Episode 1 - The Crisis of Extroverted Leadership: Why We Need More Dag Hammarskjölds

In a world that rewards loud voices, where does that leave the quiet leaders? Today, politics, business, and media glorify "charisma" over competence, mistaking performance for wisdom. But what if true leadership doesn’t look like the loudest voice in the room?

In this episode, we'll explore the bias toward extroverted leadership, why it's failing us, and how leaders like Dag Hammarskjöld offer a desperately needed alternative.

Topics include:
✅ How modern leadership favors showmanship over substance
✅ Why introverts and deep thinkers are overlooked—and why that’s dangerous
✅ How Dag led with intellect, integrity, and quiet strength
✅ What today’s world can learn from his leadership in a crisis
✅ Practical takeaways for embracing introverted leadership in your own life

If you’ve ever felt like your quiet nature was a disadvantage in leadership, this episode is for you. Let's challenge the extrovert bias—and redefine what real leadership looks like.

Links:

https://thisibelieve.org/essay/16608/

For more, please check out Decoding the Unicorn: A New Look at Dag Hammarskjöld. Click here to buy it on Amazon. 

Transcript

Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Extroverted leadership, quiet leadership, Dag Hammarskjöld, charisma, performative leadership, introverted leaders, thoughtful decision-making, corporate world, political sphere, leadership crisis, wisdom, substance, media influence, corporate gaslighting, leadership selection.

Welcome to the Decoding the Unicorn Podcast. Here's your host, Sara Causey.

