‘David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants’ by Malcolm Gladwell (Little, Brown and Company; October 1, 2013)
Table of Contents:
i. Introduction/Synopsis
PART I: WHEN ADVANTAGES BECOME DISADVANTAGES
1. Too Much of a Good Thing, Part I: Money and Parenting
2. Too Much of a Good Thing, Part II: Small Class Sizes
3. Too Much of a Good Thing, Part III: Miscellaneous Excessiveness
4. Power and Authority Gone Awry
PART II: WHEN DISADVANTAGES BECOME ADVANTAGES: DESIRABLE DIFFICULTIES
5. The Plight of the Dyslexic
6. Successful Dyslexics
a. David Boies
b. Brain Grazer
7. Dyslexia and Risk-Taking
8. Severe Trauma: The Trauma of Losing a Parent in Childhood
a. Emil ‘Jay’ Freireich
PART III: UNDERDOG GROUPS: THE EFFECTIVENESS OF UNCONVENTIONAL TACTICS AND APPROACHES
9. Underdog Armies (and a Digression into the Story of David and Goliath)
10. Underdog Sports Teams: The Redwood City Junior Girls Basketball Team
11. Conclusion
i. Introduction/Synopsis
This book is not about underdogs and giants in any conventional sense of these terms. Rather, the book is about the curious nature of advantages and disadvantages, and how each can (under certain circumstances) become its opposite.
The first lesson to be learned is that the things we take to be advantages are often no such thing. Our greatest mistake here comes from the fact that we identify a certain quality or characteristic as being a benefit or advantage, and then assume that the more of it there is the better—when this is often not the case. Put another way, most of us recognize that it is possible to have too much of a good thing, and yet we fail to appreciate just how often and where this principle applies. For instance, we recognize that having a certain amount of money greatly facilitates raising children (it being very difficult to raise a family in a state of poverty), and yet we fail to recognize that beyond a certain point wealth also makes parenting increasingly difficult (for it becomes harder and harder to instill qualities of hard work and self-control). Or we recognize that small class sizes are a good thing, and yet we fail to recognize that classes can actually begin to suffer once they become too small (since diversity and energy begin to disappear).
Another arena wherein an advantage can become a disadvantage is in power and authority. Power and authority is an advantage, of course; however, when it is wielded illegitimately and without fairness, it can actually cause more chaos, destruction and violence than it curbs. This is as true in the classroom as it is in community policing as it is in handling minority groups within a nation’s borders.
The second lesson to be learned here is that certain disadvantages can sometimes drive people into positions of advantage. Take the disadvantage of being born with a disability, for example. Say dyslexia. In our modern world, where the ability to read is extremely important—and practically a requirement for success—having great difficulty with reading is a major disadvantage. And indeed the statistics indicate that the vast majority of those who are born dyslexic end up falling through the cracks and missing out on success.
Still, though, many dyslexics have gone on to become highly successful people; and it has also been noted that in certain fields (such as entrepreneurship) an inordinate proportion of the most successful individuals do, in fact, have dyslexia. So how can we explain these success stories? What we find in these cases is that these individuals have managed to compensate for their disability by developing skills that make up for their flaws (such as an improved memory or debating prowess). Thus, in a way, the successful dyslexic has actually benefited from his disability, because it has forced him into a position where he has had to develop other skills that have led him directly to success.
Also at play here is the fact that dyslexics tend to endure many failures when they are young. Repeated failures (especially at a young age) have the potential to crush the spirit. But they can also have the opposite effect: they can inure the individual to failure, thus making them more likely to take risks and try things that others wouldn’t—which is often a sure path to success.
A similar phenomenon also sometimes touches trauma victims. Take the ultimate trauma of losing a parent in childhood, for example. This is one of the worse experiences imaginable, and the trauma of losing a parent in childhood does indeed crush the vast majority of those who have the misfortune of enduring it.
Again, though, it has been noted that a very high proportion of highly successful individuals across many fields (from science to art to politics) have in fact lost a parent in childhood. And what we find in these cases is that the experience has left these individuals with the mind-set that now that they have endured such a terrible event, that nothing could ever be so bad. And thus they are liberated from the fear of failure, and—like the successful dyslexic—are willing to try things and take risks that others are not (which often leads directly to success).
