You Do Not Need to Be Loud to Lead

May 24, 2026 · 7 min read Career

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One sure way to not have my business is to require me to talk on the phone.

If I reach out to a company via email or a contact form, I always make sure to let them know that email is my preferred form of communication. If their default response is a callback, I will just drop them from the options. Similarly, if they do not reply to my message, I will not call them. I will just move along and find another vendor.

I also have a personal policy of never answering my phone. No one who knows me and seriously needs to talk to me would ever call me. Unless I have previously agreed to pick up your call at a specific date and time, you will go to voicemail.

I started by telling you this not because of my views on business models, customer outreach, my vision for asynchronous communication, or the importance of respecting people’s time. While these would all be good and valid excuses, the reality is that I am not good with people. I would not go as far as saying I have social anxiety, but I am, without any shadow of a doubt, a highly introverted person.

I am in no way special. It is very common for people in our industry to be introverted. You can sit in front of a computer by yourself for days on end, without ever needing to talk to anyone, and still produce value to your company and society. Engineering job ladders allow individuals to grow into high-paying, well-respected positions as individual contributors, often requiring minimal interaction with others.

Things get a little more interesting when an introvert like me makes the jump from the technical ladder to the people-management ladder.

Since this may be the case for some of my readers, I want to offer some actionable advice to help with that transition.

The first thing is to fully acknowledge that your main job now is to deal with people.

Sure, if you are someone technical, you may still have the opportunity to get your hands dirty once in a while, but your primary goal is to help your team get stuff done. That means meetings. Loads of them. Sometimes, entire days of nothing but meetings.

When you are an individual contributor, meetings are basically interruptions and annoyances. As a rule of thumb, they divert you from productive work. But when you move to a leadership role, meetings are the work.

So embrace the suck and realize that when you are attending meeting number seven in your day, you are indeed working.

And here is something I only learned very late in my career: people actually expect you to talk during meetings if you are a leader.

That is a little annoying, if you ask my opinion.

When I am attending a meeting with several people, I do not feel the need to audibly agree with or endorse what I am quietly agreeing with or endorsing in my mind. I am also very comfortable not having an opinion on many things, in a way that allows me to agree with any of the options the team presents. However, if I disagree with something, you will hear from me, and I will do my best to drive my point across.

One painful lesson for introverts is that silence is not neutral in leadership positions.

If you stay quiet in a meeting, people are unlikely to interpret it as “thoughtful observation.” More often than not, they will interpret it as disagreement, disengagement, lack of preparation, or lack of confidence.

This does not mean you need to dominate conversations or become one of those people who talk just to hear themselves speak. But it does mean you need to learn to externalize your thinking.

Simple things like “I agree with that approach,” “That seems reasonable to me,” or “I do not have strong opinions either way” go a surprisingly long way.

Of all the meetings I had to attend as a leader, 1:1s were my favourites.

I never went through the trouble of creating a formal structure, and I mostly just went with the flow during each call, letting the other party set the rhythm, whether it was my boss, a peer, or someone reporting to me. I had calls with some people where we just talked about life for the entire meeting, while others would join the meeting already sharing their screen and go straight into a technical discussion.

That is one of the areas where introverts can have a real advantage.

We naturally do better in small groups and in individual conversations than in large groups. We are often more comfortable listening than talking. We do not usually feel the need to dominate the conversation, and we are often perfectly happy letting others shine.

That matters in leadership.

You want your people to be successful. You want them to be heard. You want them to bring ideas forward. You want them to take credit for good work. If you are always trying to be the loudest person in the room, you will make that harder.

Also, when you talk less, you are usually listening more. And you probably also have the propensity for thinking before talking, which seems to be a lost art these days.

The challenge, of course, is that 1:1 meetings do not scale forever.

Once you reach a certain number of people reporting to you, some meetings may need to move from weekly to every other week. Some may move to monthly. At some point, you may need to drop regular meetings with your skip-levels altogether.

That is not a failure. That is just reality.

Leadership requires you to be intentional with your time, and that is especially true if social interaction drains you. You need to decide where your presence is most valuable, which conversations need to happen live, and which ones can happen asynchronously.

So, in my opinion, there is nothing special about leadership that cannot be learned and applied in a way that works for introverts. Pretty much everything is a learnable skill, and there are plenty of books that can help you learn it.

Here are some recommendations that helped me over the years:

But now I need to address one important issue: energy management.

While extroverts get energized by social interactions, introverts get completely drained. Days with too many meetings are guaranteed to be days when, after work, I just sit on the couch and stay quiet until bedtime.

This is not a big issue in my case since my wife is also an introvert who knows me well and respects my space. But if you have an extrovert spouse, kids, or a very socially active life outside of work, you may need a more formal strategy.

That may mean blocking quiet time after meeting-heavy days. It may mean avoiding unnecessary evening commitments. It may mean being honest with your family about the fact that you are not angry, distant, or uninterested. You are just done talking for the day.

My main goal with this post is to encourage people with introverted personalities who may be wondering whether leadership is for them.

I think it absolutely is.

You do not need to become loud, charismatic, highly social, or constantly energized by people to lead effectively. You do not need to dominate meetings or become the center of attention every time you walk into a room.

What you do need is to communicate clearly, listen carefully, support your team, and make people feel that someone competent is paying attention.

And, honestly, introverts are often naturally good at those things.

Yes, leadership will probably drain your social battery faster than deeply technical work ever did. Yes, you will need to intentionally develop communication skills that may not come naturally to you. But those are learnable skills, not personality traits.

You are not disqualified from leadership because you prefer quiet over noise.

Just do not stay silent.

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