Anne O’Leary, the CEO of Vodafone Ireland, joined Stuart Lancaster on Leader’s Questions and touched on how introverts can assume leadership roles.
An introverted person is someone who tends to be more concerned with internal thoughts, feelings and moods rather than seeking out external stimulation.
They tend to be less outspoken than extroverted people, who concern themselves with external stimulation more and would tend to be more socially confident.
The Leinster Senior Coach wondered whether being more introverted would hurt people’s chances of becoming a leader and that it was something he felt was important when coaching players.
“We’ve got a lot of lads at Leinster who would be pretty quiet really. Pretty quiet, quite reserved and more on the introverted scale than on the extroverted.
“I say to them, ‘Obviously, you are who you are but in order for you to be successful at this rugby team, we need you to take this step.
“We need you to be a little bit more outgoing and to communicate a bit more, to ask questions in meetings, to talk on the field and to make decisions,” Lancaster said.
The Vodafone CEO was confident however that being introverted should not rule people out of becoming leaders, although did say it could make it more difficult.
“In teams diversity is key. All types of diversity. So you know you need introverts and extroverts and you need different types of personalities.
“I always say that in Vodafone. Our team needs to reflect our customer base. So I think, look people have their strengths and their development needs.
“If you have introverts and they want to become leaders they probably have to work a little harder on getting their voice heard,” O’Leary said.
Cultivating leaders at Leinster
The former England head coach has put plenty of emphasis on cultivating young players for leadership after taking an interest in how to become a better leader himself.
“I did a psychometric profile of myself. It was through a leadership coaching course. I did that, I think, at 28 years old.
“I probably knew instinctively what my strengths and weaknesses were but actually, this gave me the evidence behind it. So I try to do it a lot earlier than I did it with the players at Leinster.
“So the younger players now, okay let’s try to understand what kind of person you are and raise your self-awareness about who you are and let’s try to grow you as a leader.
“So that then by 25, 26 or 27 they’ll be leading rather than 32, 33 or 34,” Lancaster explained.
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