Inge Aben, Co-Applicant, University of the West of England

Project Title

Silence is Golden – Learning from Introversion to Broaden Teaching and Learning Experiences in Management and Business

Names of Principal Applicant and Co-Applicants (please also include the names of the institutions and email addresses)

Dr. Eda Ulus – Principal Applicant, University of Leicester Inge Aben, Co-Applicant, University of the West of England

Introduction

This project was the culmination of a number of conversations and the authors’ experiences and observations about introversion in a variety of learning and management contexts. The authors became increasingly interested in the concept of introversion, particularly the lived experiences of it in higher education learning and training settings. As a result of support from The British Academy of Management, we were able to explore our interests, with the aim of analysing the data for both teaching pedagogy and management practice.

When we started sharing our grant work through internal and external channels, we were struck by the energetic interest in our topic, beyond our initial focus on teaching and learning spaces. A number of practitioners wished to share their experiences of introversion, including misperceptions of this concept and disadvantages encountered in settings favouring extraverted characteristics. We were pleased to conduct interviews with students, educators, and management practitioners, learning from their conceptualisations of introversion and implications for teaching, learning, and working.

As we progressed in our research, we learned that further cross-cultural research on meanings and nuances of introversion would help to expand our analysis. We will build upon the support from The British Academy of Management by bidding for future large-scale grants, to explore these topics in a range of countries, and to study in more depth the themes that are emerging from our research. These themes include: the influence of social, historical and cultural context upon introversion; qualitative meanings of introversion; the interpretation of introversion by others; and links of introversion to other concepts such as masculinity in higher education. We found the connection between introversion and masculinity to be important not only in higher education, but also in a number of organisational spaces, with significant implications for management practice.

Report of Activities

We administered qualitative, open-ended surveys to undergraduate students and conducted open- ended interviews with undergraduate, postgraduate, and Executive Education students. We also conducted interviews with academics and practitioners. We began analysing these interviews thematically and were invited by Farscape in Bristol to feedback our preliminary analyses. We met with them in early April, and they were interested in our findings.

We will continue to analyse the surveys and interviews to develop our paper for BAM 2015 and to write manuscripts for journal submission. We will also start exploring cross-cultural similarities and differences in introversion, based on interviews conducted in the US, UK and later in the Netherlands. Our public engagement includes an invitation by the UWE Social Media manager to do a Facebook Q&A, which is currently being designed. The manager, Mr. Tatnall, said that press releases about our BAM grant work, such as a LinkedIn and Twitter post, generated more than usual enthusiasm on a research post, and he was interested in our participation in this social media project. We are planning on a September date, so that we will be able to generate publicity and gather members to visit the Facebook post about our introversion research. We will mention this Facebook event at BAM after we present our paper, for participants who may be interested in continuing the discussion.

Our results have importance for a variety of learning and management practices, including:  Higher education teacher training, such as increasing inclusivity by valuing introverted learning preferences. Professor Macfarlane has written recently in The Times Higher Education about introversion and learning, and we can build upon our work by connecting to him and other colleagues with interests in this area.  Higher education hiring processes, as we learned that some committees hire based on extraverted assumptions of what constitutes good teaching (i.e., making everyone speak), whereas our findings challenge these views and can broaden good practice  Perceptions of introversion in classrooms and meetings, as our data provides ways to challenge negative evaluations of what constitutes introversion in these spaces  Interviewing practices of new employees, as current interview methods disadvantage introverted preferences for reflecting before speaking out  Providing a balance of extraversion and introversion, so that both sets of preferences can learn from and support one another  Challenging conceptions of good leadership and effective employees, when these judgments are based on extraverted characteristics

Planned Activities for the Future We are excited about how much excitement and curiosity has resulted from our project, and we have a number of plans for the future, made possible by building upon this BAM supported project. These plans include:

 Further qualitative empirical work about the meanings and manifestations of introversion in a variety of settings. This work could take the form of more open-ended interviews in different international locations and a variety of businesses, and possibly participant observation or ethnographic approaches in these settings. The second author in particular is interested in exploring meanings of ‘silence in the boardroom’.

