Сьюзан Кейн - Quiet [The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking]

“I’m going to dinner with a friend,” replied Raj, looking fixedly at Ni, his voice barely audible, “and then perhaps tomorrow I’ll go hiking.”

Professor Ni asked him to try it again.

“I’m going to dinner with a friend,” said Raj, “and then, mumble, mumble, mumble , I’ll go hiking.”

“My impression of you,” Professor Ni told Raj gently, “is that I can give you a lot of work to do, but I don’t have to pay much attention to you. Remember, in Silicon Valley, you can be the smartest, most capable person, but if you can’t express yourself aside from showing your work, you’ll be underappreciated. Many foreign-born professionals experience this; you’re a glorified laborer instead of a leader.”

The class nodded sympathetically.

“But there’s a way to be yourself,” continued Ni, “and to let more of you come out through your voice. Many Asians use only a narrow set of muscles when they speak. So we’ll start with breathing.”

With that, he directed Raj to lie on his back and vocalize the five American English vowels. “A … E … U … O … I …” intoned Raj, his voice floating up from the classroom floor. “A … E … U … O … I … A … E … U … O … I …”

Finally Professor Ni deemed Raj ready to stand up again.

“Now, what interesting things do you have planned for after class?” he asked, clapping his hands encouragingly.

“Tonight I’m going to a friend’s place for dinner, and tomorrow I’m going hiking with another friend.” Raj’s voice was louder than before, and the class applauded with gusto.

The professor himself is a role model for what can happen when you work at it. After class, I visited him in his office, and he told me how shy he’d been when he first came to the United States—how he put himself in situations, like summer camp and business school, where he could practice acting extroverted until it came more naturally. These days he has a successful consulting practice, with clients that include Yahoo!, Visa, and Microsoft, teaching some of the same skills he labored to acquire himself.

But when we began talking about Asian concepts of “soft power”—what Ni calls leadership “by water rather than by fire”—I started to see a side of him that was less impressed by Western styles of communication. “In Asian cultures,” Ni said, “there’s often a subtle way to get what you want. It’s not always aggressive, but it can be very determined and very skillful. In the end, much is achieved because of it. Aggressive power beats you up; soft power wins you over.”

I asked the professor for real-life examples of soft power, and his eyes shone as he told me of clients whose strength lay in their ideas and heart. Many of these people were organizers of employee groups—women’s groups, diversity groups—who had managed to rally people to their cause through conviction rather than dynamism. He also talked about groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving—clusters of people who change lives through the power not of their charisma but of their caring. Their communication skills are sufficient to convey their message, but their real strength comes from substance.

“In the long run,” said Ni, “if the idea is good, people shift. If the cause is just and you put heart into it, it’s almost a universal law: you will attract people who want to share your cause. Soft power is quiet persistence. The people I’m thinking of are very persistent in their day-to-day, person-to-person interactions. Eventually they build up a team.” Soft power, said Ni, was wielded by people we’ve admired throughout history: Mother Teresa, the Buddha, Gandhi.

I was struck when Ni mentioned Gandhi. I had asked almost all the Cupertino high school students I met to name a leader they admired, and many had named Gandhi. What was it about him that inspired them so?

Gandhi was, according to his autobiography, a constitutionally shy and quiet man. As a child, he was afraid of everything: thieves, ghosts, snakes, the dark, and especially other people. He buried himself in books and ran home from school as soon as it was over, for fear of having to talk to anybody. Even as a young man, when he was elected to his first leadership position as a member of the Executive Committee of the Vegetarian Society, he attended every meeting, but was too shy to speak.

“You talk to me quite all right,” one of the members asked him, confused, “but why is it that you never open your lips at a committee meeting? You are a drone.” When a political struggle occurred on the committee, Gandhi had firm opinions, but was too scared to voice them. He wrote his thoughts down, intending to read them aloud at a meeting. But in the end he was too cowed even to do that.

Gandhi learned over time to manage his shyness, but he never really overcame it. He couldn’t speak extemporaneously; he avoided making speeches whenever possible. Even in his later years, he wrote, “I do not think I could or would even be inclined to keep a meeting of friends engaged in talk.”

But with his shyness came his unique brand of strength—a form of restraint best understood by examining little known corners of Gandhi’s life story. As a young man he decided to travel to England to study law, against the wishes of the leaders of his Modhi Bania subcaste. Caste members were forbidden to eat meat, and the leaders believed that vegetarianism was impossible in England. But Gandhi had already vowed to his beloved mother to abstain from meat, so he saw no danger in the trip. He said as much to the Sheth, the headman of the community.

“Will you disregard the orders of the caste?” demanded the Sheth.

“I am really helpless,” replied Gandhi. “I think the caste should not interfere in the matter.”

Boom! He was excommunicated—a judgment that remained in force even when he returned from England several years later with the promise of success that attended a young, English-speaking lawyer. The community was divided over how to handle him. One camp embraced him; the other cast him out. This meant that Gandhi was not allowed even to eat or drink at the homes of fellow subcaste members, including his own sister and his mother- and father-in-law.

Another man, Gandhi knew, would protest for readmission. But he couldn’t see the point. He knew that fighting would only generate retaliation. Instead he followed the Sheth’s wishes and kept at a distance, even from his own family. His sister and in-laws were prepared to host him at their homes in secret, but he turned them down.

The result of this compliance? The subcaste not only stopped bothering him, but its members—including those who had excommunicated him—helped in his later political work, without expecting anything in return. They treated him with affection and generosity. “It is my conviction,” Gandhi wrote later, “that all these good things are due to my non-resistance. Had I agitated for being admitted to the caste, had I attempted to divide it into more camps, had I provoked the castemen, they would surely have retaliated, and instead of steering clear of the storm, I should, on arrival from England, have found myself in a whirlpool of agitation.”

This pattern—the decision to accept what another man would challenge—occurred again and again in Gandhi’s life. As a young lawyer in South Africa, he applied for admission to the local bar. The Law Society didn’t want Indian members, and tried to thwart his application by requiring an original copy of a certificate that was on file in the Bombay High Court and therefore inaccessible. Gandhi was enraged; he knew well that the true reason for these barriers was discrimination. But he didn’t let his feelings show. Instead he negotiated patiently, until the Law Society agreed to accept an affidavit from a local dignitary.