+ + +

PHOTOS © SHUTTERSTOCK/PROMETHEUS72 (BRANSON, GATES); PHOTO © GETTY IMAGES/BLOOMBERG /CONTRIBUTOR (QUIGLEY)
cycle of an organization. “I would bet that
at the early stages of a venture startup,
ambiversion is more important than it is
later,” he says. “In the early phases, you
have to play more roles. There are fewer
opportunities to delegate and adjust what
your responsibilities are. As you grow,
it’s much easier to carve out a role that
allows you to operate effectively in your
introverted niche or in your extroverted
niche. Maybe ambiverts would have
higher rates of early startup success, and
those differences would vanish once companies
hit some kind of stride.”
Time will tell whether Grant’s theory
is correct; research into the ambivert
profile is still in its infancy, and the
concept remains on the fringes of the
popular consciousness. But with a
growing number of academics turning
their attention to personality psychology
and its impact on all facets of human life,
major breakthroughs could be within
reach, Little believes.
“What’s exciting is that we’re getting
away from the ‘Are extroverts better
than introverts?’ logic and starting to
look at some of the more subtle aspects
of why we do the things we do and
how they involve managing the balance
between our natures and what I call our
‘socio-genetic motives’—our cultural expectations,
our work and so on,” he says.
“We’re all a bit more complex than simple
types of being.”
RADICALS AND VISIONARIES
In the absence of personality-test results or other hard
data, we can only speculate where leading entrepreneurs
fall along the psychological continuum. But the available
evidence suggests that most are ambiverts.
“RICHARD BRANSON
is probably an ambivert,”
says Adam Grant, professor
at The Wharton School.
“We see his extroverted
behaviors most vividly,
but if you look at the sheer
amount of time he spends
writing and reflecting, or
some of his discomfort with
public speaking, we can
make a prediction that
he’s less extroverted than
he appears.”
“BILL GATES likely
would be an example of an
ambivert,” author Daniel
Pink says. “Here’s a guy
who’s stimulus-seeking
and risk-taking—he drops
out of Harvard and goes to
Albuquerque, of all places,
to start a company. That’s
risk-prone behavior. But he’s
also a guy who leaves work
for one or two weeks every
year to go off by himself and
read, which is very much
introverted behavior.”
“JIM QUIGLEY, who was
the CEO of Deloitte for some
time, noticed that when he
walked into a room, people
would shut up and listen for
him to talk,” Grant says. “I
don’t know where he falls
on the personality spectrum
by default, but he very
deliberately decided to act
more like an ambivert and set
a goal that he was only going
to talk during 20 percent of
meetings, max. When you
do that and let other people
carry the floor 80 percent of
the time, you are more or less
mimicking the advantages of
being an ambivert. You get to
hear other ideas, and people
feel more empowered.”
I call ‘beta culture,’ which I
compare to an orchestra.
You have virtuosos in all areas,
and you organize around
tasks and what needs to be
done, with many voices and
a conductor who brings them
all together.”
According to Ardi, alpha
culture emerged in the
Industrial Age and crystallized
in the years following World
War II. The organizing principle
took its cues from military
hierarchy, with a general—
the CEO—serving as a
centralized decision-making
authority, issuing orders to
the lieutenants, sergeants
and privates serving under
him. That approach no longer
works, Ardi believes.
“Contemporary leaders
are betas,” she proclaims.
“They are good listeners, they
understand how to mine organizations
and curate them,
and they have an amazing
sense of communication.
They’re not leaders in that all
decisions have to come from
them—they drill down to make
sure that everyone in the organization
is sharing ideas and
playing well together.”
The beta mindset must
extend to all facets of a company,
from how its physical
space is organized to how
employees communicate to
how teams are rewarded for
their efforts. “Then [betas]
need to bring people together
and have the community start
to brainstorm around how they
can become more effective at
all of the markers of being a
beta culture,” Ardi says. “What
are the challenges of our
company moving forward?
What are the things we want
to get better at? What are
the opportunities for us in the
marketplace? What are the
things we’ve been doing that
we take for granted that maybe
we need to rethink? There’s
a whole internal dialogue to
becoming self-actualized.”
There are risks, Ardi warns.
Some entrepreneurs embrace
the beta concept too aggressively,
opening up all discussions
and decisions to internal
debate. “Doing that becomes
groupthink,” she says. “The
best advice I can offer is to
be what I call a ‘productive
narcissist’—to believe in your
idea, to understand the direction
you want to go and how
you want to move the group,
but to be open, to be a good
listener, to be a good communicator,
to seek advice and
counsel, to do something with
that advice, and to always
challenge common wisdom.”
In other words: Be an
ambivert. —J.A.
MARCH 2015 ENTREPRENEUR 41