 Hello, Hello and thanks for tuning in. Welcome to this inaugural episode of decoding the unicorn, the podcast. I'm very happy and grateful that you're joining me. It's always a little daunting when you're making the very first episode of a brand new podcast, even though I already have two other podcasts, the Causey Consulting Podcast and my nighttime broadcast, the con-sara-cy theories, when you're sitting at the microphone making the very first episode for something new that you're kicking off. It's a bit nerve-wracking. You worry about getting tongue tied, about appropriate segues, about the new audience that will be joining you. It's a bit of a deer in headlights experience, but I'll get my sea legs. I do promise you that in any event, I really am grateful that you're here with me, because we're going to explore some important and timely topics as we go through the episodes of this podcast. For example, we live in a world that values charisma. I'm using air quotes here, charisma, loudness and spectacle over wisdom, patience and substance. What if that is a huge mistake? What if the leaders that we truly need are being ignored. What if a style like dag hammer shows style quiet, reflective, deeply principled is exactly what we're missing today. So let's get into it. Let's kick off this episode one by talking about the crisis of extroverted leadership and why I think the world needs more people like Dag. So how did we get here? Where did this bias toward extroverted leadership come from for one thing, the loudest person in the room is often seen as the most competent or the most engaged, the most passionate. But is that actually true? One of the quotes that I include in decoding the unicorn the book in a footnote was how a college professor once told me, when I was having a really difficult time, an empty can makes the most noise. And that is so true, something that's hollow is actually going to rattle around a lot louder than something with some substance, something with some real meat and potatoes inside it. The loudest person that's in a boardroom or a meeting is not necessarily the person who has the best ideas or the person who cares the most about the job. They could just be really freaking loud. That's not always a very beneficial thing. I know, speaking for myself, there have been plenty of meetings that I sat in when I was in the corporate world where the loudest extrovert was the person who won the day. And let's also be further honest, it was generally the loudest, most extroverted male who won the day. Introverts, HSPs, creatives and women who might not have wanted to be loud and boisterous and over the top were often passed over in favor of those loud, pushy, aggressive, extroverted men. Society tends to reward bravado over actual competence. Confidence is a great thing, but when we start getting into arrogance and overconfidence, braggadocio, bravado, machismo and not real competence, not real mastery of a skill. We're in trouble because none of that is a substitute for any actual wisdom in the political sphere, as well as mass media and the corporate world, we've seen this rise of so called charismatic leaders. And the reason why I tend to say it that way, and I tend to put charisma or charismatic in air quotes, is because, for one thing, one man's trash is another man's treasure, and vice versa, one one man's treasure is another man's No thank you. I'm not interested in that, but it's like, what even is this idea of charisma? Anyway? When we start to strip away this additional verbiage, it usually means extrovert. It usually means loud, neuro, typical, pushy, sociable, extrovert, and we tend to in the in the media and in the Western world, we tend to equate someone who gets up on a stage or gets behind a podium and jabbers a lot as being someone who knows a lot, if they can just talk around somebody in search. Goals, they must have some level of talent, and it's like, well, they may have the gift of gab and they may have the talent of BS, but it doesn't mean they're actually giving you anything of substance, and we see plenty of examples of performative leadership in today's world. Politicians. Hello, hi. How are you? CEOs, influencers galore, people that may have a gimmick, they may have some kind of kitsch, but when you really listen to what they're saying, they're not communicating any valid points. My God, politicians are notorious for behaving that way. Introverts and HSPs are often overlooked for leadership and management positions, even when they are more effective. I cannot tell you, you know, I've told this story before across platforms. I'll say it again. I cannot tell you how many times in my career I heard things like, you're a great producer, you're awesome at what you do, but you really need to be more sociable. You need to socialize more. You need to hang out at the water cooler and the coffee pot and talk to more people. Normally, we have to say that work is for work and not for playing and horsing around. But with you, it's the opposite. You need to play. You need to horse around more. People don't like you. They can't really breed you. You're not chatty with everybody. You don't hang out enough. No, Sara, you don't have to go to Billy Bob's barbecue and give up your Saturday afternoon with your friends and family. But it would really look good if you did so many times I heard variations of that same theme, and it's like, why can't I just come to work and do my job, do it in a way that's exemplary, that satisfies everybody, and that's profitable, and then I just go home. Why do I have to be sociable? There's a passage, by the way, in markings, where Dag talks about how much He loathes that word, sociable. I'm like kindred spirit alert. So what's the alternative? What happens when a leader comes along who doesn't fit this loud, extroverted mold, and they're really freaking incredible? Well, that's where somebody like Dag Hammarskjöld comes in. Let's take a minute, especially for those of you who are new to this podcast, which would be everybody, since this is the beginning episode, if you're also new to Dag's story, if you just happened upon this one day and thought, yeah, sure, unicorns, whatever. I'll tune in. Dag was a diplomat. Yes, he was the second secretary general of the United Nations. He was also a philosopher, a translator, a linguist, a problem solver, and just an all around awesome human being. Yes, he was reserved and intellectual, but not in the way that's been sort of portrayed by the media over the decades, like Dag was cold, he was calculating, he was manipulative, he was unfeeling. He didn't have any social skills at all. He didn't have any friends. Nobody wanted to be around him. All of that is just completely and totally untrue. What Dag didn't do is rush into situations like the proverbial bull in a china shop. He would wait, he would suspend judgment, he would take the time to clarify his thoughts. One of the things that I have noticed I'm in the process of writing another book. I'm calling it Simply Dag and it deals a lot with the dance that Dag had to do with the media. He was a private man thrust into the international spotlight. He had a highly, highly public role. We don't really understand that as much in 2025 now. We obviously understand the idea that celebrities, actors and actresses, people from the Hollywood set, as well as modern politicians, have zero privacy. They're in the tabloids. They're on the news all the time. It's and social media as well. It's ubiquitous, but we don't really understand that. Like back in the 1950s Dag was all over the newspapers all over the world, he was really seen as like this, President or Prime Minister, figure of the world stage, and his privacy went bye, bye very fast. But even when he would be in press conferences, even when he would be cornered by the media, he wouldn't shoot from the hip. He wouldn't do the ready aim fire and or the, I should say, ready fire aim. He would take his time to formulate a cogent response, and he wouldn't allow anybody to bait him into saying something controversial or saying something negative, or getting a tit for tat. Going with somebody else. He was reserved in that regard. Of I'm going to reserve my judgment. I'm going to reserve my comments until I know what I want to say, and I've had time to think about it. So Dag was a deep listener. He was a strategic thinker. He wasn't a reactionary. He tried to build bridges rather than burning them down. He had a strong moral compass. He didn't compromise his ethics just to be popular. And he really led with service, not with ego. If you listen to his radio broadcast from this, I believe, which I'll drop a link so that you can hear it in his own voice, he talks about service and duty as being love in action. That was really his way of showing love, was by performing service and being duty bound. So it wasn't about, I want to take this position to glorify me. It was about, I actually do sincerely want to help other people. He handled crises calmly. That's a stark contrast, not only to people on the political sphere who like to lash out and make flamboyant