Developing Tomorrow’s Introverted Leader: Exploring Discrimination, Leadership Aptitude, and Strategic Development

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Authors

Harless, Rachel

Issue Date

2024-04

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Article

Language

en_US

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Human Resource Management , Organizational Behavior

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Abstract

When it comes to leadership opportunities, introverts are commonly dismissed due to qualities that seem ill-fitting when compared to extroverted candidates. In truth, introverts possess many leadership-suited traits, but these are often unnoticed in the workplace because many organizational practices, standards, and selection measures are designed with extroverts in mind. By shaping development, success, and advancement around extroversion, introverted employees – including those from cultures that value introverted traits – are systemically disserviced, creating disparate impact. To further understand these issues, an extensive literature review was conducted to explore the relationship between leadership and introversion from multiple cultural and industry perspectives. The takeaways from this research affirmed that introverted leaders can be powerful but that employers tend not to see this potential. More interestingly, the study revealed the serious issue of discrimination that introverts face, as well as the roots of such treatment. This revelation, in turn, confirmed that organizational practices have created unfair leadership roadblocks for introverts. On the bright side, the literature review confirmed that successful leadership development methods for introverts exist but have generally been unutilized because they have not been strategically wielded together. To begin rectifying this oversight, those development methods were summarized into a basic developmental framework of best practices for effectively identifying and developing introverted leaders.

Description

17 pages

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Publisher

Drake Management Review

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