Bashful business

The meek may inherit the Earth but they have a tough time in the modern firm, where extroverts thrive. But there is a cure, psychologist Philip Zimbardo tells Luke Collins.

David Brent is walking through the warehouse of paper merchants Wernham Hogg, expounding his management philosophy to his none-too-amused boss. "The thing is though," Brent says, trying to convey a certain gravitas, "no one's dispensable in my book. Because we're like one big organism, one big animal. The guys upstairs on the phones, they're like the mouth. The guys down here, the hands."

"And what part are you?"

"Good question," he shoots back, no beats missed. "Probably the humour."

The central character of the UK television program “The Office”, Brent imprinted himself on millions of people as a triumph of style over substance, someone who has risen beyond his station in life through a mixture of bluff and bluster. He even gets offered another promotion before his incompetence is laid bare.

Most office workers can probably name a handful of real-life David Brents without even trying. We live in superficial times where companies place a premium on appearance and the illusion of competence. It's not necessarily fair or even logical. In Blink: The power of thinking without thinking (Allen Lane, 2005), Malcolm Gladwell notes that it even manifests in terms of height: 58 per cent of American chief executive officers are more than six feet tall (183cm), compared with just 14 per cent of the total population.

"In the United States we have such a narcissistic culture - it's all about self-presentation," says Lynne Henderson, a visiting professor in psychology at Stanford University. "It's a sickness in the American culture."

For two decades Henderson has been trying to do something to counter that culture - by helping the reserved and bashful compete with the extroverts. Working at The Shyness Institute and The Shyness Clinic in California, she treats people who suffer from a syndrome that can be as damaging to your career as any.

Those being treated come from all backgrounds, ages and personalities, introverted and extroverted alike. As Henderson points out, outwardly confident people can be inwardly uncomfortable.

Interestingly, more men than women seek treatment, which bucks the general societal trend of men being less prepared to seek help in such situations. As Henderson points out, "sensitive" men often face difficulties in a professional world which rewards assertiveness, pushing them to seek treatment because their personalities are "counter to what they're supposed to be".

Both institutions draw on the work of their co-founder, the famed Stanford scholar Philip Zimbardo, who remains co-director of the facilities. Zimbardo shot to fame more than 30 years ago with an extraordinary study of human behaviour known as the Stanford Prison Experiment. It didn't have much to do directly with shyness but it was revelatory about what happens to people under pressure.

Zimbardo took 24 normal, healthy college students, randomly divided them into two groups - prisoners and guards - and placed them in a simulated jail. The study was stopped after just six days. Despite knowing it was staged, students assigned as guards quickly became sadistic power-wielders; the prisoners were broken mentally, becoming subservient, introverted and passive.

The outcome astounded researchers and led directly to the conclusion that human behaviour is very much a product of environment. As Zimbardo, now an emeritus professor at Stanford, says: "It's not about the people, it's all about the situation."

Fast forward to the 21st century corporation. Peer pressure encourages business suits and conservative haircuts, just as prisoners wear uniforms and have shaved heads. No guards, but there are colleagues with dominant personalities who monopolise meetings, grab promotions and pay rises, and leave the less assertive invisible and resentful.

"It's nothing to do with fairness and it's all unwritten," Zimbardo says. "In American culture the social facade is very important: to not only look good physically but to be a socially competent person. If you're not, you're just categorised ... there are sanctions against you."

When Zimbardo first began researching behaviour, surveys showed about 40 per cent of Americans considered themselves to be shy. That number is now above 50 per cent and continues to grow, despite the emphasis on appearance in social or work situations.

Zimbardo believes one of the reasons is that society as a whole is becoming less interactive: children camp in front of television rather than playing outside; they text message rather than talk; they listen to iPods and tune out. Adults suffer because technology has all but eliminated the art of small talk: you buy petrol, swipe your card and leave; you deal with machines rather than telephone operators; you can even do your own grocery scanning in some places. So while email and other technologies can help you communicate more effectively on a remote basis, they also reduce the amount of social interaction critical for shy people to overcome their fears.

"There are a lot of skills involved in a two-way conversation," says Zimbardo. "Non-verbal skills such as making eye contact, knowing when to look away, monitoring how much you've spoken and how much they've spoken, knowing how to cut in without interrupting. How do you learn except by practising?

"All the technology has the same consequence: there's virtually no simple social relationship anymore. Each of these things is a very small element, but it becomes pervasive and insidious and part of your everyday life. And the next generation doesn't even have the contrast that I do as an older person to remember what it used to be like. It's just the way it is."

The results can be profound. Studies show shy people typically join the workforce at a later age, earn less money, and can even suffer greater health problems due to the lack of a robust support network and reluctance to admit to medical issues.

But it's not just an individual's problem, because companies that fail to identify and assist people who are quiet achievers can suffer.

