You can be shy and still be a CEO

As an employee. I really don&#x27;t care if the CEO is outgoing.<p>Honestly it is a relief when the CEO isn&#x27;t trying to sell me on some vision (with the exception of one CEO who was a legit magical salesman) or whatever it is. Just give me my orders so I can get on with it, I don&#x27;t need a show &#x2F; extrovert at the helm.<p>Maybe other people do and maybe the article is wrong, but at least for leadership, I don&#x27;t need a super outgoing guy. I just want to know what he needs done &#x2F; and let&#x27;s go make the thing.<p>Now if the CEO is a guy who is gonna come running out onto a stage screamming at a presentation, like that is who he is ... that&#x27;s cool too.

I am a shy CEO and can confirm. It can be difficult but definitely doable. We currently have one employee, myself, and although I sometimes have difficulty confronting him we mostly get our work done.

I think the return of introvert CEOs and other executives and leaders is coming. Remote work has turned down the “impact” (or presence) of the extroverted leader. The thoughtful and reflective qualities of introverts are well suited for leading others and making the big decisions.

Being shy and being introverted are not always the same thing. For some people, being introverted and being shy are closely entwined. For others, being an introvert does not always mean being shy or anxious in social situations. For example, an introvert may find giving talks or presentations a stimulating activity. These activities are typically seen as extrovert activities.<p>On a somehwat related note, you can find introverted people in many professions, in roles which might be associated with being extroverted e.g. acting or a movie director.<p>An example: here&#x27;s an informative video from introvert movie director David Sandberg (director of Shazam!, Lights Out and Annabelle Creation).<p><i>Can You Be An Introvert Director?</i> Note: there&#x27;s a very brief horror clip featuring a bit of gore in the following video:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=DEyFH-uzlGg" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=DEyFH-uzlGg</a>

The real problem is that we don’t have good examples of leaders. A lot of the examples we look for in terms of whom to emulate comes from the pop culture view of corporate America and startups. At a previous company I worked at far too many people were trying to behave like Steve Jobs and give that as an excuse for being an asshole.

Anyone can be a CEO. All it takes is a registering a business with the govt. The apt title should be: &quot;... and still be a successful CEO&quot;.<p>The question is whether people want to be CEO, and is that what their life&#x27;s calling is.

Recent gig, I was the introverted CEO of a company with 80+ employees on three continents, and I spent time in all our office locations.<p>One of the superpowers of not talking all the time is that you’re listening more often than not. And if you can be judicious with what you say, and confident &amp; persuasive when you do need to use your influence, it can be very effective.

This is marketing with a clickbait title

Yes. All you need is product market fit, and ability to execute on your vision.

Depends on the culture. People like Musk or Jobs wouldn&#x27;t last 5 minutes as CEO in my country. Everyone will just move to a non toxic workplace.

puff piece.<p>unrelated to the article, but im curious if this business can sustain itself to another round of funding. it has been tried before and does not work.<p>ecommerce stores do well when they run an ad or email promoting a product that they can sell 1k&#x2F;10k&#x2F;100k times over.<p>a market place like this has no such inventory.

It&#x27;s technically possible for most people to &quot;be&quot; anything, i.e. to succeed in an unusual way, but I don&#x27;t think that&#x27;s the right way to look at it. Why is our current economic environment not optimized for this behavior? Why is our economy set up to disproportionately reward ruthless behaviors and predatory personalities?

In school, I was so shy, I constantly struggled to initiate conversations and I was always playing back what I said in my mind and feeling bad about how dumb it sounded. I held others to a higher esteem than myself.<p>But as I grew older, the system beat shyness out of me by revealing the ugliness in people. Now I don&#x27;t care about what people think. I even swore and shouted at my boss when quitting my last job.<p>Eventually, I realized that most people are selfish idiots so it doesn&#x27;t matter what they think.