So if you picture the typical classroom nowadays: When I was going to school, we sat in rows. We sat in rows of desks like this, and we did most of our work pretty autonomously. But nowadays, your typical classroom has pods of desks -- four or five or six or seven kids all facing each other. And kids are working in countless group assignments. Even in subjects like math and creative writing, which you think would depend on solo flights of thought, kids are now expected to act as committee members. And for the kids who prefer to go off by themselves or just to work alone, those kids are seen as outliers often or, worse, as problem cases. And the vast majority of teachers reports believing that the ideal student is an extrovert as opposed to an introvert, even though introverts actually get better grades and are more knowledgeable, according to research.
当你描绘今天典型教室的图案时，当我还上学的时候，我们一排排地坐着。我们靠着桌子一排排坐着就像这样，并且我们大多数工作都是自觉完成的。但是在现代社会，所谓典型的教室，是些圈起来并排的桌子，四个或是五个或是六、七个孩子坐在一起，面对面。孩子们要完成无数个小组任务，甚至像数学和创意写作这些课程。这些你们认为需要依靠个人闪光想法的课程，孩子们现在却被期待成为小组会的成员。对于那些喜欢独处，或者自己一个人工作的孩子来说，这些孩子常常被视为局外人。或者更糟，被视为问题孩子。并且很大一部分老师的报告中都相信，最理想的学生应该是外向的，相对于内向的学生而言，甚至说外向的学生能够取得更好的成绩，更加博学多识，据研究报道。
Okay, same thing is true in our workplaces. Now, most of us work in open plan offices, without walls, where we are subject to the constant noise and gaze of our coworkers. And when it comes to leadership, introverts are routinely passed over for leadership positions, even though introverts tend to be very careful, much less likely to take outsize risks -- which is something we might all favor nowadays. And interesting research by Adam Grant at the Wharton School has found that introverted leaders often deliver better outcomes than extroverts do, because when they are managing proactive employees, they're much more likely to let those employees run with their ideas, whereas an extrovert can, quite unwittingly, get so excited about things that they're putting their own stamp on things, and other people's ideas might not as easily then bubble up to the surface.
好了，同样的事情也发生在我们工作的地方。现在呢，我们中的绝大多数都工作在宽阔没有隔间的办公室里，甚至没有墙，在这里，我们暴露在不断的噪音和我们同事的凝视目光下工作，而当谈及领袖气质的时候，内向的人总是按照惯例从领导的位置被忽视了。尽管内向的人是非常小心仔细的，很少去冒特大的风险，这些风险是今天我们可能都喜欢的。宾夕法尼亚大学沃顿商学院的亚当·格兰特教授做了一项很有意思的研究，这项研究表明内向的领导们相对于外向领导而言总是会生产更大的效益。因为当他们管理主动积极的雇员的时候，他们更倾向于让有主见的雇员去自由发挥，反之外向的领导就可能，当然是不经意的。对于事情变得十分激动，他们在事务上有了自己想法的印迹，这使其他人的想法可能就不会很容易地，在舞台上发光了。
Now in fact, some of our transformative leaders in history have been introverts. I'll give you some examples. Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, Gandhi -- all these peopled described themselves as quiet and soft-spoken and even shy. And they all took the spotlight, even though every bone in their bodies was telling them not to. And this turns out to have a special power all its own, because people could feel that these leaders were at the helm, not because they enjoyed directing others and not out of the pleasure of being looked at; they were there because they had no choice, because they were driven to do what they thought was right.
事实上，历史上一些有改革能力的领袖都是内向的人，我会举一些例子给你们。埃莉诺·罗斯福，罗沙·帕克斯，甘地。所有这些人都把自己描述成内向，说话温柔甚至是害羞的人。他们仍然站在了聚光灯下，即使他们浑身上下，都感知他们说不要。这证明是一种属于它自身的特殊的力量，因为人们都会感觉这些领导者同时是掌舵者。并不是因为他们喜欢指挥别人，抑或是享受众人目光的聚焦。他们处在那个位置因为他们没有选择，因为他们行驶在他们认为正确的道路上。
Now I think at this point it's important for me to say that I actually love extroverts. I always like to say some of my best friends are extroverts, including my beloved husband. And we all fall at different points, of course, along the introvert/extrovert spectrum. Even Carl Jung, the psychologist who first popularized these terms, said that there's no such thing as a pure introvert or a pure extrovert. He said that such a man would be in a lunatic asylum, if he existed at all. And some people fall smack in the middle of the introvert/extrovert spectrum, and we call these people ambiverts. And I often think that they have the best of all worlds. But many of us do recognize ourselves as one type or the other.
