Are you setting your own limits?
Now I’ve really gone around the bend. After a year and a half of blogging I am going to explain where we have been and where we are going—and what it means to you—in the space of one article.
Human potential has a three part history. Most of human history took place in phase 1, where your potential was fixed at birth and nothing you could do would change that. For the last five hundred years or so, we have been in phase 2, which has been an ongoing struggle for the liberation of human potential. We are now poised on the verge of Phase 3, where personal potential is potentially unlimited.
Phase 1: In which everyone knew their place
In the beginning and long after, the world “potential” would have been meaningless because people knew their place in the world. They all lived in a Great Chain of Being, with God at the top, down through the angels to kings to nobles, to commoners, to peasants, and down to slaves. You looked up to others or down on others according to your natural place in the world, and the circumstances of your birth determined the arc of your life. It was not an easy or comfortable world to live in by any means, but at least you had the comfort of knowing you were part of a plan and didn’t have much choice in the matter.
Phase 2: The great struggle
In the second phase, beginning about 500 years ago, the Great Chain of Being began to unravel. We figured out that the universe does not revolve around the earth, books became more widely available, religious dissension opened the door to questioning sacred beliefs, and a few smart people began using scientific methods of thinking to form their own opinions and explanations. But despite astounding leaps in human knowledge the standard of living remained stagnant, and Malthus proved mathematically that things would never get better, because as even as output grew, population would always expand faster than production.
And yet, the seeds were planted for the idea that maybe there was a way out. 1776 was a miraculous year, as Jefferson told us all men are created equal, Adam Smith explained how free markets create abundance, and James Watt finally got his improved steam engine working in commercial enterprises. Freed from dependence on animal power, the standard of living began to take off. Not everyone was better off, because people had to leave the glorious countryside to work in dark satanic mills, and slaves had to grow and pick the cotton that fed those mills. Yet, people began to eat better and live better, got better educated, and realized that their own efforts and abilities could take them to heights their ancestors could not even dream about. This second phase seemed to promise that no one had to accept any limits placed on them by the circumstances of their birth.
Unfortunately, science can be used to shackle as well as to liberate. No sooner did Darwin publish his theories than his cousin Francis Galton used science (or at least something resembling it) to claim that intelligence is hereditary and to propose social engineering based on eugenics to improve its well-being. Intelligence tests were introduced in the early 20th century and some leading early proponents advocated using them to allocate peoples’ places in society. Eminent scientists such as Charles Spearman told us we could no more improve our given intelligence than we could train to be taller. A version of the GCB still existed, this time with a scientific veneer.
But not all scientists believed this. Alfred Binet, who invented IQ testing, said, “A few modern philosophers…assert that an individual’s intelligence is a fixed quantity, a quantity which cannot be increased. We must protest against this brutal pessimism.”
Many unscientific voices also chimed in. The proponents of a positive mental attitude told us there are no limits on what we can achieve. They infused a can-do attitude and inspired millions to great efforts and unexpected accomplishments. Simple belief can work wonders: Carol Dweck, among others, showed that just believing that you can accomplish far more than you are currently able to accomplish, as long as you work hard, keep learning, and persist in the face of failure, can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It’s called a growth mindset.
The only problem is that not everyone has that belief; according to Dweck, approximately half of us still have a fixed mindset—we believe fundamental abilities like intelligence are inherited and unchangeable. We limit ourselves and others.
Phase 3: From belief to certainty
We are now entering the third phase of our history where we don’t have to take it on faith anymore. A tremendous amount of scientific evidence has been gathered to show that many of the qualities we consider to be innate and genetically determined are substantially within our control. Studies of identical twins raised apart show that environment can cause a swing in IQ between 12 to 18 points, which could be the difference between a career as a professional or a more modest position. MRIs have demonstrated that acquiring large amounts of knowledge and skill can physically affect the size of various structures in our brains. Anders Ericsson has showed us how “natural genius” can be produced with lots and lots of deliberate practice. (I could go on and on, but I would exceed my limit.)
Speaking of limits, the evidence shows that most are self-inflicted. There is no need to accept natural limits, and certainly no excuse at all for anyone in a position to influence impressionable young minds, to allow this pernicious belief to take root in their minds.
If we can give everyone a growth mindset, we will liberate and energize the energies of half of mankind, and imagine what that will mean to our future. Imagine what it could mean to your future.
Even with one of these, if you’re not learning, you’re losing.
Which would you rather have working for you, a salesperson with 10 years of experience, or one with one year of experience ten times? The unfortunate fact is that the majority of sales professionals fall into the second category.
The world’s foremost expert on experts is K. Anders Ericsson (who discovered the 10,000 hour rule that Malcolm Gladwell made famous). He tells us that:
“Some professionals continue to improve steadily during many years and even decades, and are eventually recognized by their peers as having attained the highest levels as experts or masters. In contrast, most professionals in a domain reach a stable, average, undistinguished level of achievement within a relatively short time frame and maintain this mediocre level for the rest of their careers.”[1]
Like any complex problem, there are many causes for this unfortunate situation. The one I address in this article is the lack of feedback that most sales professionals receive, especially after sales calls.
Not bad for a medical student and part-time runner
One of the more common ideas in motivation is what some people call the Bannister effect. For decades, once people began keeping records, it was thought to be impossible to run a mile in under four minutes, until Roger Bannister did it at on a windy spring day at Oxford on May 6, 1954. Two months later, he raced his great rival John Landy of Australia and won that race, with both men going under four minutes, and within three years 16 runners had gone under the barrier.
