New research from Adam Grant, the youngest tenured professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Management, is really intriguing. In his study, Grant collected data from sales representatives at a software company. He began by giving reps an often-used personality assessment that measures introversion and extroversion on a 1-to-7 scale, with 1 being most introverted and 7 being most extroverted.
Then he tracked their performance over the next three months.
The introverts fared worst; they earned average revenue of $120 per hour.
The extroverts performed slightly better, pulling in $125 per hour. But neither did nearly as well as a third group: the ambiverts.
In Grant’s study, ambiverts earned average hourly revenues of $155, beating extroverts by a healthy 24 percent.
Who are Ambiverts?
Ambiverts, a term coined by social scientists in the 1920s, are people who are neither extremely introverted nor extremely extroverted. Think back to that 1-to-7 scale that Grant used. Ambiverts aren’t 1s or 2s, but they’re not 6s or 7s either. They’re 3s, 4s and 5s. They’re not quiet, but they’re not loud. They know how to assert themselves, but they’re not pushy.
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