现在我觉得对于这点我有必要说，那就是我真的喜爱外向的人。我总是喜欢说我最好的几个朋友都是外向的人，包括我亲爱的丈夫。当然了我们都会在不同点时偏向，内向者/外向者的范围。甚至是卡尔·荣格，这个让这些名词为大众所熟知的心理学家，说道，世上绝没有一个纯粹的内向的人，或者一个纯粹的外向的人。他说这样的人会在精神病院里，如果他存在的话。还有一些人处在中间的迹象，在内向与外向之间，我们称这些人为“中向性格者” 并且我总是认为他们拥有世界最美好的一切。但是我们中的大多数总是认为自己属于内向或者外向，其中一类。
And what I'm saying is that culturally we need a much better balance. We need more of a yin and yang between these two types. This is especially important when it comes to creativity and to productivity, because when psychologists look at the lives of the most creative people, what they find are people who are very good at exchanging ideas and advancing ideas, but who also have a serious streak of introversion in them.
同时我想说从文化意义上讲我们需要一种更好的平衡，我们需要更多的阴阳的平衡。在这两种类型的人之间，这点是极为重要的。当涉及创造力和生产力的时候，因为当心理学家们看待，最有创造力的人的生命的时候，他们寻找到的，是那些擅长变换思维的人，提出想法的人，但是他们同时也有着极为显著的偏内向的痕迹。
And this is because solitude is a crucial ingredient often to creativity. So Darwin, he took long walks alone in the woods and emphatically turned down dinner party invitations. Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, he dreamed up many of his amazing creations in a lonely bell tower office that he had in the back of his house in La Jolla, California. And he was actually afraid to meet the young children who read his books for fear that they were expecting him this kind of jolly Santa Claus-like figure and would be disappointed with his more reserved persona. Steve Wozniak invented the first Apple computer sitting alone in his cubical in Hewlett-Packard where he was working at the time. And he says that he never would have become such an expert in the first place had he not been too introverted to leave the house when he was growing up.
这是因为独处是非常关键的因素，对于创造力来说。所以达尔文，自己一个人漫步在小树林里，并且断然拒绝了晚餐派对的邀约。西奥多·盖索，更多时候以苏索博士的名号知名，他梦想过很多的惊人的创作，在他在加利福尼亚州拉霍亚市房子的后面的，一座孤独的束层的塔形办公室中。而且其实他很害怕见面，见那些读过他的书的年轻的孩子们，害怕他们会期待他，这样一位令人愉快的，圣诞老人形象的人物，同时又会因发现他含蓄缄默的性格而失望。史蒂夫·沃兹尼亚克发明了第一台苹果电脑，一个人独自坐在他的机柜旁，在他当时工作的惠普公司。并且他说他永远不会在那方面成为一号专家，但他还没因太内向到要离开那里，那个他成长起来的地方。
Now of course, this does not mean that we should all stop collaborating -- and case in point, is Steve Wozniak famously coming together with Steve Jobs to start Apple Computer -- but it does mean that solitude matters and that for some people it is the air that they breathe. And in fact, we have known for centuries about the transcendent power of solitude. It's only recently that we've strangely begun to forget it. If you look at most of the world's major religions, you will find seekers -- Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad -- seekers who are going off by themselves alone to the wilderness where they then have profound epiphanies and revelations that they then bring back to the rest of the community. So no wilderness, no revelations.
当然了，这并不意味着我们都应该停止合作。恰当的例子呢，是史蒂夫·沃兹尼亚克和史蒂夫·乔布斯的著名联手创建苹果电脑公司。但是这并不意味着和独处有重大关系，并且对于一些人来说，这是他们赖以呼吸生存的空气。事实上，几个世纪以来我们已经非常明白，独处的卓越力量，只是到了最近，非常奇怪，我们开始遗忘它了。如果你看看世界上主要的宗教，你会发现探寻者，摩西，耶稣，佛祖，穆罕默德，那些独身去探寻的人们，在大自然的旷野中独处，思索。在那里，他们有了深刻的顿悟和对于奥义的揭示，之后他们把这些思想带回到社会的其他地方去，没有旷原，没有启示。
This is no surprise though if you look at the insights of contemporary psychology. It turns out that we can't even be in a group of people without instinctively mirroring, mimicking their opinions. Even about seemingly personal and visceral things like who you're attracted to, you will start aping the beliefs of the people around you without even realizing that that's what you're doing.
尽管这并不令人惊讶，如果你注意到现代心理学的思想理论，它反映出来我们甚至不能和一组人待在一起。而不去本能地模仿他们的意见与想法，甚至是看上去私人的，发自内心的事情。像是你被谁所吸引 你会开始模仿你周围的人的信仰，甚至都觉察不到你自己在做什么。
And groups famously follow the opinions of the most dominant or charismatic person in the room, even though there's zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas -- I mean zero. So ... (Laughter) You might be following the person with the best ideas, but you might not. And do you really want to leave it up to chance? Much better for everybody to go off by themselves, generate their own ideas freed from the distortions of group dynamics, and then come together as a team to talk them through in a well-managed environment and take it from there.
