Longing Is the Source of All Our Moonshots, and All Our Love

A podcast conversation with Susan Cain, author of Quiet and Bittersweet

You can listen to the podcast conversation here

 

Tim Leberecht

Hi, my name is Tim Leberecht. My guest today is Susan Cain, and Susan certainly qualifies as a Master of Business Arts. Susan is an author, entrepreneur and public speaker. Her 2012 book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking, and her subsequent TED talk on that topic made her literally an overnight sensation. Her book became an international bestseller, and her TED talk has now been viewed more than 20 million times and counts as one of the most popular TED talks of all time. With Quiet, Susan gave millions of people the signs, the language and the encouragement to not only feel good about being an introvert, but also recognize the value of introversion in themselves and in others. In 2016, Susan published Quiet Power, a follow-on to her first book focused on introverted children and teens. She also founded her own company, Quiet Revolution, and the Quiet Leadership Institute to take her ideas to leaders and organizations in the form of publications, training programmes or products, such as office spaces catering to introverts at the workplace. For this podcast recording, I met Susan on the sidelines of TED summit in Edinburgh, where she, seven years after her first breakthrough TED Talk, gave a new TED talk on longing, inspired by the book that she currently is writing on that very topic. From Quiet to longing there was a lot to talk about for us. And in our conversation we spoke about why sad music is so powerful, her love for Leonard Cohen, why she doesn't always feel the urge to meet in person artists she adores, and tennis. With that, here is Susan Cain.

Tim Leberecht

Susan, it’s such a pleasure to be here with you today. Thank you very much for your time.

Susan Cain

Oh, sure. It's so great to be here with you. I have always felt that you were a kindred spirit, from the moment I first heard about your work, which was I don't know how many years ago! I think you wrote to me, right? Years ago, when you first were coming out with your book. And you know, just from the moment I heard the title, I knew that you were a kindred spirit. So I love what you do.

Tim Leberecht

Thank you very much, that's quite flattering. So we're here, we're both part of the TED community, the TED summit in Edinburgh. And I really appreciate you giving us the time, because it’s an important day for you. It's the day after you just went on stage last night to give a new TED Talk seven years after your first TED talk, Quiet: The Power of Introverts, which, of course, was a massive breakthrough, a huge hit, one of the most popular TED talks of all time. And now3 you're back. So how did it feel to be back on the TED stage? And were you as intimidated as you were the first time?

Susan Cain

So it still felt really exciting in an infinite kind of way: even during the six weeks or so leading up to the talk, in terms of my work life, I did almost nothing but prepare for the talk. I just dedicated everything to it. I don't know why, there's something about these talks that have the potential to have so much power that it feels worth really investing a lot in it. But the first time I gave a talk here, I was so crazily nervous about it, because I wasn't really a public speaker at that point. Now I have this crazy career as a public speaker. So I no longer had any nerves about just the fact of appearing before people, that part was absolutely fine. The only part that was really nerve-wrecking was that this was brand new material for me. And I was telling you this before, there was no confidence monitor of any kind. So I was just sort of really focused on making sure I would remember everything I had to say. And that was the only tricky part.

Tim Leberecht

Yeah, it was a beautiful talk. We'll come back to that. But first let's come back to the first talk seven years ago, which really was the beginning of a remarkable career, and the movement, and the platform—in fact you kind of invented a whole new category by really giving introverts language, right, and the power to find their places, especially in the workplace. Actually I was googling you, and I was awed by the amount of coverage that you and the book are still getting. Like, every day, there's an article about Quiet, it's unbelievable seven years later. So The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking — it's ironic, because it's almost like the world cannot stop talking about your book. It seems obsessed with Quiet! So looking back at the past few years, let's take stock, like what has the impact been that the book has had on the workplace and on society? I know you've partnered with Steelcase, the furniture company, to create furniture for introverts at the workplace. What other company initiatives have you seen, and would you say that the world has indeed become a place that has a deeper appreciation for the value and the power of introverts?