comments, who like to escalate conflicts and seek attention, but we also see that in the corporate world, there are bully bosses, and there are also passive aggressive bully bosses. They might put a lovely face out to the public, or they might put a lovely face out to people in other departments, but then the individuals that actually have to work with them are like, Oh my God, this person is a bully. This person is horrendous to be around, and it can be even more traumatizing when nobody believes you. So if you're working for someone who has a carefully crafted image to where they seem to be lovey dovey, sunshine and roses and everything's great, but then you're around them, privately in a meeting, and they act like a complete jerk and nobody believes you. It's like a form of corporate gas lighting. Dag's ability to remain calm, to not escalate, to not be an attention hound. These things did not make him weak. He faced enormous pressure and he didn't break that's not the hallmark of somebody who's a wimp or Mr. Milquetoast. So why do we not have more leaders like him today? What happens when there's that kind of a void, or that kind of a vacuum, when leadership becomes performative, the real problems don't get solved. Dag was very savvy about understanding that. He gave a speech once where he talked about how, if someone is a juggler, if someone is the lion tamer at a circus. If someone's doing acrobatics, they get a lot of applause, they satisfy the audience for that brief moment, and everybody's razzled and dazzled, and then they go home, and it's all forgotten about the patient builder, the person who actually has to do the slow and steady, methodical construction is the person who will really get long term, sustainable results. We can also compare it to doing a crash diet. You may be able to go on a crash diet for two or three weeks at most, that might be a generous estimate, but you might be able to go on a crash diet for two or three weeks, lose a bunch of weight, and then your willpower gives out. You're hungry, you're tired, you've probably lost more muscle than fat anyway, and your body is beginning to rebel against you. Fad diets and crash diets are not meant to work and be a sustainable solution that you use for the rest of your life. So it is with performative leadership. Somebody razzles and dazzles, and they have jazz hands, and they seem very seductive and easy to listen to, but they don't actually solve any problems. My gosh, I've seen plenty of those people too over the course of my corporate career, people who just seem to get promoted. You didn't really understand why, other than they always seem to kiss the right backsides and massage the right egos, but they didn't actually do anything, and in fact, they weren't even good producers. It was like, well, they're not making very much money for the company. They just seem to have mastered the art of ego massage, and so the can just gets kicked down the road further and further, and no problems are actually being solved. A lot of modern crisis management tends to be reactive instead of proactive. There's a loss of wisdom in leadership, because if somebody's just a smooth talker or a fast talker, it doesn't necessarily mean they're also a deep thinker and. So there's also this push towards constant performance and also just being able to perform on cue. Now, I've said before that I see a real value in extemporaneous speaking and being able to make a comment off the cuff in my daytime, business oriented broadcast, one of the reasons why I moved away from having guests come on is because, for one thing, it was getting more and more difficult to sync up schedules with other people. I had a woman that wanted to record at like, 3am central time, and I thought there's just no way I would either have to stay up all night and try to remain coherent, or I'd have to get up around to start trying to get myself coherent, drink some hot tea so that I didn't have a froggy voice in the middle of the night. No, just no. The to use some corporate jargon, the juice is not worth the squeeze. I'm not going to do that. But for another thing, I started to encounter people that took themselves so seriously. It was like they thought that they were going to be the next Oprah Winfrey or the next Tony Robbins, and they would just be like, well, I want to have all questions sent to me ahead of time. I want to approve every syllable that's uttered, every breath that's taken, and it's like no, just no. There is a value to being able to know your subject backwards, forwards and sideways, so that if somebody says, Hey, do you want to come to a book signing? Do you want to come give a talk at the library? Do you want to get on a podcast? Do you want to record a YouTube with me? You're ready to go? You can think on the fly, but there's also value to recharging and reflecting before you act. Life is not always about that. Shoot from the hip. Hurry up. Give us a response right now, sometimes you'd need the opportunity to take a breath, take a pause and really formulate a good response, something that reflects what you really mean and what you genuinely want to communicate to other people. It shouldn't always be in the corporate world or in the political arena. You need to give an answer right now. We want an answer right now. You need to tell us everything that has happened right now. In the business world, that person might need more time to refine their response. If they're pitching to a client, let's say that there's a meeting at 2pm and they're pitching to a client, they may not want to go in unprepared. They may want to have some time to do some research, to get a general outline of their thoughts and feel more confident about what they're doing. There's nothing wrong with that. So there shouldn't be this stress of having to always ad lib. I do think it's a highly valuable skill to be able to speak extemporaneously and to know what you know, that you know, that you know, so that you're prepared. But not everything in life needs to be almost like you're being held at knife point. You better say something right now, or you're fired. That's absurd. There are real world consequences to that sort of ready fire, aim mentality. You have CEOs that make rash decision, rash decisions based on public perception, you have politicians who care more about social media engagement than policies. That also happens in the corporate world, I have worked for more than a few places that seem to care more about photo ops and patting each other on the back on social media than about actually doing anything out in the community. Loud leaders get caught in scandals and missteps and bad decisions because they didn't take the time to think. Maybe they did think and they just decided to do the wrong thing. But if you are acting from that place of hurry up. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. Do it now. It's almost like panic mode, like Chicken Little you're probably not going to do as good of a job as you could have if you just calm the heck down. So if we know that all of this is a problem, what can we do about it? How can we embrace introverted and HSP leadership today? Well, for one thing, we have to recognize and value quiet leadership in workplaces, communities and in politics, we should encourage thoughtful decision making over knee jerk reactions. We should shift leadership selection criteria away from who talks the best, who schmoozes the best, who massages our ego the best, and start looking at who has the best ideas, who's the deepest thinker, who has the most knowledge on this topic. If you're an introvert and you're listening, please know that quiet strength is needed now more than ever. You don't have to fake being an extrovert. In order to be an effective leader or a good people manager, and leadership is also not about volume. It's about impact. Let's think about this for a second. So here we are. Dag passed away in September of 1961 I'm recording this in February of 2025, to release the episode in March of 2025, all these years later, his legacy is still amazing. That didn't happen because he was loud, he was brassy, he was pushy, he was aggressive. We're not on this broadcast talking about Dag because he fomented World War Three or he advocated for atomic bombs to be dropped all over the world. We're not on this podcast remembering him because he was loud and wild and zany. I'm here talking to all of you because of Dag's real legacy and because of his real impact, Dag showed us that quiet leadership is not weak. It's one of the strongest forces in the world. And as we look at, shall we say, the chaos of today's leadership landscape, it's time to start taking a different kind of leader seriously, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to tune in, especially to this inaugural episode. If anything resonated with you, please subscribe and share it with others. Tune in next time, as we continue to unravel the myths and the truths about Dag as well as taking a look at the modern leadership and political landscape. See you soon. 

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