The moral of the story, of course, is that so often our limitations exist only in our minds, and when someone erases the mental limits, performance takes off. It’s also a testament to the power of belief, because Bannister’s belief is seen as the magic key that unlocked the sacred door.
It’s a great story and a powerful moral, except that, as in much of real life, reality is a bit more complicated.
You can always choose which face to present to the world
I’ve just finished reading Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain. If you consider yourself an introvert, as I did, the book will help you recognize and apply your strengths to be more successful in a predominately extraverted world. If you’re an extravert, it will give you a greater appreciation of your own blind spots and help you get the most from the introverts around you.
But a word that only appeared once in the entire book sparked my greatest interest: ambivert. I’ll explain why a little later in this article.
Today’s business and culture glorifies the extravert ideal. We watch reality shows in which the brashest, most outgoing and shameless people grab the limelight. We put charismatic business leaders on the covers of our magazines. In meetings, those who speak up the most are seen as smarter and better leaders, and they are the ones who tend to get the promotions.
Business today glorifies teamwork, which is tailor-made for extraverts. Open-plan offices are thought to encourage more interaction, teamwork, and creativity. (From the 1970s to the 1990s, the average space per office worker declined from 500 to 200 square feet.) Yet, research shows that open-plan offices impair productivity and increase stress. Group brainstorming has been found to produce fewer good ideas than people working alone. That’s because the extraverts tend to take over, and introverts clam up.
No less a business leader than Jack Welch said: “big companies are so tilted towards extroverts that introverts within them often experience a dynamic not unlike the one faced by many women and minorities. They have to constantly overdeliver just to stay even.”
Welch further went on to say that introverts in large organizations need to release their inner extravert; they have to get out more and “deploy all the energy and personality they can muster.”
It sounds like excellent advice, but is it necessary? Are extraverts automatically better leaders and better salespeople? In his book Good to Great, Jim Collins tells us that all the great companies he studied had quiet leaders in common. Peter Drucker said that, of all the most effective leaders he had ever met, all had little or no charisma. And, as I recently wrote here, pundits who are the most confident and bold in their predictions are the most likely to be heard and the most likely to be wrong.
More recent research shows it might be more complicated than that, indicating that what matters is the relationship between the styles of both followers and leaders. A recent study showed that better group performance resulted when extraverted leaders led passive employees, and when quiet leaders worked with outgoing and proactive followers. When both leaders and followers have similar styles, performance went down.
In today’s fast-changing world, leaders rightly want to empower employees to take initiative, but that means they then have to act more introverted by asking more questions, listening more, and being more accepting of others’ views. Otherwise, it can lead to a struggle for dominance with followers ultimately becoming disenchanted that their leaders were not listening to them and following their advice. This may be especially important for sales managers. If you’ve risen from an extravert pool to your current position, you may need to tone down your need to be the center of attention and to always be right.
Even in sales, a profession which seems to be tailor-made for extraverts, the picture is not so clear.
Extraverts have some definite advantages in sales. They are action-oriented, confident, and gregarious. They’re not afraid to make the calls and reach out to high level decision makers, and they have the energy and enthusiasm to entertain and develop strong relationships. They are great networkers. I have 115 friends on FB and that’s too much. My friend John has almost 3,000 and is eagerly seeking more. Extraverts love doing these things and introverts find them to be work, so there’s a strike against introverts.
And yet, especially in complex systems sales, success comes to those who research the customer’s company, who put together effective opportunity and account plans, who ask questions and listen. Introverts may not like to make cold calls, but they are more likely to create a calling plan and have the dogged discipline to follow it. As one highly successful salesperson says in the book: “I discovered early on that people don’t buy from me because they understand what I’m selling. They buy because they feel understood.”
Because both types have advantages, it stands to reason that the most effective salespeople should combine the best traits of each, or who can flex their style to match the needs of the situation.
The key point in all this is that success in any profession is based on the effective performance of certain required behaviors and actions as the situation dictates, and these are products of will and skill. Practice and habit make things easier in the long run, so introverts can get better at doing the things they need to do, and extraverts can do the same. Personality is not destiny.
Labels can limit us. The first thing we should do is drop the labels we’ve imposed on ourselves. See, labels work both ways. If we behave as introverts, we—or others—place that label on us. Once we accept the label, it goes to work on us in the future. We react to situations the way we think introverts should react.
Labels can also empower us. If labels have that much power, why not change the label? The more I read the book, the less I identified with the pure introvert label. If you think of the distribution of personality types as a bell curve, most people will fall somewhere in the middle, so most of us are really ambiverts. This should be encouraging, because it means that you may not be as far from the center as you thought. From the center, it is much easier to move in either direction as the need arises. If you need to be assertive and outgoing, you can do so. Or, if you need to quiet down a bit and think a bit, you can also do it.
So, if you’re more introverted, take Welch’s advice and get out more; before meetings, think about what you’re going to say and plan to participate and speak out more. Seek out speaking opportunities; joining Toastmasters quite literally changed my life, because the confidence I gained in speaking in front of groups translated into many other business and social situations.
If you’re more extraverted, cut your talk/listen ratio way down. One CEO says that he purposely does not say anything for the first 15 minutes of any meeting. If you’re spouting opinions and nobody rebuts, don’t automatically assume it’s because they’re blown away by your brilliance. Maybe they just think you’re a jerk and want you to go away.
So, if you ask me which personality type is better, I’m firmly in the middle.
