BirdsCommaAngry
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What we as fans of the Seattle Seahawks are seeing again and again is that the NFL media is chalk full of individuals who know very little about and even seem to dislike our own Marshawn Lynch. We've heard presumptuous statements about his beliefs and his character, ranging from accusations of being a locker room distraction to an all out cancer. Unsurprisingly, this comes from sources that Lynch chooses to guard those very qualities from. Much of this behavior has been explained away as racially motivated bias, efforts to smear Lynch for not cooperating with the entitlement of certain media members, and manufactured conflict for the sake of creating a juicier story than the one Lynch is giving them. What is surprising, however, is there is a bias at work and there is a juicy story to be told. That story is America's transformation into an extroverted culture and how that transformation has lead to both the mistreatment and misunderstanding of Marshawn Lynch we're witnessing today.
"Marshawn, people have been trying to change you your whole life." -Pete Carroll
Robert Klemko was able to bring this line and the context in which it was said to our attention in his article A Marshawn Kind of Way (linked below). What Robert wasn't able to accomplish in a short article, though, was articulating some of the core reasons why people have been trying to change Marshawn his whole life. On Marshawn's end, those reasons are due to the way his mind works and due to his upbringing not offering the chance to learn the social skills needed to skillfully navigate the NFL media as more extroverted players, like Michael Strahan, have been able to do. On the media's end, those reasons are due to America's recent history with the development of big business and a misunderstanding about what makes the best kind of salesperson.
Introversion isn't just about a preference for how we communicate with others; it's about stimulation. Whether we're listening to music, viewing a landscape, talking with a coworker, or even in how a person handles having a small army of needy reporters shoving recorders in their face, we're all going to handle ourselves differently based upon what fears and pleasures we get out of those experiences. Introverts have tons of tendencies from those fears and pleasures. They tend to listen to music at a lower volume, solve complex puzzles more quickly, retain more of the information they've seen or read, etc. Introverted people like detail and get more stimulation out of less than extroverts. They're also very easily over-stimulated, especially when speaking in public. When reporters attempt to conduct the standard post-game interview with a dozen people crowding around a player's locker, it's too much stimulation for the detail-oriented mind of someone like Marshawn. The end result is an unpleasant experience for Marshawn and a terrible interview for the reporters.
So, why do they do it?
During the end of the 19th century, our country was beginning to become an industrial juggernaut. This part of our nation's evolution created a new demand for the salesperson and all sorts of ideas about what made the best salesperson. The victor among those ideas was the out-going, assertive personalities of heavily extroverted individuals. The idea was that being out-going allowed greater ability to connect with a potential customer and like all plausible ideas, this one was particularly contagious. The problem, however, is it isn't entirely true. What makes one person gifted as a salesmen in acting as a public speaker in front of a crowd of people will often also make them weaker as a salesmen in a one-on-one encounter. This is because for the heavily extroverted mind, a crowd is exciting; it's the perfect level of stimulation. However, getting people what they want when dealing with them one-on-one and one-by-one requires getting into more detail and this exercise in detail is typically pretty boring for an extrovert. There is no single ideal salesmen as a sale depends too greatly on context. For a large business to reach its utmost potential, they need both introverts and extroverts and especially those who are willing to learn the skills that come less naturally.
Modern day reporters attempt to engage Marshawn as they are because they don't recognize this. They're hopped up on the extroverted ideal because that's the group-think that's been passed down to them from a previous generation. If Lynch were put into a brain-scanning fMRI machine designed to determine what kind of brain activity is happening, we'd see some big differences in activity depending on what situation he was placed in. If he were in there and shown a few pictures of defensive fronts, we would see his synapses flair and all the gears start to turn and turn at a higher rate than many other RBs. If we put him in and played a clip of the typical group of reporters asking questions, we would see his fight-or-flight take over instead of the deep thinking. People have been trying to change Marshawn because they haven't recognized that what makes him so uncomfortable during post-game interviews is one reason why he is so skilled as a player.
Some introverted people are able to be highly successful doing what extroverts are born being better at but Marshawn Lynch didn't have the sort of childhood necessary to grow those particular skills. Introverts require being exposed little by little to what over-stimulates them to reduce the effect of their fight-or-flight response. With growing up on food-stamps in the projects without a father, Lynch's skill as a public speaker years down the road was probably the last thing on his or his mother's mind. Pete Carroll has never tried to change Marshawn because he realized this part of Marshawn's past and recognized the resulting duality of his psyche. It's like Marshawn says; he's just about that action. More importantly, he's found a place accepting of that. Now if only the entire NFL media could follow suit...
