out as ENTJ, yet I love to spend quiet time working on problems, and in groups I often do more listening than talking. I don’t think I am alone. A couple of years ago I read ‘Quiet’ by Susan Cain who explored why modern businesses cultivate extroversion and so miss out on the insights and ideas of people who don’t rush ahead with partly-formed answers to ill-defined questions – which turns out to be most of us.

I teach project management at Lancaster University and this year I experimented by taking a ‘Quiet’ approach to the seminars that are part of the course. Instead of setting a task and assigning teams to work on it straightaway, I asked everyone to consider the problem quietly on their own for a few minutes, raise any queries and then work in teams. It worked really well. The students liked the approach and it produced more rounded and insightful ideas than the traditional dive-straight-in model, which favours quick-thinking extroverts over deeper thinking introvert.

For the best outcomes don’t we need the ideas of both?