The Shadow Side of Introvert Strengths
Each ability characteristic of introverts has an extreme where a personality strength turns into a weakness.
At college, an art history professor lecturing on Twentieth Century Art took my breath away when he proclaimed, “Picasso’s problem was that he had too much talent.” His pronouncement rang in my head like a sentence that wasn’t quite English. How could someone have “too much talent”? Wasn’t talent, in any quantity, necessarily a good thing?
Reconsidering the professor’s comment now, I believe he meant that Picasso had a hard time settling on a style that expressed his aesthetic ideas because drawing and painting were as easy as walking for him. At an exceptionally young age he had already mastered the techniques of the greats who preceded him. Indeed, Picasso himself once lamented, “I never drew like a child. When I was 12, I drew like Raphael.” Artists with less inborn talent might have had to put more thought and effort into their artistic growth and development.
In this light, when I revisited the five personality strengths of introverts that I have written about in Introvert UpThink, I was able to identify ways in which, like the “too much talent,” those advantages can turn into drawbacks when they are taken to extremes. Perhaps this exercise shows the wisdom in what Aristotle stated more than 2000 years ago: “It will clearly be best to possess the gifts of fortune in moderation.”
1. Creativity. Although many of us pursue and celebrate creativity, an excess amount of it, not balanced by practicality, can bring about self-indulgence, reality distortions, lack of focus, and misalignment with other people. When I taught workshops on creativity years ago, some participants complained that they rarely finished things because their imaginations would always be flitting on to the next exciting idea. Consider also star scientist Barbara McClintock, who was so brilliant at thinking her way into the world of the plants she studied that she had a hard time communicating her discoveries to other scientists.
2. Listening. Great listeners enable those who talk with them to feel very deeply heard. But they run the risk of getting overwhelmed by others’ troubles. When taken to an extreme, serving as a sounding board for negativity can not only lead to exhaustion and burnout, but also depress the listener’s own mood. Self-care, boundaries and limits are essential to prevent an excellent listener from tumbling into overload.
3. Trustworthiness. Introverts in business often inspire confidence because they place more attention on getting the job done well than on schmoozing with clients or superiors. However, their outsized reliability can become a disadvantage by encouraging unrealistic or inappropriate expectations in others’ minds.
4. Keeping secrets. A person who will never reveal confidences entrusted to them is often referred to as “a tomb.” Functioning too much as a living dead-letter office can become an emotional burden, creating awkward situations, anxieties and serious moral dilemmas. Like the excellent listener and the extremely trustworthy person, a secret-keeping pro can unwittingly get drawn into and badly entangled in other people’s dramas.
5. Independence. Too much self-reliance can of course turn into isolation. Extremely independent people often overlook opportunities to benefit from collaboration, delegation and mutual help. From the perspective of people who are more integrated in society, the loner may unfairly come off as misanthropic, aloof, arrogant or lacking compassion. A noted example of independence turning into a weakness might be engineer Nikola Tesla, who once defended self-sufficiency in this way: “One’s salvation could only be brought about through his own efforts.” Unlike his great rival Thomas Edison, the ultra-independent Tesla did not successfully ally himself with others to implement his inventions, and he died in poverty.
Related posts
Introvert Superpower #1: Creativity
Introvert Superpower #2: Listening
Introvert Superpower #3: Trustworthiness