142. Why Introverts Are Still Being Passed Over for Leadership — with David Boroughs

What if being overlooked at work had nothing to do with your performance — and everything to do with a bias so embedded in workplace culture that most people don't even recognise it as bias at all?

David Boroughs spent 30 years navigating corporate America as an introvert. He received top performance rankings and was still told, repeatedly, that he wasn't visible enough. Near the end of his career, that contradiction became an epiphany: it wasn't him that was broken. It was the culture.

Now retired, David is an author and advocate for personality type inclusion. We talk about what it costs to mask your introversion, why the burden of change cannot keep falling on the individual, and what leaders can practically do to create cultures where introverts thrive as their authentic selves.

We also explore the Anxiety High book series — a fiction series for introverted teenagers that David co-authored with his son, Joshua — and why it's finding just as much resonance with parents, teachers, and school counsellors.

In this episode:

• What "personality type bias" is — unconscious, socially accepted, and legally unchallenged
• The performance review moment that changed everything for David
• The exhaustion of performing extroversion, and why it compounds over time
• What leaders can do differently: hiring language, selection committees, and creating genuine belonging
• Why introverts who break into leadership sometimes perpetuate the very bias they've suffered
• How David and his teenage son wrote fiction books together to help young introverts feel seen

About David Boroughs

David is the author of The Extrovert's Guide to Elevating Introverted Leaders in the Workplace and co-author of the Anxiety High teen fiction series. Connect with David on LinkedIn and his website.

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This episode was edited by Aura House Productions