Hello friends,

Today I'm doing something slightly terrifying. In a few hours, I'll be sitting in front of a room full of journalists at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia - one of Europe's biggest media conferences - to talk about being an introvert (the irony is not lost on me).

I’ve been coming to IJF for 15 years. For the vast majority, I did what I suspect a lot of introverts do at big professional gatherings: I performed. I went to everything. I stayed out a bit too long. I came home empty and called it a networking success.

Last year I finally stopped all that, made peace with being an introvert, released myself from the burden of needing to be everything to everyone all at once, and had a better conference for it.

Which got me thinking about us as leaders, about our organisations, and the quiet, costly mistake so many of us make regarding introverts…

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❓WHAT IS IT ❓

Let's start with what introversion actually is, because the popular version - "I find people draining" - is more vibes than definition.

A more rigorous framing comes from Hans Eysenck's work in the 1950s and 60s (all links below, source fans!). Eysenck proposed that introverts and extroverts differ in their baseline cortical arousal, that is: the background hum of activation in the brain's reticular formation, which affects wakefulness, heart rate, and vigilance. Introverts run hotter to begin with, basically. They need less external stimulation to feel alert and engaged. Extroverts however, starting at a lower baseline, seek stimulation to bring themselves up through socialising, novelty, and general busyness.

This explains the festival experience rather neatly. For an introvert, a busy conference hall with multiple overlapping conversations, ambient noise, and unfamiliar faces is major load on a system already ticking over.

There's a neurotransmitter angle too. Extroverts are potentially less sensitive to dopamine, so they seek more of it; introverts respond more strongly to acetylcholine, associated with calm focus and inward attention. Reading, concentrating, thinking deeply - these produce a satisfying reward that extroverts register less.

None of this makes introversion a problem of course. What makes it a problem is the environment we keep putting introverts in.

⚙️ HOW IT WORKS ⚙️

Arts organisations and newsrooms (and I say this with love, having spent most of my career in one or the other) are structurally built for extroverts.

The open-plan office rewards visible busyness. The brainstorm privileges whoever speaks first and loudest. The networking event treats participation as performance. Energy becomes a proxy for contribution, which means the person who processes slowly, writes better than they speak (hello!), or needs a moment before they respond… well... they look, systemically, like they're not quite pulling their weight.

This is an architecture problem, imho. The introvert who keeps getting passed over for leadership isn't failing but rather the pipeline for identifying leadership potential is. Your team member who doesn't shine in the room but sends the most incisive email you've ever read isn't underperforming; your feedback structure is.

The cost isn't just to the individual. When introverts learn that performing extroversion is the price of admission, they pay that price until the burn rate becomes unsustainable. Then they go quiet, leave, burn out…

(FWIW: tech companies in my experience tend to have more written culture, more async communication, more tolerance for the person who says nothing in the meeting and it turns out to be potentially more introvert-friendly).

🖼️ THE REFRAME 🖼️

So, here's the reframe I want to offer: designing for introversion isn't a kindness to a minority. It's an upgrade for everyone.

When you build in time for people to think before they speak, you get better ideas from more people. When you create written channels that are as valued as spoken ones, you surface perspectives that were always there but never had a viable route in. When you stop equating presence and volume with competence, you start actually seeing your team.

I reckon introvert-friendly design is good design, full stop. Agendas sent in advance; smaller meetings where possible; time to prepare before high-stakes conversations; space for people to contribute in writing, not just in rooms. These aren't woke accommodations, they're the conditions under which most people think more clearly. To my mind, organisations that are serious about psychological safety are, whether they know it or not, already trying to do this. And that's a good thing, people!

📅 TRY IT THIS WEEK 📅

If you lead an organisation and want to make it more introvert-friendly:

Audit who speaks in your meetings and who doesn't.

Take one recurring meeting this week and notice, without intervention, who contributes verbally and who doesn't. Then send the next agenda 24 hours in advance and explicitly invite written input before the meeting begins. See what surfaces that wasn't surfacing before.

Create a written space that's treated as equal to the spoken one.

If the only way to contribute meaningfully in your organisation is to say something in a room or Zoom call, you've already excluded a significant portion of your team's thinking. Pick one process - a strategy conversation, a project retrospective, a funding decision - and build in a written input stage before anyone talks.

Rewrite one job description or person spec.

Most of them, if you look closely, describe extrovert behaviours as requirements: "excellent communicator," "confident presenter," "thrives in a fast-paced environment." Ask yourself which of those are genuinely necessary and which are just... how you've always done it. Replace one piece of extrovert-coded language with something that describes the actual skill you need.

If you're an introvert trying to lead / survive in an organisation:

Design your own pre- and post-event rituals.

Before a big meeting, conference, or high-stakes conversation, write down what you actually want to get out of it: one idea, one connection, one decision. Give yourself permission to leave (physically or mentally!) when you have it. Afterwards, give yourself genuine recovery time.

Find your written voice and use it deliberately.

If you're clearer on paper than in a room, stop apologising for that and start working with it. Send sketches of your thinking beforehand. Follow up every significant meeting with a short written summary of your perspective.

Stop performing extroversion in job interviews and performance reviews

The introvert's biggest professional trap is trying to present as someone they're not in high-stakes moments, and then wondering why they're exhausted and unconvincing. Instead: prepare more specifically. Rehearse not to perform, but to reduce the cognitive load in the room so your actual self has space to show up.

📖 FURTHER READING 📖

If you want to go deeper on the science:

• Eysenck's arousal theory, reviewed: Hans Eysenck's interface between the brain and personality — ScienceDirect, 2016

• The dopamine/extroversion study: Brain chemistry plays role in extroverts — Cornell Chronicle, 2013

• Grey matter and the prefrontal cortex: Are the brains of introverts and extroverts actually different? — Discover Magazine

• The evolutionary case: The power of introverts — Scientific American, Susan Cain interview

And if you want one book that pulls it all together: Susan Cain's Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Won't Stop Talking is still the definitive text.

🌊 WAVE GOODBYE 🌊

The quiet scout at the networking event. The person sending the incisive email the day after at 9am. The leader who prepares more carefully precisely because a Teams call costs them more energy than other folks.

For many of us, these people are already in our organisations or collectives or friendship circles. Designing for introversion just means finally building a space they can thrive in (and discovering, probably, that everyone else does too).

And I'm here for it.

If you want to talk about any of this in person - and you happen to be at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia today (Thursday 16th April 2026) - come find me, Steffi Dobmeier, Ellen Heinrichs and Shirish Kulkarni for our panel on just this topic at 10:30am in Sala delle Colonne, Palazzo Graziani.

Or write us an email afterwards. ;)

Take care,

Adam

p.s. If you were forwarded this, welcome! You can subscribe over at my website.

p.p.s If you've been here for a while, thank you too! If you'd like to support my work in any of its many forms, you can tip me and I will make a happy little buzzer sound.

You might also like...

... this video about how I survived Europe's biggest media conference last year, or this video about why your lack of focus is a secret gift.

Or check out a little app I built that audits your mission and vision against eight essential building blocks that I’ve spotted during decades of work (and having read 1000s of these damn things). Then it rewrites the whole caboodle in plain, human language you'll actually want to put on your website. It's in beta; feedback is very welcome.

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