 Future funding applications to support our planned further empirical work. Possible sources that we may target are the ESRC, the British Academy/Leverhulme schemes, and the Society for the Advancement of Management Studies, as well as opportunities from Teaching and Learning funding bodies. Large scale funding would help to support international travel for field work, conference attendance, administrative assistance, transcription costs, and seminars to feedback results.

 Engagement with social media platforms about our results and findings, such as Twitter, Facebook Q&A, and blogging about our findings for future exploration.

Were the Research Aims and Objectives met? Yes, we were pleased to conduct research and begin analysing the findings, and in some ways our expectations were exceeded, in the wide variety of interested individuals who contacted us, and in public response to the importance of our work.

Analysis of Methods We are analysing the interview data and survey data through identification of themes, recording them on a spreadsheet along with associated quotes, and reviewing them repeatedly for analytic potential with regard to theoretical frameworks to help explain our results. For instance, the themes of Othering of introversion, and issues around diversity and inclusion/exclusion, are emerging strongly from the data. In extracting themes, we are listening to the transcripts as well as reading them, following the points made in methods publications about the added nonverbal data from listening that helps to give meaning to the words in response to the interview questions. Our analysis is entirely qualitative, one of our contributions to the academic literature with implications for teaching pedagogy and management practice. We are also focussing on the sharing of stories in relation to experiences of introversion, and applying narrative methods to make sense of these stories.

Analysis of Results We have extracted a number of themes from the data analysis, including the following:

 The Othering process of introversion – introversion perceived as different, as inferior, as even an illness, as something ‘not right’ – we are planning on theorising these findings with psychodynamic theories, and to discuss how these perceptions may be challenged, for the benefit of supporting introverted preferences in learning and working.  Introversion as important to one’s sense of self  Historical roots, and societal/ global trends influencing the imbalance of extraversion and introversion in how they are perceived and valued  Advantages and limitations of introverted preferences, as conceptualised by those identifying with introversion  Silence as a key feature of introversion particularly in learning settings, and specific recommendations about how to teach a mix of extraverted and introverted preferences, in particular to counter learning spaces currently geared towards performative qualities of extraverted preferences

Overall, our results provide a number of contributions to the academic literature, by providing voice to meanings of introversion, as discussed by those identifying with introversion, in contrast to published research with judgments about introversion on the basis of popular understanding or psychometric testing. Our work also illustrates the complexity of introversion, as discussed by participants in our research who identified with extraversion and/or introversion. For instance, some associated introversion with a central part of their self-understanding, while others discussed the importance of context in enacting extraverted and/or introverted preferences.

Impact of Research to the wider business and management academic community We are happy to report that our analyses provide a number of recommendations for the wider business and management academic community from our study. We have data about biases about introversion that may begin as early as childhood, and continue into adult working spaces. By making links within and between interviews and surveys, we will analyse how negative judgments about introverted behaviours in learning (such as choosing to remain silent and listen and absorb, or choosing to reflect in a classroom or group exercise before speaking out immediately), may persist into work places.

For instance, hiring decisions, interview processes, promotion practices, and performance appraisal are all crucial management considerations which benefit from our research about introversion. Talent management may be adversely affected when great employee potential is lost through assumptions that introversion cannot lead to good leadership, or that one must perform by being on display, and so on, as interviewees indicated to us their competence in ways not associated with extraverted practice. We plan to broaden our impact by publishing our results both in practitioner journals, and in academic journals, such as The British Journal of Management.

Further research opportunities the project has highlighted Connections of extraversion to masculinity

More detailed analyses of the contextual influences upon enacting introverted or extraverted preferences

Cross-cultural dynamics of introversion

Silence in learning, teaching and management

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