# Susan Cain takes us into the mind of an introvert | The TED Interview

Segment00:00:00 – 00:08:00

Full episode transcript, trimmed to training segment.

==================================================

[0000:05] Chris Anderson: Welcome to The TED Interview.

[0000:07] I’m Chris Anderson,

[0000:08] and this is the podcast series where I sit down with a TED speaker,

[0000:12] and we dive much deeper into their ideas than was possible during their TED Talk.

[0000:18] Today on the show,

[0000:20] one of the world’s most famous introverts, Susan Cain.

[0000:24] Seven years ago, Susan called for something of a revolution

[0000:28] in how the world should think about introverts.

[0000:32] She published a best-selling book called "Quiet,"

[0000:35] and she also gave a TED Talk: "The Power of Introverts."

[0000:39] The book and the talk were packed with ideas

[0000:42] on how to avoid doing what we often do to introverts:

[0000:45] make them suffer and ignore their superpowers.

[0000:49] (Recorded talk) Susan Cain: ...and it's our loss, for sure.

[0000:52] But it is also our colleagues' loss and our communities' loss.

[0000:55] And at the risk of sounding grandiose, it is the world's loss,

[0000:58] because when it comes to creativity and to leadership,

[0001:00] we need introverts doing what they do best.

[0001:03] CA: Speaking as something of an introvert myself,

[0001:06] I find this whole topic super interesting.

[0001:08] Really, talking with Susan is kind of like coming home,

[0001:12] and in the next hour, we'll be discussing how to better manage our places of work,

[0001:17] our schools, our relationships,

[0001:20] and explore what the scientific understanding of introversion really is.

[0001:29] Susan Cain, welcome.

[0001:31] SC: Thank you so much. It's great to be here.

[0001:34] CA: We’re very excited to have you here.

[0001:36] You’re a revolutionary.

[0001:38] Honestly, you’ve ushered in this revolution.

[0001:41] I think we can say that,

[0001:42] because not many people do anything like you have done.

[0001:46] So, introversion-extroversion: let's talk some science.

[0001:50] I'd love to hear your definition, fundamentally,

[0001:53] of how we should think about what an introvert is versus an extrovert.

[0001:58] SC: The one-minute answer: you could ask yourself

[0002:01] how do you feel when you show up at a party

[0002:04] that you're truly enjoying, with company you truly like?

[0002:08] If you're an extrovert, it's as if you have an internal battery

[0002:11] that is getting charged by that experience.

[0002:14] So at the end of the two hours, now your battery's charged,

[0002:17] you're raring to go, you're looking for more.

[0002:20] And if you're an introvert, no matter how socially skilled you are

[0002:24] and no matter how much fun you've been having,

[0002:27] after two or three hours, you just start to hit that mark

[0002:30] where you wish you could kind of teleport home.

[0002:32] You probably know this feeling well, right?

[0002:35] Like, there you are --

[0002:36] CA: Oh, I do.

[0002:37] SC: ... at the wonderful TED dinner, and then suddenly, "Oh, I wish I could go."

[0002:41] CA: Yeah, and people assume that because I host TED,

[0002:43] I must be an extrovert.

[0002:45] You know, here's this conference with 1,500 people there,

[0002:47] and you have these big events,

[0002:49] and you have to go around and glad-hand people and so forth.

[0002:52] And people assume I must be an extrovert, and I'm not.

[0002:56] And that is exactly what happens to me.

[0002:58] Actually, it's not even two hours. It's about 74 minutes.

[0003:01] My battery sort of hits, "Oh, God, I just have to get out of here and breathe."

[0003:08] So, there's plenty of types of social stimulation

[0003:11] that introverts are actually great at.

[0003:13] Draw that distinction for me.

[0003:14] What is the difference between social stimulation

[0003:17] that an introvert actually is great at,

[0003:19] versus what they get depleted by?

[0003:22] SC: Yeah. And I don't want to say "great," because there are introverts

[0003:25] who are really great at any number of types of social interactions.

[0003:29] Everybody's got their different ones that they like,

[0003:32] but there's a big difference between what you're good at

[0003:35] and what you enjoy doing or feel energized by.

[0003:38] So it really does vary by person.

[0003:42] In general, you can say for lots of introverts,

[0003:45] they prefer a one-on-one conversation.

