This short review deals with the second edition of The Introverted Leader, 2018.
I bought this one in the Foyle’s close to Covent Garden in London during my most recent management/leadership book buying spree. Some time in summer 2019. It seemed to be a worthy skim-book to refresh some thoughts, and it fulfilled that promise.
The core of this book is about communication skills. It’s a manual for communicating across a sliding scale of introversion and extroversion.
The “big idea” as the author puts it, is to show that introverts can be leaders. I’m grateful for the permission.
The intro lays out how most people are not 100% introverted or extroverted, and the rest of the book then deals with the two groups as distinct from each other. Maybe helpful conceptually, but it was somewhat repellent to me throughout.
The author presents a “4 P’s” framework for leading as an introvert.
The P’s are “Prepare, Presence, Practice, Push”. Which is eerily similar to GMB.io’s 5P’s, Prepare, Practice, Play, Push, Ponder – where GMB.io’s seems more complete – once again an exciting overlap between training physically and mentally!
As a tool for deep understanding, this book falls flat. As a handy reference for handling specific challenging situations, I can see it working.
It’s split into a few distinct sections that can be opened up and skimmed for quick reference when facing a new challenge in that area. The sections are:
- Leading people and projects
- Delivering powerful presentations
- Leading and participating in meetings
- Networking
- Communication and coaching
- Leading up
All relevant topics to explore, but the book is definitely more useful as a basic reference when facing a specific challenge, than it is as a full methodology to absorb.
Onto the shelf it goes.