The same experience and logic can also apply to underdog groups. For example, when a group recognizes that it is severely over-matched in terms of skill or strength compared to its opponent, it can begin to feel liberated to try unconventional tactics and approaches. This is often for the best, for it turns out that unconventional tactics and approaches are frequently very effective against giants—in everything from sports, to politics to war—and are, in many cases, the only chance the underdog has to win anyway. Again, then, in both of these instances (the trauma victim and the underdog group) a disadvantage has driven the party into a position of advantage, and thus the disadvantage may itself be seen as a kind of boon.
Here is Malcolm Gladwell introducing his new book:
*To check out the book at Amazon.com, or purchase it, please click here: David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants. The book is also available as an audio file at Audible.com here: Audio Book
What follows is a full executive summary of David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell.
PART I: WHEN ADVANTAGES BECOME DISADVANTAGES
1. Too Much of a Good Thing, Part I: Money and Parenting
We are all well aware that it is quite possible to get too much of a good thing. And yet, when it comes to benefits and advantages, we tend to lose sight of this wisdom, and assume instead that the more the better.
Take parenting, for example. Raising a child is expensive, and it is certain that bringing up a healthy and well-rounded child requires a certain minimal amount of money. Put another way, it is extremely difficult to raise a happy and healthy child in a state of poverty. As Gladwell puts it, “it is hard to be a good parent if you have too little money. That much is obvious. Poverty is exhausting and stressful. If you have to work two jobs to make ends meet, it’s hard to have the energy in the evening to read to your children before they go to bed. If you are a working single parent, trying to pay your rent and feed and clothe your family and manage a long and difficult commute to a physically demanding job, it is hard to provide your children with the kind of consistent love and attention and discipline that makes for a healthy home” (loc. 494).
Given that having a certain amount of money makes parenting easier, we may be tempted to think that the more money one has the better—to the point where parenting would be easiest when money is no object. However, when we look into the issue, we find that this is not at all the case. Instead what we find is that beyond a certain point, wealth actually makes parenting more difficult.
The reason for this is that once there is enough wealth around, children get the idea that there is nothing their parents could not afford to buy them (now and ever). But how can you instill qualities of self-reliance, ambition and restraint when a child knows that they will never need to develop these attributes? As Gladwell puts it, “how do you teach ‘work hard, be independent, learn the value of money’ to children who look around themselves and realize that they never have to work hard, be independent, or learn the meaning of money?” (loc. 507).
Of course, it is possible to make it clear to your children that you will not buy them anything they want (or bail them out of any kind of trouble) even if you are able to do so. However, this is much harder than it sounds. It takes resolve, and a commitment to values. As Gladwell explains, “‘no we can’t’ is simple. Sometimes, as a parent, you have to say it only once or twice. It doesn’t take long for the child of a middle-class family to realize that it is pointless to ask for a pony, because a pony simply can’t happen. ‘No we won’t’ get a pony requires a conversation, and the honesty and skill to explain that what is possible is not always what is right… all of which are really difficult things for anyone to do, under any circumstances, and especially if you have a Ferrari in the driveway, a private jet, and a house in Beverly Hills the size of an airplane hangar” (loc. 522).
And because it is so difficult for wealthy parents to say ‘no’ to their children, they often don’t say ‘no’. They say ‘yes’—and this, of course, leads to a host of problems. Specifically, it leads to children who are dependent, lazy, entitled, profligate and lack self-control—which is a recipe for failure. It is for this reason that great wealth often evaporates over generations. As Gladwell explains, “that’s why so many cultures around the world have a proverb to describe the difficulty of raising children in an atmosphere of wealth. In English, the saying is ‘Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.’ The Italians say, ‘Dalle stele alle stalle’ (‘from stars to stables’). In Spain it’s ‘Quien no lo tiene, lo hance; y quien lo tiene, lo deshance’ (‘he who doesn’t have it, does it, and he who has it, misuses it’). Wealth contains the seeds of its own destruction” (loc. 512).
Thus the relationship between money and ease of parenting may be said to go like this: Having too little money makes parenting very difficult. From here, the more money one has the easier parenting becomes—until one reaches a certain amount of money, at which point parenting again becomes more and more difficult.