Susan Cain

I would say that we're getting there. And I see the changes in all kinds of subtle but powerful ways in the workplace. So just as an example, one friend is a Harvard Business School professor. And she tells me that whenever she used to introduce her leadership students to personality types, and they would come to the introvert/extrovert section of the test, nobody would ever admit to being an introvert. It was like she apparently had classes that were composed of 100% extroverts. And she said now when she runs those tests, half the class proudly admits to being an introvert. So that's just one lens into how I think the business world is starting to shift. And then lots of companies invite me in to speak or to consult. And they're doing it from many different perspectives, but a really interesting one is that it's now part of the language of diversity and inclusion. So it's like there's race, and gender, and nationality, and so on—and there's also personality and temperament, and especially introversion and extroversion. I think people really are starting to get that. And then companies started incorporating it in all different ways. Some of them build little websites around it, and encourage their team members to talk about it, and incorporate exercises that I share with them. So it's exciting!

Tim Leberecht

So we're headed in the right direction? Do you see this sort of continuing? If you look at all the social media frenzy, you could also argue the world has become even chattier, right? And if you look at the sound design of restaurants, people are trying to squeeze more people into, you know, smaller amounts of spaces. And it's very noisy. But generally, are you optimistic there is a broader spectrum for all kinds of introverts and extroverts on that continuum, and the world is accommodating them?

Susan Cain

I'm very optimistic, and have been from the very beginning—and I haven't changed this since. In my mind I always compare this to the women's movement. And I think that the movement of introversion has started kind of where women were in the 1950s, let's say, and it has started to move. And there's also still such a long way for it to go. So right now I happen to be binge watching Mad Men, the TV show, because I always binge watch shows, like, seven years after everybody else is doing it. So I'm literally now in the first season of it. I'm watching what it was like for women in the 1950s in this corporation, and you just can't even believe it. I think that's kind of where we started. And we're getting there. But you know, we'll still be talking about this in a few decades, just the way we're not done with the work on women.

Tim Leberecht

So speaking of changes in the workplace, and speaking of Mad Men, remember that episode when there is the supercomputer arriving? Like the big IBM computer?

Susan Cain

Oh, I haven't gotten to that yet.

Tim Leberecht

I don't know what it is, but basically it's disrupting everything, and everyone is very worried. So I do want to ask you about artificial intelligence and AI, because you could argue that AI is the ultimate introvert. It's just sitting there calmly, analyzing. It doesn't really speak up unless it's asked, and doesn't really strive to be very expressive, or show emotions. It's running in the background and, in a sense, it's very introverted. I'm wondering what that will do to the workplace, and the workplace for introverts and extroverts? Will it level the playing field and will it be actually favorable to introverts? Or, rather, in contrast, will it sort of allow extroverts to be celebrated again, because, you know, automated work is done quietly, and extroverts are the new heroes again, in that sort of quasi automated workplace. So how do you feel about it? How is it going to change the dynamics?

Susan Cain

I don't know, because I think AI can mean so many different things, and it has so many different manifestations. There's also the AI of robots, right, or like a Siri AI. I think there is going to be really interesting potential for people to interact with AI, in the kinds of intimate ways that introverts like to interact in real life. And I think that's going to be a real boon. And I also think that what's going to happen in the world of AI is that qualities like creativity, and the ability to make deep connections are going to matter more and more. And many introverts are really good at that stuff. Not all of them, right. You can't speak about a gigantic population of people in one broad swath, but, but those are, yeah, those are qualities that tend to work well for introverts. So I think that there's a lot of promise there.

Tim Leberecht

Your new talk that you gave last night, a beautifully crafted, really bold and inspiring talk, is about longing, which arguably is a quality that machines are not able to muster. That seems to be something inherently human. And when I saw the talk last night, I had this feeling that it was very personal. And it was something you always wanted to talk about. It was a homecoming of sorts. Is that an accurate observation? And if so, why is this notion of longing so important to you? Tell me a little bit about this journey: how did you find out that this is something you wanted to talk about and write about?