"It hurts the company, because as an employee you begin to feel resentment," says Zimbardo. "If I know that my performance is better than yours and yet you're getting promoted, you're getting raises, you're given more opportunities than me ... resentment builds up and over time I say, 'Why bother? Why should I put myself out and give 100 per cent when I'm being passed over?' "

So what constitutes shyness? It should not be confused with introversion, which can be an innate temperamental quality - people may simply be less social, more sensitive and somewhat cautious. Shyness is when the individual is negatively affected by that introversion: they are overly sensitive to criticism, avoid social interaction, and become isolated. There can even be physical manifestations, including sweating, shaking, nausea and dizziness.

"People have quiet temperaments and more introverted temperaments and more sensitive temperaments," says Henderson. "But where shyness interferes in life is when there's such a concern about being evaluated that people don't perform. They don't do what they want to do, they don't perform to their own goals. One can have an employee who's shy and they could be one of the best employees.

"You will even see, at the extreme, somebody who has very good social skills and is even meeting their goals, but they will say, 'I'm still uncomfortable inside.' That's why when you work with shyness you're often working with negative thinking patterns: the self is seen as inadequate and others are seen as critical."

It is easy to see how a personality that leans towards introversion can be exacerbated in an office environment. But it's encouraging to note that psychologists can identify hundreds of individuals throughout history who were like that - Abraham Lincoln and former US Vice President Al Gore among them.

Other studies show the attributes often exhibited by introverts can outweigh the negatives. These people are often good technically and tend to be collaborative team players, despite finding it hard to interact with others.

Henderson says shy people are often conscientious and ethical: "Competence does not correlate with confidence. We all know people who are very confident and we wonder why. The good news for shy people is it's only at the very beginning of an acquaintance that people judge others on their confidence; it quickly becomes about results."

While executives such as Donald Trump and Jack Welch grab headlines, studies show that the best corporate results are more often achieved by management teams you may never have heard of and by people who exhibit classic shy traits. As Jim Collins detailed in his book Good to Great: Why some companies make the leap ... and others don't (Harperbusiness, 2001), executives such as long-time Kimberly-Clark boss Darwin Smith (now deceased) are the best performers - people who "channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company".

That's encouraging, because it suggests you are not necessarily missing out because you are not extroverted. Despite the popular perception that vocal, outwardly confident people are more successful in a business world that seems to place a premium on appearance and confidence, less extroverted individuals can thrive.

"If you look at companies and you look at the management team, a lot of the managers have been shy," Henderson says. "The reason they get to be managers is that people find them effective and want to work for them. A shy person can find role models in any company. One of the beliefs of the person who's shy is that the biggest bully wins. The biggest bully doesn't [win]. There are a lot of excellent managers and a lot of excellent chief executive officers who aren't getting recognition - because they don't care about it. They care about doing their job."

The challenge for companies is to identify and nurture those who do not fit the stereotype of a confident, assertive professional. Ros Coffey, a New York-based global human resources director for a top Wall Street investment bank, says that means not taking people entirely on face value, whether they are overly confident or meek.

"If someone's quiet it could be due to one of several factors: they could be shy, they could be introverted, they might not be knowledgeable, they may be nervous, or maybe they're just not talkative," Coffey says.

"It's absolutely critical that someone's personality or self-presentation is interpreted appropriately. And the impact of a person's outward demeanour depends very much on the type of role you're looking to hire someone for. It's very easy to assume that if someone is quieter they must be more technically inclined. Or to assume that if they're quiet they won't be good at managing a team. People make these sorts of assumptions, and while sometimes these things are true, often they're not. It's impossible to use a broad-brush approach."

However, psychologists agree that shy people need to address the issue. Zimbardo says it is expected that "employees are socially competent, socially adept". Many institutions use Henderson's "social fitness model", which helps shy people attain a level of social fitness - the ability to adequately interact to a point where you are not being negatively affected by shyness.

Says Henderson: "We're changing them from seeing themselves as a shy person to seeing themselves as someone, maybe, with a sensitive temperament, an introverted temperament. That's why I talk about a 'social workout': you wouldn't say if you're out of shape that you have a disease, and you don't have a disease if you're shy. There are many ways to work out socially."

There are some basics. Smile. Make eye contact. Look for common interests to stimulate conversation. Be comfortable giving compliments and receiving them. Make your work visible by drawing people's attention to it, not aggressively but assertively. Collaborate with co-workers and learn to make small talk. Rather than eating lunch at your desk, get out and eat with others. If you have a problem, speak up but talk it through with yourself first. If you're scared of speaking in meetings, practise at home in front of the mirror. And when you find yourself having negative thoughts, challenge them - why would you think that?

"The only thing that kills the shy person in the work environment is isolation and avoidance," Henderson says. "Do not let it go on."

Much of the work of The Shyness Clinic involves changing the way people present themselves, because that dictates how others treat them. "Rather than thinking of shyness as something you're stuck with, there are lots and lots of things you can do in a particular situation," Zimbardo says. "It's how you present yourself and not allowing other people to put a negative label on you."

Published by AFR BOSS, October 14, 2005.