[0003:48] They prefer to direct more of their social energy

[0003:52] to family or to the people who they know and love best.

[0003:56] But then there's also this subset of introverts

[0003:59] who I discovered through my research

[0004:01] who love performing.

[0004:02] You know, they love being onstage,

[0004:04] and for them, that's the real comfort zone.

[0004:06] You talk to comedians and actors,

[0004:09] and lots of them will tell you that they're really comfortable

[0004:12] when they're up onstage doing their prescribed role,

[0004:14] and then the minute they step off and have to mingle at the cocktail party,

[0004:18] that's when the discomfort comes for them.

[0004:20] CA: Well, you're in control in that situation.

[0004:23] You are not exposed to random things

[0004:26] that you don't know where you might take you, it's --

[0004:29] you own the stage.

[0004:30] And there's something very powerful and different about that

[0004:34] than having to figure out small talk in a social setting.

[0004:38] SC: That's exactly it.

[0004:40] And when you look at what's happening neurobiologically

[0004:42] for a lot of introverts,

[0004:44] what it really is is a nervous system that reacts more

[0004:47] to all the different bits of incoming stimulation.

[0004:50] So if you think about a cocktail party or something like that,

[0004:54] there's so much coming at you,

[0004:55] so much you have to decode all at once,

[0004:58] and it doesn't matter how big a brain you have.

[0005:01] Your nervous system is just experiencing that

[0005:04] as a kind of bombardment.

[0005:06] CA: So I read that in your book, where you said that often,

[0005:10] the key marker for an introvert child

[0005:12] is one who reacts more strongly to stimulation.

[0005:16] SC: Mm-hmm.

[0005:17] CA: What kind of child were you, for example?

[0005:20] SC: Oh, gosh.

[0005:21] Well, I think as a child I was really similar

[0005:26] to the way I am now,

[0005:27] which is, I really liked people and I always made friends pretty easily,

[0005:34] but I liked to hang out with people usually one person at a time

[0005:38] or in small settings,

[0005:40] and I tended to like the company of people who I knew really well,

[0005:43] and you could, oh, I don't know,

[0005:45] as a kid you don't think about talking about things deeply,

[0005:48] but I liked that kind of socializing.

[0005:50] And I liked to spend a lot of time reading.

[0005:54] I grew up in a family where all of that was really normal and par for the course,

[0006:00] and I became aware at a pretty early age

[0006:03] that my preference of how I liked to spend my time

[0006:08] didn't always match up

[0006:09] with the way people thought that kids were supposed to be.

[0006:13] You know, there was this feeling that you'd want to get together

[0006:16] in a group of kids and sing a song,

[0006:20] just this kind of constant socializing.

[0006:22] CA: Were there lots of awkward or painful moments as a child,

[0006:26] where you were just, "No, please don't make me do that.

[0006:28] I don't want to go to that party,"

[0006:30] or, "That's too hard for me"?

[0006:32] SC: Well, I was shy as a child,

[0006:34] so I had a lot of those moments of shyness

[0006:38] in situations where I didn't know the people well.

[0006:42] Or I was really into figure skating when I was a kid and, you know,

[0006:45] every figure skater gets nervous before they go out on the ice

[0006:48] for their performance or competition,

[0006:50] but I really suffered more than your typical skater would.

[0006:55] Until I learned how to deal with that side of myself,

[0006:59] yeah, that would sort of show up and get in the way sometimes.

[0007:04] CA: I mean, you explain in the book that shyness, per se,

[0007:07] is not necessarily the same as introversion.

[0007:11] Explain that difference.

[0007:13] SC: Yeah. I always think of the book and the work that I do

[0007:17] as being about both shyness and introversion

[0007:20] and the whole constellation of traits that goes along with this way of being,

[0007:24] even though they really are separate.

[0007:26] And you could be an introvert who's not shy,

[0007:28] and you could be a super extrovert who is shy in new situations.

[0007:32] So, shyness is about the fear of social judgment.

[0007:37] So if you're going out on the ice and everybody's watching you,

[0007:40] you're feeling an acutely, painfully heightened self-consciousness.

[0007:46] And then later on in life it would show up in job interviews and things like that.

[0007:51] And introversion is much more about the preference for environments

[0007:57] where there's just a little less going on,