还曾跟随群体的意见，跟随着房间里最具有统治力的，最有领袖气质的人的思路。虽然这真的没什么关系，在成为一个卓越的演讲家还是拥有最好的主意之间。我的意思是“零相关” 那么...你们或许会跟随有最好头脑的人，但是你们也许不会，可你们真的想把这机会扔掉吗？如果每个人都自己行动或许好得多，发掘他们自己的想法，没有群体动力学的曲解，接着来到一起组成一个团队，在一个良好管理的环境中互相交流，并且在那里学习别的思想。
Now if all this is true, then why are we getting it so wrong? Why are we setting up our schools this way and our workplaces? And why are we making these introverts feel so guilty about wanting to just go off by themselves some of the time? One answer lies deep in our cultural history. Western societies, and in particular the U.S., have always favored the man of action over the man of contemplation and "man" of contemplation. But in America's early days, we lived in what historians call a culture of character, where we still, at that point, valued people for their inner selves and their moral rectitude. And if you look at the self-help books from this era, they all had titles with things like "Character, the Grandest Thing in the World." And they featured role models like Abraham Lincoln who was praised for being modest and unassuming. Ralph Waldo Emerson called him "A man who does not offend by superiority."
如果说现在这一切都是真的，那么为什么我们还得到这样错误的结论？为什么我们要这样创立我们的学校，还有我们的工作单位？为什么我们要让这些内向的人觉得那么愧疚，对于他们只是想要离开，一个人独处一段时间的事实？有一个答案在我们的文化史中埋藏已久。西方社会，特别是在美国，总是偏爱有行动的人，而不是有深刻思考的人，有深刻思考的“人”。但是在美国早期的时候，我们生活在一个被历史学家称作“性格特征”的文化，那时我们仍然，在这点上，判断人们的价值。从人们的内涵和道义正直。而且如果你看一看这个时代关于自立的书籍的话，它们都有这样一种标题：“性格”，世界上最伟大的事物。并且它们以亚伯拉罕·林肯这样的为标榜，一个被形容为谦虚低调的男人，拉尔夫·瓦尔多·爱默生称他是“一个以‘优越’二字形容都不为过的人”。
But then we hit the 20th century and we entered a new culture that historians call the culture of personality. What happened is we had evolved an agricultural economy to a world of big business. And so suddenly people are moving from small towns to the cities. And instead of working alongside people they've known all their lives, now they are having to prove themselves in a crowd of strangers. So, quite understandably, qualities like magnetism and charisma suddenly come to seem really important. And sure enough, the self-help books change to meet these new needs and they start to have names like "How to Win Friends and Influence People." And they feature as their role models really great salesmen. So that's the world we're living in today. That's our cultural inheritance.
但是接着我们来到了二十世纪，并且我们融入了一种新的文化，一种被历史学家称作“个性”的文化。所发生的改变就是我们从农业经济发展为一个大商业经济的世界。而且人们突然开始搬迁，从小的城镇搬向城市，并且一改他们之前的在生活中和所熟识的人们一起工作的方式。现在他们，在一群陌生人中间有必要去证明自己，这样做是非常可以理解的。像领袖气质和个人魅力这样的品质，突然间似乎变得极为重要。那么可以肯定的是，自助自立的书的内容变更了以适应这些新的需求，并且它们开始拥有名称。像是《如何赢得朋友和影响他人》（戴尔・卡耐基所著《人性的弱点》），他们的特点是做自己的榜样。不得不说确实是好的推销员，所以这就是我们今天生活的世界，这是我们的文化遗产。
Now none of this is to say that social skills are unimportant, and I'm also not calling for the abolishing of teamwork at all. The same religions who send their sages off to lonely mountain tops also teach us love and trust. And the problems that we are facing today in fields like science and in economics are so vast and so complex that we are going to need armies of people coming together to solve them working together. But I am saying that the more freedom that we give introverts to be themselves, the more likely that they are to come up with their own unique solutions to these problems.
现在没有谁能够说，社交技能是不重要的。并且我也不是想呼吁，大家废除团队合作模式。但仍是相同的宗教，却把他们的圣人送到了孤独的山顶上，仍然教导我们爱与信任。还有我们今天所要面对的问题 像是在科学和经济领域，是如此的巨大和复杂，以至于我们需要人们强有力地团结起来，共同解决这些问题。但是我想说，越给内向者自由让他们做自己，他们就做得越好，去想出他们独特的关于问题的解决办法。
转载自TED演讲内向者的力量The power of introverts
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