4 Strategies to Spread Ideas Quickly If You're an Introvert

It's understandable to think when listening to any of the world's politicians, CEOs, and educators that to lead or entice people to listen to your big ideas, you have to be a social person who spends every moment shaking hands, kissing kids, and meeting people.

But that's not true. You don't have to go on a world tour, or try to convince everyone you meet in order to be a leader and influence people's lives. In fact, you can achieve great things only by connecting with a few people. This is because when you connect with the right people, you can share your idea, sell your product, and encourage people to use your app without confusing yourself with too many people.

When you have a great idea and you tell the right people about it in the right way, you can achieve a turning point from which your idea spreads quickly without any further effort from you. If you always thought that you had to pretend to be social to get people's attention for your ideas, this concept could change your life.

Introverts have a natural advantage when it comes to sharing powerful ideas. This is because they are good at forming deeper relationships with fewer people. So, they save their energy and focus it on the people they get along with.

If you want to develop your skill in creating turning points for your ideas, products, or anything else, you may find it useful to learn from introverts. In this article, we will talk about turning points formation, and what you should do to make sure that your ideas have the best chance of spreading.

How Turning Points Work?

Do you remember when you were at school? At the end of the day everyone is watching the clock ticking, your teacher is trying to get your attention, and someone starts to quietly pack their bag trying to keep quiet and avoid attention, but  someone else notices and starts packing too. Then a third person notices the other two and does the same. Then a fourth person notices and starts to pack up, too. Seconds later, the students are all packing. It's called the "Professor's problem".

What happened is a turning point. If you think about why the impatient fourth person had to pack up, you would notice that it was the influence of the third person. Until then everyone else who packed their bag had been affected by the first.

Three steps away from the first trigger, 30 people imitate them. Most of them don't know where the transformation started. Many don't even know why they're packing, but they simply do what the rest do.

Turning points happen when the people you influence start to influence others. Then you don't need to do anything to share your idea. Even if you disappear, your influence will continue to spread. This is because the idea no longer depends on you. This is a sign of success for anyone who is looking to share an idea.

In "The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference" the author Malcolm Gladwell describes in detail how tipping points form and what people who have ideas worth spreading can do to get attention.

We know that you can spread an idea to encroach yourself and your circle by creating a tipping point. But how do you do that successfully? How can you design your impactful idea and get it ready to go viral?

There are some promising ideas in crowd psychology that will help understand how tipping points are created, and it will help share ideas, especially for introverts who have a limited amount of social energy that they can invest.

Crowd psychology:

To understand how people are affected by thoughts, you should learn a little about crowd psychology. We, as human beings, act in very different ways when we are alone. We think of ourselves compared to when we are in a group, or we consider ourselves part of a community. We may even think that we are in control of our actions. The truth is that when we are with others, or even when we have a relationship with others, we make decisions differently.

A UK-funded study revealed the way we make those decisions, and how we can be manipulated into making them the way someone wants. The goal of their research was to manage crowds better in emergency situations, but what they discovered is incredibly useful for introverts who want to spread their ideas as much as possible without becoming leaders who meddle in every little thing. 

Here are 4 strategies to spread ideas quickly if you're an introvert:

1. Presenting the idea as the easiest option:

If you want people to listen to your ideas, they should feel comfortable and safe about them. One of the most important discoveries made by UK researchers is that people tend to choose the easiest and safest way to get where they want to go.

They pointed out that in our nature we prefer shortcuts that have the fewest and clearest turns to get to our destination as soon as possible.

This is something you can see in gardens. Although there are marked paths that are simple and straight, they are often ineffective. You can see where the grass erodes into a soil path because everyone takes that shortcut.

But what about ideas and how do they spread? Oftentimes, in order to look smart or special, we overcomplicate our thoughts, adding unnecessary details without good reason. Then they become harder and longer for others to understand. Eventually fewer people follow it. So, if you want people to listen to your ideas, they should be easy to understand.

2. Focusing on immediate short-term benefits:

It is not impossible to persuade people to listen to a complex idea, but it takes a lot of effort. Another finding from crowd control research is that when necessary, you can persuade people to choose the harder path, but you will need to put in a lot of effort. For example, groups will choose a longer and less abbreviated route if it is well lit, attractive, distinct, and clean because people are afraid to walk paths in which they cannot see the end clearly. This is because they fear going the wrong way. They are guided by the human tendency to fear what we might lose more than appreciate what we might gain.