Susan Cain

You know, it's interesting when you ask that question, it makes me realize that it's a lot like the way I came to the subject of introversion, which is that I had been living with it all my life without ever having articulated it. Until one day suddenly I did. And it's kind of like, it's the same thing with this. So all my life as long as I can remember I have been drawn to bittersweet music. I mean, I love all kinds of music. But there's something about bittersweet music that, to me, transcends everything. And when I hear beautiful versions of it, I just can't even believe it. I feel such immense gratitude to the musician—like they're telling the truth of what it's like to be alive, expressing it for everybody. And it's just the most amazing thing. But I could never understand why this was. I said this on the talk last night: I've been thinking about that all my life. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it's not the music itself so much, but that music is a guide along a pathway that I think we all feel. As if we have a conviction that we come from a perfect and beautiful world, but that world is always just out of reach. To me there's something really profound and sacred about focusing on the fact of being out of reach and the desire to get closer and closer, as close as we can. And I think that manifests in so many different ways—in trying to do great art or great music, and infuse it with as much beauty and truth as you can. I think if you're spiritually inclined, it manifests that way. I don't think there's anything more important to being human. And I don't know why it's located in this feeling of longing, which I kind of define as a joy that's laced with sorrow. I don't know why it's so important. But I know that it is the source of all our moonshots, and all our love. It all comes from that place.

Tim Leberecht

It was interesting, the use of the word “sacred”. You just also talked about and used the term “spiritual”. And I remember, as I was writing my book, The Business Romantic, actually I was told by a publisher that I should stay away from spirituality. It's a dangerous word, it's very charged, they said. So I just wonder how you feel about that. Using that rhetoric—“sacred”,“spiritual”. Is that something like this: is longing sort of a pathway into the spiritual, something transcendent? And would you call it spiritual without being coy about it?

Susan Cain

I consider myself a very deep agnostic-slash-atheist, but more agnostic, really. And I think that what happens is, in the world of intellectual types, many of whom are also deep agnostics and/or atheists, because they's so invested in that identity or belief system, I think it kind of blinds them to the longing for the divine, or the perfect, or the true, or the beautiful, or full love, or whatever word you use to describe it. And I think that it's really possible to admit, not just admit, but embrace all the bounty of what spiritual longing actually is—and that's completely consistent with deep agnosticism, but we've lost sight of that. So I'll give you an example. When I started thinking about this love of bittersweet music, I started reading the scholarly literature on it. There's a lot of articles about it: why do people love sad music? It doesn't seem to make sense, but they do. And you know, and all these different theories are suggested. And they never talk about spiritual longing. This is because the people who write these articles are all agnostics, and atheists, so they don't even think of it. And yet, it's kind of the most deeply human emotion there is. And you can acknowledge the fact of that emotion without having to believe in the deities of the ancient books. Those two things are totally consistent.

Tim Leberecht

It's an interesting tension, isn't it? Even amongst the tech community, I feel like there's this fundamental rift. And that's probably representative of the world. There are people who basically believe in science, and believe in things that are explicit, and believe in scientific explanations for phenomena, who would say, well, the experience of sorrow or of what you describe as longing is explainable, right? By the synapses in the brain. It's all basically like a small part of your brain, and it's all mechanically explainable. And then there's another camp that says, No, no, no, wait a minute. That might be true, but it doesn't tell us anything about like a whole other sphere that we just tap into. That it's just not explainable. And that remains mysterious, and it should remain mysterious. I find it really challenging to bridge between the two. Is that a view you would share?

Susan Cain

It's something that I think about all the time. I find these questions endlessly fascinating. Yes, of course, it's synapses. But that's like saying that the love that you feel for your child is “synapses in the brain”, so that doesn't really mean that much. But in truth, it means everything. So that's the first thing, I think. The fact that something can also be explained through empirical data doesn't take anything away from the mystery of being human and the wonder of it. And secondly, underneath all of that, as far as I know, still no one has explained what caused the Big Bang or what happened before it. And therefore, I think there is still this great, unexplainable, inexplicable mystery that means everything. And that doesn't require subscribing to a dogmatic belief system that doesn't apply.

Tim Leberecht

Do you know the movie “Central Station”? It's a Brazilian movie.

Susan Cain

I think I saw it years ago, but I can't remember now.

Tim Leberecht

There's a line, I think it's a final sentence, where the protagonist says—and I remember these lines very vividly—he says, “I have a longing for everything”. And I remembered it last night when I saw your talk. So I guess the question is, does it matter what you long for? Or is longing in and of itself the point?