If you were to graph this relationship, it would look like this (loc. 525):
The shape of the graph, as is clear, is an inverted-U. And, for Gladwell, the inverted-U graph is actually quite common when it comes to advantages (loc. 528).
2. Too Much of a Good Thing, Part II: Small Class Sizes
Take class sizes for example. When it comes to the teacher-pupil relationship, it is generally believed that the more individual attention a teacher provides a student the better-off that student will be (loc. 402). And thus it is generally believed that the smaller the class-size the better (since the fewer students there are, the more individual attention each stands to receive). As Gladwell explains, “virtually everywhere in the world, parents and policymakers take it for granted that smaller classes are better classes. In the past few years, the governments of the United States, Britain, Holland, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, Korea, and China—to name just a few—have all taken major steps to reduce the size of their classes. When the governor of California announced sweeping plans to reduce the size of his state’s classes, his popularity doubled within three weeks. Inside of a month, twenty other governors had announced plans to follow suit, and within a month and a half, the White House announced class-size reduction plans of its own. To this day, 77 percent of Americans think that it makes more sense to use taxpayer money to lower class sizes than to raise teachers’ salaries. Do you know how few things 77 percent of Americans agree on?” (loc. 399; see also loc. 438).
Now, it is true, of course, that when a class gets too big, it becomes a problem: past a certain number, a teacher just has no chance to cater to the needs of each student. Consider Israel, for example. As Gladwell explains, “Israel… has historically had quite large elementary school classes. The country’s educational system uses the ‘Maimonides Rule,’ named after the twelfth-century rabbi who decreed that classes should not exceed forty children. That means elementary school classes can often have as many as thirty-eight or thirty-nine students. Where there are forty students in a grade, though, the same school could suddenly have two classes of twenty. If you do a… analysis and compare the academic performance of one of those big classes with a class of twenty, the small class will do better. That shouldn’t be surprising. Thirty-six or thirty-seven students is a lot for any teacher to handle” (loc. 546).
However, when we get down to the mid-range of class sizes, say between 12 and 30 students (loc. 404), the evidence indicates that there is little, if any, difference in academic outcomes between the bottom of the range and the top. As Gladwell explains, “if you look at all the studies of class size—and there have been hundreds done over the years. Fifteen percent find statistically significant evidence that students do better in smaller classes. Roughly the same number find that students do worse in smaller classes. Twenty percent… find no effect at all—and the balance find a little bit of evidence in either direction that isn’t strong enough to draw any real conclusions” (loc. 427).
How can we explain this bizarre result? For Gladwell, the mystery can be solved when we appreciate the fact that though teachers may have more time to spend on each student when classes are smaller, not all teachers respond to smaller classes by way of spending more time with each student. As the author explains, “a smaller classroom translates to a better outcome only if teachers change their teaching style when given a lower workload. And what the evidence suggests is that in this midrange, teachers don’t necessarily do that. They just work less. This is only human nature. Imagine you are a doctor and you suddenly learn that you’ll see twenty patients on a Friday afternoon instead of twenty-five, while getting paid the same. Would you respond by spending more time with each patient? Or would you simply leave at six-thirty instead of seven-thirty and have dinner with your kids?” (loc. 553).
O.k, but what about very small classes? Say, between 1 and 12 students? Surely teachers with such few students couldn’t help but to provide each with a very high-level of individual attention. Perhaps. However, at such small numbers, other factors begin to come into play.
The fact is that individual attention from the teacher is not the only factor that leads to school success. Oftentimes students learn as much, if not more, from class discussions as they do from individual attention—and when classes become too small, productive discussions tend to become more difficult. There are a few reasons for this. To begin with, class discussions tend to gain from diversity, energy and friction, but each of these begins to wane as classes become too small. One high school teacher that Gladwell interviewed put it this way: “The life source of any class is discussion, and that tends to need a certain critical mass to get going. I teach classes right now with students who simply don’t discuss anything, and it is brutal at times. If the numbers get too low, discussion suffers. That seems counterintuitive because I would think that the quiet kids who would hesitate to speak in a class of thirty-two would do so more readily in a class of sixteen. But that hasn’t really been my experience. The quiet ones tend to be quiet regardless. And if the class is too small, among the speakers, you don’t have enough breadth of opinion perhaps to get things really going. There is also something hard to pin down about energy level. A very small group tends to lack the sort of energy that comes from the friction between people” (loc. 579).
