Last year I did research on introverted leadership. I conducted a survey, interviewed introverted leaders worldwide and had them fill out a personality questionnaire. This is what I discovered.

As an introvert I had several leadership roles before. In those roles, it struck me that there is a certain picture of what a good leader should look like. Preferably such a person likes to be in the foreground and he or she speaks loudest. Quite different from my own natural style, where I prefer to give others space.

This observation was the start of my own research into introverted leadership. I was very curious if other introverted leaders experienced this as well and how they deal with the challenges as introverted leaders. As a first step, I conducted a survey, which I shared worldwide. It was filled in by 338 self-identified introverted leaders from all over the world.

Then I spoke to a number of introverted leaders: 18 in total, from 17 different countries and 11 different industries. I supplemented this with another 12 introverted leaders from the Netherlands and Belgium, because I decided to write a book about it.

Finally, I had the 18 interviewed leaders complete a personality questionnaire. That way I could check how introverted they really are and I could also see what other personality traits affect their leadership. That way I got a pretty complete picture of the introverted leader.

Three things

During my research I discovered three important things. First, many introverted leaders deal with the so-called affinity bias. As human beings we tend to mainly look for people who are like ourselves. Within companies this sometimes results in the introvert getting the feeling that he or she is an exception. But introversion basically has a normal distribution, so there are just as many introverts as extroverts. 

In addition, it became very clear what the added value of the introverted leader is: he or she is very people-oriented and also highly analytical. Introverted leaders give their teams plenty of room, making them ideally suited to environments where innovation is very important. And because they are good at overseeing the big picture and figuring things out, they are usually also very good at strategy.

Finally, the introverted leaders were also very open to innovation and worked hard. According to various studies, these are characteristics that make a leader successful. You can call the leadership of the introverted leader participatory, or even transformational. In any case, it's a style to be proud of.