Improving Managerial Talent

5Extraversion

The concept of extraversion is more than 100 years old, having been introduced by the Swiss psychologist C. G. Jung in 1910.¹ The word literally means outward (extra) turning (vertere). In Jung’s model, extraverts were fundamentally motivated towards engaging with the outside world, whilst introverts were primarily concerned with defending themselves from the incursions and demands of that world.

In the middle years of the 20th century, two developments occurred in the wake of Jung’s theorising. Firstly, the German-born British psychologist, Hans Eysenck, established that the degree to which a person exhibited extraversion was ...