There are also personal and political issues to consider. Specifically, many students need to feel as though they can withdraw and have their autonomy protected at least on certain occasions or on certain days; but when classes are very small this can be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to achieve. In addition, small classes are often more easily dominated by one, or a handful, of students (or the teacher themselves), and this tends to be a counter-productive dynamic. As Gladwell explains, when classes get small enough to fit around a single table, it is “too intimate for many high schoolers to protect their autonomy on the days they need to, and too easily dominated by the bombast or bully, either of whom could be the teacher herself” (loc. 566).
In short, then, the smaller class is not always the better the class. Rather, the choice-worthiness of class sizes tends to follow the same graphing pattern as the relationship between money and the ease of parenting: the inverted-U:
3. Too Much of a Good Thing, Part III: Miscellaneous Excessiveness
For Gladwell, many advantages follow this pattern. For example, we recognize that incarcerating criminals deters criminal activity, and yet we fail to recognize that overly-long and heavy sentences can actually increase criminal activity (since harsh prison sentences not only have certain negative psychological impacts on inmates, but they also have knock-on effects on inmates’ families and even their communities) (loc. 2723, 2758-72). Or we recognize that certain universities are more prestigious than others, and so we assume that it is best to try and get into the most prestigious school that we can, but we fail to appreciate that the competition at more prestigious universities is fiercer, and that this competition is often demoralizing to all but the very best students (and leads to higher drop-out rates) (loc. 909-17). Or we recognize that modern and heavy weaponry is an advantage in war, and yet we fail to recognize that such weaponry can actually become a disadvantage when fighting a quick and mobile opponent who insists on employing guerrilla tactics (since modern and heavy weaponry renders an army slow and predictable—and the more modern and heavy weaponry an army has, the slower and more predictable it becomes) (there will be more on this topic in the section on underdog groups below).
Gladwell runs through many other instances in the book, but you get the point: benefits and advantages, when taken to an extreme, can sometimes become disadvantages.
4. Power and Authority Gone Awry
Another domain wherein an advantage can become a disadvantage is in power and authority. For though power and authority may be an advantage (all things being equal), when it is wielded illegitimately and without fairness it can actually cause more chaos, destruction and violence than it curbs. This is as true in the classroom as it is in community policing as it is in handling a minority group within a nation’s borders.
Now, there are 3 conditions that must be satisfied in order for an authority figure to be recognized as legitimate. First, the authority figure’s charges (or constituents) must feel as though they are respected and that their voice will be heard. Second, the authority figure must apply the rules in a predictable and consistent way. And third, the authority figure must be fair, in that they must apply the rules the same to everyone. As Gladwell explains, “when people in authority want the rest of us to behave, it matters—first and foremost—how they behave. This is called the ‘principle of legitimacy,’ and legitimacy is based on three things. First of all, the people who are asked to obey authority have to feel like they have a voice—that if they speak up, they will be heard. Second, the law has to be predictable. There has to be a reasonable expectation that the rules tomorrow are going to be roughly the same as the rules today. And third, the authority has to be fair. It can’t treat one group differently from another” (loc. 2339).
Whenever an authority figure fails to meet one or more of these conditions (whether it be a teacher or a police officer or a military official etc.), the response is more likely to be rebellion and discord, than obedience and peace. In other words, where power and authority is wielded illegitimately, it is more likely to be counter-productive than effective. As Gladwell puts it, “when the law is applied in the absence of legitimacy, it does not produce obedience. It produces the opposite. It leads to backlash” (loc. 2479).
The importance of establishing legitimacy on the part of an authority figure is easy enough to recognize in the classroom. However, it tends to be something that we lose sight of when it comes to law and order (loc. 2345). Nevertheless, countless examples bare out that the principle applies just as much in the latter case as in the former.
For instance, the British military broke virtually every one of the conditions of legitimacy on countless occasions during the uprising in Northern Ireland that began in the late 1960s, and, as Gladwell notes, “what should have been a difficult few months turned into thirty years of bloodshed and mayhem” (loc. 2288).