In terms of creating a tipping point and sharing an idea, this means that you can overcome objections to your idea by making it more engaging. It takes more effort. But if you're committed, you can spend more time making people aware of your idea to guide them to the "enlightening path" that they naturally prefer.

For example, you may notice that some people stand while they work at their desks even though sitting is easier. The reason is probably that someone told them about the negative impact of sitting for the whole working day on the body. Then they showed them some smart things they can do to avoid it. That person would have explained their alternative solution to make it look attractive and give them everything they need to implement it.

To get people to listen to a complex idea, you'll need to do more than just telling them how much things will be better in the end. You must show them how it would be better to follow this path right now, just as someone who walks to the store would prefer the clean sidewalk of a well-lit street to the narrow, dark alley.

3. Finding small groups to influence first:

If you want to save a lot of money, you will be careful when spending small amounts. If you do so, you will always have a lot of money. This applies to the way of influencing a large community as well.

If you ask most people, you will not find anyone who likes to be alone among a large number of people. Most people, whether they are introverts or extroverts, prefer to be surrounded by people they know.

This is what the crowd study found. Most crowds are not just a large group of individuals. They are in fact a collection of many small groups, such as friends, families, organizations, and other people gathered together by the fact of being in the same place. That is, if you want to influence a large group of people and share your idea, you must influence smaller groups within the crowd.

This is great news for introverts because they feel more comfortable forming relationships with a smaller group. It is also easier to get the attention of a small number of people.To create a tipping point, your goal should be to influence enough small groups in order to influence the opinion of the crowd.

For example, there are sites that target a specific type of readers, such as those dedicated to helping introverts become better leaders. But there are different types of introverts and different types of leaders. It is not possible to talk to all introverts in every article. But in total there are hundreds of articles in the site's archive, and they offer different articles that appeal to different readers. While each article may attract only a few people, together the articles make up a community of millions of readers.

To invest in your introverted traits and to share your ideas, focus on small groups. Once you reach enough of them, the whole community will notice. That's when you reach the tipping point.

4. Leading from the Center:

When you think of leadership, you probably think of a brave leader standing in front of a large crowd and giving an inspiring speech. When you think of the structure of an organization, you probably imagine a pyramid with a point at its head.

This is the default model of leadership in most parts of the world and it's hard to imagine otherwise. However, there is another and better way, which is the centralized leadership model. It's not only better for introverts who feel uncomfortable putting themselves first, it is also a faster way to share an idea and make change.

Think about the way bees or ant colonies work. The queen is the center of operations and is surrounded by the entire colony, but it is still closely related to some bees. When it moves, the bees around it will notice and spread the message to the rest.

According to crowd psychology research from the UK, this is how good leaders share their ideas too. They found that the crowd can collectively decide how to act based on the actions of a few people in the crowd. They also found that the message spreads more quickly when it comes from the center.

When you try to influence hierarchically, you get better control of the message, but you do it at the expense of speed, which is a key element in reaching the tipping point. The faster an idea is shared, the faster it can spread and change.

In conclusion:

The idea that you have to be an extrovert to share an idea is not true. According to what we know about crowd psychology and how tipping points work, introverts are naturally capable of becoming leaders and sharing their ideas with large crowds.

If your idea is good, you don’t have to tell everyone about it to reach the tipping point. It is enough to share it with a few right people in the right way. Then it will reach and spread without much effort from you. Here are some things you should do when you want to share an important idea:

1. Simplifying your idea as much as possible: When an idea is simple, people feel that it is safe to implement and share.
2. Drawing people's attention to its immediate benefit: You can convince people to accept a complex idea by showing how it improves their lives now.
3. Focusing on small groups: Large communities are influenced by the smaller groups that they are made of. So, convince a few of them and you will make progress quickly.
4. Practicing leadership from the center: Information travels quickly when it comes from the center rather than the top.

The real lesson at the end of all this is to make a big impact and forget what you're used to seeing. The media highlights the hierarchical leadership model because it's exciting and our culture is dominated by social personality. However, the research suggests there's another way to achieve the same result and reach a tipping point with an important idea quickly. In addition, being an introvert will help you achieve what you want in a sustainable way, which is reason enough to ignore the mainstream.