Susan Cain

I think longing in and of itself is the point. And I think at different stages of life you're going to long for different things, and sometimes they're a little more highfalutin, and sometimes they're a little more just every day, you know. So it expresses itself through the longing for a career that feeds and expresses your true identity. That's a big one that tends to happen for younger people. As you get older I think you start to long more for the frankly spiritual or for some sense of larger meaning, but I think at the end of the day, it's really the same thing. I love what the Sufis say about longing: from their perspective, longing in and of itself is the point. And they'll say: you don't actually want your longing to be fulfilled. What you want is to be in that state of desire. That's really the sacred state. And I think there's a lot of truth in that.

Tim Leberecht

You had one of your longings fulfilled, right? You wanted to be a writer, an artist. And you are. So I wonder: is longing sort of a finite resource? What happens when it becomes fulfilled? Like, does that sort of deflate your overall capacity of longing? Or what did it do to you?

Susan Cain

Well, I feel like the luckiest person in the world when it comes to the career that I now enjoy and did long for since I was four years old. I had gone off on this huge detour of being a Wall Street lawyer and had I been “lucky” enough to make partner—which I didn't—but had I made partner, I might still be there now and it would have been a disaster. But because of that, I'm grateful, consciously, every single day that I've had this longing fulfilled. But that doesn't really in any way dilute the larger longing I feel for some other ineffable state. I call it the perfect and beautiful world. I'm so conscious of the fact that the world we all want to live in—where all love is unconditional, and peace is at hand—those ideal states are very far away. And yet there's this feeling about them, of “so close, yet so far”. It's like you feel like you can see it right around the corner. And yet you can't ever get there. But I think there's something about that that's sacred and that will make us keep on trying.

Tim Leberecht
Now with Quiet, right, I guess you fought a fight, right? It was almost like an act of liberation for probably millions of people, the language you gave them. And it seems like this is a similar path, where you are rehabilitating our appreciation for longing in the mainstream conversation, where it's maybe often dismissed as unproductive, or inconvenient, or an aberration, or...

Susan Cain
Or embarrassing, because it has to do with sorrow, and admitting that you feel sorrow. After I gave the talk last night, I realized that I had a very familiar emotion, which I'm still having right now, of feeling very exposed and raw. And I came offstage and one friend said to me, “Oh, I didn't realize it, but you're a goth.” And I was like, “Well, no, I'm not really a goth exactly, but okay, something like that, I suppose.” And then somebody else said, “Oh, you're just like me, you're morose and depressive.” And I was like, “Oh, this is why I'm having that feeling.” And then today, lots of people have come up and said, “Thank you for expressing something I always felt but didn’t know that it wasn't okay to say.” And that reminded me so much of what happened with Quiet, where I initially had this kind of embarrassed feeling, and then other people said, “Oh, this is what I've been thinking too.” So yeah, it's kind of like that. So I had that feeling for about two months after Quiet came out, and then it went away. And I expect to have a similar trajectory with this.

Tim Leberecht

Well, I guess it also shows that feeling raw and exposed, that you actually touched upon something that is true. That's very true, right? When you're embarrassed about something, it means that something is really true. There's an emotion that's really true.

Susan Cain

Yes.

Tim Leberecht

Now, we live in this culture obsessed with positivity and optimization. It's about getting ahead and being your best self. So what can individuals do? And what can companies do similar to the way they create a space for the introverts, right? What can they do to create spaces for longing and to honor longing, say, at the workplace, or society at large?

Susan Cain

I think the good news for companies who are interested in this is that this is actually very consistent with business goals. It's not antithetical to it. I think that the reason that people responded, for example, to Apple the way that they did, and to Steve Jobs in particular—despite the fact that Steve Jobs was reportedly a jerk in so many different ways. The true reason that people revere him so much is because they sense that he was inspired by trying to get to the perfect world. And he knew he wasn't getting there. But he was always, you know, close to that asymptote, and other people want to be there too. And he was a leader in that. So it's actually quite a worthy goal for companies. There's also quite a bit of data now that making room for compassion in the workplace is really good for business goals. And what does compassion really mean? It means “with sorrow”. So being with someone in their sorrow actually helps. But to do that, you have to have a company culture where you can actually talk about sorrow and talk about longing. And most of our company cultures are not that way. But it just needs to come from the leadership. And I have a whole bunch of different examples of companies that have started to do that. And the results that they've seen from doing it. So it's kind of exciting.

