Introverts have been sidelined culturally and economically as extroverts grab all the attention, argues author Susan Cain, who is quietly redressing the balance. By

Laura M Holson

And it is at least partly because of her efforts that the Huffington Post, Buzzfeed and the like are now teeming with personality quizzes and posts like Can You Survive This Party as an Introvert? and 26 Cat Reactions Every Introvert Will Understand.

“Now people think it’s cool to be an introvert,” says Amy JC Cuddy, a social psychologist and associate professor at Harvard Business School, adding that at least half her students tell her they have read Cain’s book. “I love that the students are no longer ashamed,” she says.

One may have expected Cain to follow up with another book, and indeed she considered it, but she changed her mind after seeking advice from Seth Godin, a bestselling author who chronicles social movements.

“Writing a book is rewarding,” Godin says he told her. “But it doesn’t change most people’s lives.”

And so Cain is now promoting Quiet Revolution, a for-profit company she has started that is focused on the work, education and lifestyle of introverts, which she defines roughly as people who get their psychic energy from quiet reflection and solitude (not to be confused with people who are shy and become anxious in unfamiliar social situations). Extroverts, by contrast, thrive in crowds and have long been prized in society for their ability to command attention. Many people share attributes of both, she says.

Cain and Paul Scibetta, a former senior executive at JP Morgan Chase whom she met when they both worked at the law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton in the 1990s, have set up a Quiet Leadership Institute, working with executives at organisations such as NASA, Procter & Gamble and General Electric to help them better understand the strengths of their introverted employees.

They are developing an online education course for parents and have begun to introduce a series of other programmes: a co-branded lifestyle section on the Huffington Post overseen by Quiet Revolution staff members (of which there are 13 thus far), a podcast, a website to support a community that includes writers and advocates called Quiet Revolutionaries, and a line of young-adult books and shows whose heroines are quiet leaders.

The company is based at Quiet House, a Victorian house with a view of the Hudson River near Nyack, New York. The employees there observe “quiet mornings”: no meetings before 12:30pm and none on Fridays. The dining room is a shared work space. Scibetta works in an upstairs bedroom, where he set up a whiteboard in front of a fireplace. Across the hall is Michael Glass, the creative director, formerly the director of TED Talks.

Cain sensed her own introversion early on. “I’ve been aware of it since I was four, even though I didn’t have a language for it,”

Susan Cain, main; a meeting with Quiet Revolution staff members at the company’s headquarters Quiet House, below