Quiet (41 page)

Within Jon's first eight weeks on the job, he sold $50,000 worth of knives. He went on to be the company's top representative from over 40,000 new recruits that year. By the year 2000, when he was still a high school senior, Jon had generated more than $135,000 in commissions and had broken more than twenty-five national and regional sales records. Meanwhile, back in high school, he was still a socially awkward guy who hid inside the library at lunchtime. But by 2002 he'd recruited, hired, and trained ninety other sales reps, and increased territory sales 500 percent over the previous year. Since then, Jon has launched Global Empowerment Coaching, his own personal coaching and sales training business. To date he's given hundreds of speeches, training seminars, and private consultations to more than 30,000 salespeople and managers.

What's the secret of Jon's success? One important clue comes from an
experiment by the developmental psychologist Avril Thorne, now a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Thorne gathered fifty-two young women—twenty-six introverts and twenty-six extroverts—and assigned them to two different conversational pairings. Each person had one ten-minute conversation with a partner of her own type and a second conversation of equal length with her “dispositional opposite.” Thorne's team taped the conversations and asked the participants to listen to a playback tape.

This process revealed some surprising findings. The introverts and extroverts participated about equally, giving the lie to the idea that introverts always talk less. But the introvert pairs tended to focus on one or two serious subjects of conversation, while the extrovert pairs chose lighter-hearted and wider-ranging topics. Often the introverts discussed problems or conflicts in their lives: school, work, friendships, and so on.
Perhaps because of this fondness for “problem talk,” they tended to adopt the role of adviser, taking turns counseling each other on the problem at hand. The extroverts, by contrast, were more likely to offer casual information about themselves that established commonality with the other person:
You have a new dog? That's great. A friend of mine has an amazing tank of saltwater fish!

But the most interesting part of Thorne's experiment was how much the two types appreciated each other. Introverts talking to extroverts chose cheerier topics, reported making conversation more easily, and described conversing with extroverts as a “breath of fresh air.” In contrast, the extroverts felt that they could relax more with introvert partners and were freer to confide their problems. They didn't feel pressure to be falsely upbeat.

These are useful pieces of social information. Introverts and extroverts sometimes feel mutually put off, but Thorne's research suggests how much each has to offer the other. Extroverts need to know that introverts—who often seem to disdain the superficial—may be only too happy to be tugged along to a more lighthearted place; and introverts, who sometimes feel as if their propensity for problem talk makes them a drag, should know that they make it safe for others to get serious.

Thorne's research also helps us to understand Jon Berghoff's astonishing success at sales. He has turned his affinity for serious conversation, and for adopting an advisory role rather than a persuasive one, into a kind of therapy for his prospects. “I discovered early on that people don't buy from me because they understand what I'm selling,” explains Jon. “They buy because they feel understood.”

Jon also benefits from his natural tendency to ask a lot of questions and to listen closely to the answers. “I got to the point where I could walk into someone's house and instead of trying to sell them some knives, I'd ask a hundred questions in a row. I could manage the entire conversation just by asking the right questions.” Today, in his coaching business, Jon does the same thing. “I try to tune in to the radio station of the person I'm working with. I pay attention to the energy they exude. It's easy for me to do that because I'm in my head a lot, anyways.”

But doesn't salesmanship require the ability to get excited, to pump people up? Not according to Jon. “A lot of people believe that selling
requires being a fast talker, or knowing how to use charisma to persuade. Those things do require an extroverted way of communicating. But in sales there's a truism that ‘we have two ears and one mouth and we should use them proportionately.' I believe that's what makes someone really good at selling or consulting—the number-one thing is they've got to really listen well. When I look at the top salespeople in my organization, none of those extroverted qualities are the key to their success.”

And now back to Greg and Emily's impasse. We've just acquired two crucial pieces of information: first, Emily's distaste for conversational multitasking is real and explicable; and second, when introverts are able to experience conversations in their own way, they make deep and enjoyable connections with others.

It was only once they accepted these two realities that Greg and Emily found a way to break their stalemate. Instead of focusing on the
number
of dinner parties they'd give, they started talking about the
format
of the parties. Instead of seating everyone around a big table, which would require the kind of all-hands conversational multitasking Emily dislikes so much, why not serve dinner buffet style, with people eating in small, casual conversational groupings on the sofas and floor pillows? This would allow Greg to gravitate to his usual spot at the center of the room and Emily to hers on the outskirts, where she could have the kind of intimate, one-on-one conversations she enjoys.

This issue solved, the couple was now free to address the thornier question of how many parties to give. After some back-and-forth, they agreed on two evenings a month—twenty-four dinners a year—instead of fifty-two. Emily still doesn't look forward to these events. But she sometimes enjoys them in spite of herself. And Greg gets to host the evenings he enjoys so much, to hold on to his identity, and to be with the person he most adores—all at the same time.

