The hidden power of introverts: How to thrive without changing who you are | Susan Cain (author of "Quiet")

**Susan Cain** (0:00)
I see introversion and extroversion in general as just two different kinds of strengths. The problem in our culture is just that we emphasize one type of strength, the extroverted strength, usually more than we do the introverted strength, but that they're equally valuable.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:13)
There's probably not this binary thing, you're introvert, extrovert, it's a spectrum of introvertedness, extrovertedness. Do people move along the spectrum often? I feel like I've definitely become more extroverted over time.

**Susan Cain** (0:23)
I've had the exact same trajectory you just described. I used to be terrified of public speaking, now I do it all the time, I used to be quite shy. But that's not really describing, I don't believe, becoming more extroverted. That's more describing acquiring skills. As we grow and gain experience, we acquire all kinds of skills.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:43)
What people most want is just like, how do I become potentially more extroverted slash less allow introvertedness to hurt me in my career?

**Susan Cain** (0:49)
This is a paradox that I have observed, that the more introverts become deeply comfortable in their own skin, that's when they start to show up at the job interview or on the stage in a more powerful way because you're now there as your own true being as opposed to there always being a voice in your head saying, I'm not really supposed to be me.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (1:11)
How can you help people believe this is actually true, that you can be just as successful being very true to yourself versus learning to be an extrovert?

**Susan Cain** (1:17)
One of the most important things you can do.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (1:23)
Today, my guest is Susan Cain. Susan is the author of the number one New York Times bestseller, Quiet, The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. Her books have been translated into 40 languages, her TED Talks have been viewed over 50 million times, and she basically made me and every other introvert in the world feel okay about being an introvert, and showed that actually embracing that about yourself can unlock a ton of opportunity and success in your life. In our conversation, Susan shares a ton of very tangible advice for how to be more successful in business as an introvert, including what skills you should actually be building that don't come naturally to you, also what actually is an introvert, how to raise kids who might be introverted, and so much more. This was such a wonderful conversation, and so much of it resonated with me. This episode is for anyone who considers themselves an introvert, or if you work with people who are introverts and you want to learn how to help them thrive. If you enjoy this podcast, don't forget to subscribe and follow it in your favorite podcasting app or YouTube, it's the best way to avoid missing future episodes, and it helps the podcast tremendously. With that, I bring you Susan Cain. This episode is brought to you by Interpret. Interpret unifies all your customer interactions, from gong calls to Zendesk tickets to Twitter threads to App Store reviews, and makes it available for analysis. It's trusted by leading product orgs like Canva, Notion, Loom, Linear, monday.com and Strava to bring the voice of the customer into the product development process, helping you build best-in-class products faster. What makes Interpret special is its ability to build and update customer-specific AI models that provide the most granular and accurate insights into your business, connect customer insights to revenue and operational data in your CRM or data warehouse to map the business impact of each customer need and prioritize confidently, and empower your entire team to easily take action on use cases like win-loss analysis, critical bug detection, and identifying drivers of churn with Interpret's AI assistant, Wisdom. Looking to automate your feedback loops and prioritize your roadmap with confidence like Notion, Canva, and Linear? Visit enterpret.com/lenny to connect with the team and get two free months when you sign up for an annual plan. This is a limited-time offer that's interpret.com/lenny. This episode is brought to you by Vanta, and I am very excited to have Cristina Casioppo, CEO and co-founder of Vanta, joining me for this very short conversation.

**Cristina Casioppo** (3:48)
Great to be here. Big fan of the podcast and the newsletter.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (3:51)
Vanta is a longtime sponsor of the show, but for some of our newer listeners, what does Vanta do and who is it for?

**Cristina Casioppo** (3:58)
Sure. We started Vanta in 2018 focused on founders, helping them start to build out their security programs and get credit for all of that hard security work with compliance certifications like SOC 2 or ISO 2701 Today, we currently help over 9,000 companies, including some startup household names like Atlassian, Ramp and Langchain, start and scale their security programs and ultimately build trust by automating compliance, centralizing GRC and accelerating security reviews.