Information in this post comes from:
A Marshawn Kind of Way, Robert Klemko ---- (http://mmqb.si.com/2014/12/09/marshawn- ... hawks-nfl/)
Marshawn Lynch: rare glimpse at soft side of Seahawks’ Beast Mode, Larry Stone ---- (http://seattletimes.com/html/larrystone ... 05xml.html)
Quiet, Susan Cain (Book: http://seattle.bibliocommons.com/item/s ... 1030_quiet) (Her website: http://www.thepowerofintroverts.com/)
"Marshawn, people have been trying to change you your whole life." -Pete Carroll
Robert Klemko was able to bring this line and the context in which it was said to our attention in his article A Marshawn Kind of Way (linked below). What Robert wasn't able to accomplish in a short article, though, was articulating some of the core reasons why people have been trying to change Marshawn his whole life. On Marshawn's end, those reasons are due to the way his mind works and due to his upbringing not offering the chance to learn the social skills needed to skillfully navigate the NFL media as more extroverted players, like Michael Strahan, have been able to do. On the media's end, those reasons are due to America's recent history with the development of big business and a misunderstanding about what makes the best kind of salesperson.
Introversion isn't just about a preference for how we communicate with others; it's about stimulation. Whether we're listening to music, viewing a landscape, talking with a coworker, or even in how a person handles having a small army of needy reporters shoving recorders in their face, we're all going to handle ourselves differently based upon what fears and pleasures we get out of those experiences. Introverts have tons of tendencies from those fears and pleasures. They tend to listen to music at a lower volume, solve complex puzzles more quickly, retain more of the information they've seen or read, etc. Introverted people like detail and get more stimulation out of less than extroverts. They're also very easily over-stimulated, especially when speaking in public. When reporters attempt to conduct the standard post-game interview with a dozen people crowding around a player's locker, it's too much stimulation for the detail-oriented mind of someone like Marshawn. The end result is an unpleasant experience for Marshawn and a terrible interview for the reporters.
So, why do they do it?
During the end of the 19th century, our country was beginning to become an industrial juggernaut. This part of our nation's evolution created a new demand for the salesperson and all sorts of ideas about what made the best salesperson. The victor among those ideas was the out-going, assertive personalities of heavily extroverted individuals. The idea was that being out-going allowed greater ability to connect with a potential customer and like all plausible ideas, this one was particularly contagious. The problem, however, is it isn't entirely true. What makes one person gifted as a salesmen in acting as a public speaker in front of a crowd of people will often also make them weaker as a salesmen in a one-on-one encounter. This is because for the heavily extroverted mind, a crowd is exciting; it's the perfect level of stimulation. However, getting people what they want when dealing with them one-on-one and one-by-one requires getting into more detail and this exercise in detail is typically pretty boring for an extrovert. There is no single ideal salesmen as a sale depends too greatly on context. For a large business to reach its utmost potential, they need both introverts and extroverts and especially those who are willing to learn the skills that come less naturally.
Modern day reporters attempt to engage Marshawn as they are because they don't recognize this. They're hopped up on the extroverted ideal because that's the group-think that's been passed down to them from a previous generation. If Lynch were put into a brain-scanning fMRI machine designed to determine what kind of brain activity is happening, we'd see some big differences in activity depending on what situation he was placed in. If he were in there and shown a few pictures of defensive fronts, we would see his synapses flair and all the gears start to turn and turn at a higher rate than many other RBs. If we put him in and played a clip of the typical group of reporters asking questions, we would see his fight-or-flight take over instead of the deep thinking. People have been trying to change Marshawn because they haven't recognized that what makes him so uncomfortable during post-game interviews is one reason why he is so skilled as a player.
Some introverted people are able to be highly successful doing what extroverts are born being better at but Marshawn Lynch didn't have the sort of childhood necessary to grow those particular skills. Introverts require being exposed little by little to what over-stimulates them to reduce the effect of their fight-or-flight response. With growing up on food-stamps in the projects without a father, Lynch's skill as a public speaker years down the road was probably the last thing on his or his mother's mind. Pete Carroll has never tried to change Marshawn because he realized this part of Marshawn's past and recognized the resulting duality of his psyche. It's like Marshawn says; he's just about that action. More importantly, he's found a place accepting of that. Now if only the entire NFL media could follow suit...
Information in this post comes from:
A Marshawn Kind of Way, Robert Klemko ---- (http://mmqb.si.com/2014/12/09/marshawn- ... hawks-nfl/)
Marshawn Lynch: rare glimpse at soft side of Seahawks’ Beast Mode, Larry Stone ---- (http://seattletimes.com/html/larrystone ... 05xml.html)
Quiet, Susan Cain (Book: http://seattle.bibliocommons.com/item/s ... 1030_quiet) (Her website: http://www.thepowerofintroverts.com/)