Tim Leberecht

It’s also what Susan David, author of Emotional Fragility, said: to create space for negative emotions at work. I always like to say that the real workplace is not the one where you can be happy all the time, but where you're allowed to be sad. That's really the truly humane workplace. Now, putting on sort of the more cynical head, right—and I get that pushback as well with my work—some people are saying, well, this whole conversation about bringing your full self to work and being much more emotional and vulnerable at work, isn't that just a scam? Isn't that just another really clever scheme to now also exploit resources, not just the objective performance and the tasks that we perform, but also now our emotional and spiritual resources? So is there a price for being the full self at work? And is it risky?

Susan Cain

This is something that I think about and nothing's ever straightforward. It is true that there can be a price to being too open and vulnerable at work. And in fact, there was a study showing that it's okay to be vulnerable with people on your level in the hierarchy, but when you're vulnerable with people below you, it actually makes them uncomfortable and can make them trust you less, or respect you less. And then sometimes people say they're going through a difficult thing at home, and to them work is a kind of refuge. Because they are not allowed to talk about it they end up feeling as if this is sort of a refuge from their normal troubles. All that is true. And at the same time, you also look at accounts of workplaces, where there really is a culture where people would just naturally tell each other what's happening for them. And they don't have to think about what price they are paying for this because it's part of the natural culture. You look at the data of what the results have been in those workplaces, and listen to people's accounts of it—and they just talk about this incredible feeling of trust and love for their co-workers. So I don't know where the exploitation is with that. If you're going to spend a lot of time in any location, you want to be human while you're there, so...

Tim Leberecht

I think studies say we spend 70-75% of our waking hours at work. There's also this notion of emotional intimacy—I guess that's part of this idea of longing or being your full emotional self at work. And I remember reading an op ed by David Brooks in the New York Times last year, where he said we're losing the power of touch. Because, you know, MeToo, and all the stories of sexual harassment that came out, thank God, and other awful examples of abuse, have now led us to the other extreme, to create very sanitised, heavily regulated workplaces where everybody is afraid to show any kind of emotional intimacy. So how do we navigate this really complex landscape? And are you worried that we might end up with very sterile monochrome workplaces where it's actually not okay to be human? Because we're so worried about all emotional transgressions?

Susan Cain

Yeah, I do worry about that, actually. And I'm naturally a hugger, also, and we're moving to this workplace where you're not supposed to do that. I think that's something we're really going to have to navigate. I guess I hope that eventually we'll get to a point where the transgressions of MeToo are no longer such a risk, and then we can return to a state of being able to be fully open and emotional with each other. And I also think we need to be really careful about the social codes that we create in the wake of MeToo, and make sure that they're not dehumanizing, even before we get to the point where we've fully addressed all those problems. This is a really tricky balance, but we don't want to lose our humanity either.

Tim Leberecht

Now, last year, Susan, you attended the House of Beautiful Business, the conference in Lisbon. I think you were there to basically study fado and other subjects for your book that you're working on, on longing. What did you expect, and how was the experience for you?

Susan Cain

I've never seen a conference like the House a Beautiful Business. And I go to a lot of conferences, because I'm always speaking. You do this too. So it's so interesting. You're like parachuting into these different worlds, you know. So I've never seen a conference like this that was so frankly emotional, frankly aesthetically oriented, and where everything was lush and beautiful. You know, the way the different rooms and sessions were named. The language, the houses and the spaces in which everything was held. And then the topics you had, too. I think the opening subject was “The last taboo in business was sadness”, and you handed out fortune cookies—you called them “sad fortune cookies”. There were just all these little details that you don't see at any other conference. And it created an atmosphere among people, of openness. And I think it's a real model for what businesses can do. I mean, it's kind of what we're talking about, that if you set the right tone through your culture, through its architecture and its language, and its leadership, the people who are there start to behave in that mode, and they start to dream bigger, because you're reaching them in the heart. And not just in terms of numbers, and productivity, and analyses, and things like that.

Tim Leberecht

We also had fado, the traditional Portuguese song, which is very sorrowful and wistful. I'm curious. In your TED Talk, actually, there's music on stage—which is quite a novelty, if you know TED talks—I think it was Albinoni's Adagio in G minor? Tell us a little bit more about your personal favorite playlists, like your record collection or your Spotify list? What are some of the songs that really mean the world to you?

