Quote:
Originally Posted by pylon
The bolded part kinda proves a point. I am not saying it is a fair point, but it proves one.
Take out social committee events, and trade that for negotiating for venture Capital, or negotiating a contract with a vendor, a salary roll back with an employee, the re-branding of your corporate image.... etc.
Sometimes you need the brash, loudmouth, take no prisoners type at the top to handle these types of things. I have seen people with an unpopular ideas sway the vote of an entire room using straight up brute force A-type personality and salesmanship traits to get exactly what they want.
That's the guy you want running a company in most cases, because he can leverage those skills for his employer.
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There's definitely a place for bull-in-a-China-shop personalities within companies, but I strongly disagree that they're the only type of people you want in the ranks of executive management. Once again, I refer you to the anecdotal examples of Gates, Buffett, and Zuckerberg, all of whom lead (or led) mega-successful companies despite the "character weaknesses" (in your view) of being quiet, contemplative, deep-thinking introverts.
You're also looking at the world through an exclusively North American-centric lens. In Japanese corporate culture, for example, the type of personalities you idealize as great business leaders are actually looked down upon. In fact, it's
extremely common for executives in Japanese corporations to be the INTJ (introverted) Myers-Briggs type at a rate very disproportionate to their distribution in the population.