Mark Twain once told a story about a man who scoured the planet looking for the greatest general who ever lived. When the man was informed that the person he sought had already died and gone to heaven, he made a trip to the Pearly Gates to look for him. Saint Peter pointed at a regular-looking Joe.

“That isn't the greatest of all generals,” protested the man. “I knew that person when he lived on Earth, and he was only a cobbler.”

“I know that,” said Saint Peter, “but if he
had
been a general, he would have been the greatest of them all.”

We should all look out for cobblers who might have been great generals. Which means focusing on introverted children, whose talents are too often stifled, whether at home, at school, or on the playground.

Consider
this cautionary tale, told to me by Dr. Jerry Miller, a child psychologist and the director of the Center for the Child and the Family at the University of Michigan. Dr. Miller had a patient named Ethan, whose
parents brought him for treatment on four separate occasions. Each time, the parents voiced the same fears that something was wrong with their child. Each time, Dr. Miller assured them that Ethan was perfectly fine.

The reason for their initial concern was simple enough. Ethan was seven, and his four-year-old brother had beaten him up several times. Ethan didn't fight back. His parents—both of them outgoing, take-charge types with high-powered corporate jobs and a passion for competitive golf and tennis—were OK with their younger son's aggression, but worried that Ethan's passivity was “going to be the story of his life.”

As Ethan grew older, his parents tried in vain to instill “fighting spirit” in him. They sent him onto the baseball diamond and the soccer field, but Ethan just wanted to go home and read. He wasn't even competitive at school. Though very bright, he was a B student. He could have done better, but preferred to focus on his hobbies, especially building model cars. He had a few close friends, but was never in the thick of classroom social life. Unable to account for his puzzling behavior, Ethan's parents thought he might be depressed.

But Ethan's problem, says Dr. Miller, was not depression but a classic case of poor “parent-child fit.” Ethan was tall, skinny, and unathletic; he looked like a stereotypical nerd. His parents were sociable, assertive people, who were “always smiling, always talking to people while dragging Ethan along behind them.”

Compare their worries about Ethan to Dr. Miller's assessment: “He was like the classic Harry Potter kid—he was always reading,” says Dr. Miller enthusiastically. “He enjoyed any form of imaginative play. He loved to build things. He had so many things he wanted to tell you about. He had more acceptance of his parents than they had of him. He didn't define them as pathological, just as different from himself. That same kid in a different home would be a model child.”

But Ethan's own parents never found a way to see him in that light. The last thing Dr. Miller heard was that his parents finally consulted with another psychologist who agreed to “treat” their son. And now Dr. Miller is the one who's worried about Ethan.

“This is a clear case of an ‘iatrogenic' problem,' ” he says. “That's when the treatment makes you sick. The classic example is when you use treatment to try to make a gay child into a straight one. I worry for that
kid. These parents are very caring and well-meaning people. They feel that without treatment, they're not preparing their son for society. That he needs more fire in him. Maybe there's truth to that last part; I don't know. But whether there is or not, I firmly believe that it's impossible to change that kid. I worry that they're taking a perfectly healthy boy and damaging his sense of self.”

Of course, it doesn't have to be a bad fit when extroverted parents have an introverted child. With a little mindfulness and understanding, any parent can have a good fit with any kind of child, says Dr. Miller. But parents need to step back from their own preferences and see what the world looks like to their quiet children.

Take the case of Joyce and her seven-year-old daughter, Isabel. Isabel is an elfin second grader who likes to wear glittery sandals and colorful rubber bracelets snaking up her skinny arms. She has several best friends with whom she exchanges confidences, and she gets along with most of the kids in her class. She's the type to throw her arms around a classmate who's had a bad day; she even gives her birthday presents away to charity. That's why her mother, Joyce, an attractive, good-natured woman with a wisecracking sense of humor and a bring-it-on demeanor, was so confused by Isabel's problems at school.

In first grade, Isabel often came home consumed with worry over the class bully, who hurled mean comments at anyone sensitive enough to feel bruised by them. Even though the bully usually picked on other kids, Isabel spent hours dissecting the meaning of the bully's words, what her true intentions had been, even what the bully might be suffering at home that could possibly motivate her to behave so dreadfully at school.

By second grade, Isabel started asking her mother not to arrange play dates without checking with her first. Usually she preferred to stay home. When Joyce picked up Isabel from school, she often found the other girls gathered into groups and Isabel off on the playground, shooting baskets by herself. “She just wasn't in the mix. I had to stop doing pickups for a
while,” recalls Joyce. “It was just too upsetting for me to watch.” Joyce couldn't understand why her sweet, loving daughter wanted to spend so much time alone. She worried that something was wrong with Isabel. Despite what she'd always thought about her daughter's empathetic nature, might Isabel lack the ability to relate with others?