Susan Cain

Oh, gosh, there are so many. I'll go to my easy go-to, which is Leonard Cohen. He will not be a surprise to hear. I love him! Yeah, I love him in a kind of crazy way. I think I have everything that he's done, and tons of his music on my playlist. Last year, one year after he died, I actually made a pilgrimage to Montreal. His son Adam Cohen put on a memorial concert for him, where he brought in musicians from Sting to Lana Del Rey, and each one sang one of Leonard Cohen songs, and it was one of the most transcendent nights of my life. It was incredible. He talked about longing all the time.

Tim Leberecht

Is there a favorite song of his you have?

Susan Cain

There are so many that I like... One of my favorites—it's so embarrassing, really, because it's one of his gloomiest—is “Famous blue raincoat”.

Tim Leberecht

Yes, the gloomiest among the gloomy!.. (laughs)

Susan Cain

Yeah, but I love a lot of them (laughs as well).

Tim Leberecht

Yeah. I'm just gonna ask you a few final questions, short answers are fine, “yes” or “no”. So I understand that you're an avid tennis player.

Susan Cain

Yes, I love tennis!

Tim Leberecht

Who's your favorite player?

Susan Cain

I really like Rafa, Rafael Nadal. He seems like such a good guy. He's obviously such a great player—but he seems like a good guy. And my younger son, who's a really good athlete and is now starting to pick up tennis, really admires him and wants to be like him. So that's a whole other layer.

Tim Leberecht

Then there's the question from the Proust questionnaire: which historical figure would you like to have dinner with if you could?

Susan Cain

I don't know. And the reason I say that is because I never actually have those temptations. I usually feel that, if there's someone—a writer or a historical figure, who I really admire—I'd actually rather not know them personally. I want them to be out there in the world as what they represent and not kind of....

Tim Leberecht

It goes back to the longing and the fulfillment, right? The idea of longing for someone might then be just stronger than actually meeting that person!

Susan Cain

Yes, something like that. Even with Leonard Cohen, for example, there was a moment where he tweeted me after Quiet came out. He tweeted and said how much he liked the book. That was an amazing and precious moment. And maybe I could have seen: do I know anyone who might know anyone who would know him, and maybe I could connect with him in person in real life?.. And I somehow never followed that. Maybe I didn't want to, or need to.

Tim Leberecht

My favorite place on earth is...?

Susan Cain

My house. I really love my house and hanging out with my family. And other than that, any lovely cafe where the music is just right, and I have my laptop, is heaven for me.

Tim Leberecht

I've always wanted to go to...?

Susan Cain

I guess I've always wanted to go to Morocco. I don't know why I've never been, because I've traveled quite a bit. But one day I'll go...

Tim Leberecht

Yeah, we just did a chamber of Beautiful Business in Marrakesh, it was my first time... I mean, Marrakesh is amazing, so romantic. It's a place of longing, I guess. It's very transcendent.

Susan Cain

Yeah, that's how I feel! And I don't know why I've never been there! And how come you have never been there? Right? I'm sure you have also wanted to go for a long time!

Tim Leberecht

I have a longing for...?

Susan Cain

Everything! Go back to what you said before.

Tim Leberecht

My next TED talk will be about...?

Susan Cain

Oh, gosh. I actually kind of know, I think, but I don't want to say yet, if that's okay. Because I actually have the idea for the book I'm going to write after the “longing” book. But I think it's too far in the future to talk about just yet.

Tim Leberecht

Wow. Okay. I think that's quite rare! You already have the book for....

Susan Cain

I know. It is rare. Yeah. I'll tell you offline!

Tim Leberecht

Okay. Well, that should be the perfect signal for me to stop the official recording. Susan, this has been such a pleasure! Thank you very much.

Susan Cain

Thank you. Yeah. I always love talking to you. And thank you for all the work you do. I love it so much.

Tim Leberecht

Thank you.


This conversation was recorded in June 2019 at TED Summit in Edinburgh.

Tim Leberecht is the co-founder and co-CEO of the House of Beautiful Business. The transcript has been slightly edited for clarity.

logo

We don't support this version of your browser, and neither should you!

You are visiting this page because we detected an unsupported browser. Your browser does not support security features that we require. We highly recommend that you update your browser. If you believe you have arrived here in error, please contact us. Be sure to include your browser version.