By contrast, when a police chief in New York city (named Joanne Jaffe) took measures to restore these conditions in the neighborhood of Brownsville in the early 2000s (a very tough neighborhood where the police had ignored the conditions of legitimacy for years), the measures resulted in an unprecedented drop in crime (loc. 2352-2437).
PART II: WHEN DISADVANTAGES BECOME ADVANTAGES: DESIRABLE DIFFICULTIES
Just as advantages can sometimes become disadvantages, so too can disadvantages sometimes become their opposite. Take the disadvantage of being born with a disability, for example. Let us begin with dyslexia.
5. The Plight of the Dyslexic
The era that we live in is called the information age for a reason. Access to information is the key to entry, and reading remains the surest and quickest way to achieve this goal. As such, literacy has become a basic necessity, and any difficult with reading has become a real barrier to success.
Unfortunately, some are born with a neurological disability that makes reading extremely difficult and trying. This disability is known as dyslexia. As Gladwell explains, “when a dyslexic reads, every step will be delayed, as if the different parts of the brain responsible for reading were communicating via a weak connection” (loc. 1091). The result, when it comes to comprehension, is devastating. Harvard dyslexia researcher, Nadine Gaab, describes it this way: “it may take you a while to learn to read. You read really slowly, which then impairs your reading fluency, which then impairs your reading comprehension, because you’re so slow that by the time you’re at the end of the sentence, you’ve forgotten what the beginning of the sentence was. So it leads to all these problems in middle school or high school. Then it starts affecting all other subjects in school. You can’t read. How are you going to do on math tests that have a lot of writing in them? Or how do you take an exam in social studies if it takes you two hours to read what they want?” (loc. 1109).
Needless to say, people with dyslexia tend to struggle a great deal in school (loc. 1109, 1309). And what do children do who struggle in school? They act up, and get in trouble. One dyslexic that Gladwell interviewed put it this way: “it was probably the most frustrating part of my life, which is saying a lot. Because it wasn’t that I wasn’t trying. I was working really, really hard, and no one understood that part of the equation. They literally thought that I was conscientiously making decisions to be a disruptive kid, to not learn, to hold the class back. You know what it’s like, you’re a six- or seven- or eight-year-old kid, and you’re in a public school setting, and everyone thinks that you’re an idiot, so you try to do funny things to try to create some social esteem. You’d try to get up every morning and say, today is going to be better, but after you do that a couple years, you realize that today is going to be no different than yesterday. And I’m going to have to struggle to get through and I’m going to struggle to survive another day, and we’ll see what happens’” (loc. 1313).
As self-esteem continues to suffer, and with little hope to distinguish oneself except through acting up and getting in trouble, it is no surprise that many dyslexics soon find themselves in trouble with the law. As Gaab explains, “‘usually you get a diagnosis at eight or nine, and we find that by that point, there are already a lot of serious psychological implications, because by that time, you’ve been struggling for three years… Your peers may think you’re stupid. Your parents may think you’re lazy. You have very low self-esteem, which leads to an increased rate of depression. Kids with dyslexia are more likely to end up in the juvenile system, because they act up. It’s because they can’t figure things out. It’s so important in our society to read” (loc. 1115). Elsewhere, Gladwell adds that “many people with dyslexia don’t manage to compensate for their disability. There are a remarkable number of dyslexics in prison, for example, these are people who have been overwhelmed by their failure at mastering the most basic academic tasks” (loc. 1489).
6. Successful Dyslexics
Still, despite the significant disadvantage that dyslexia poses, many dyslexics go on to become highly successful people. And in certain arenas, such as entrepreneurship, a disproportionate number of highly successful individuals are in fact dyslexics. As Gladwell explains, “an extraordinarily high number of successful entrepreneurs are dyslexic. A recent study by Julie Logan at City University London puts the number somewhere around a third. The list includes many of the most famous innovators of the past few decades. Richard Branson, the British billionaire entrepreneur, is dyslexic. Charles Schwab, the founder of the discount brokerage that bears his name, is dyslexic, as are the cell phone pioneer Craig McCaw; David Neelman, the founder of JetBlue; John Chambers, the CEO of the technology giant Cisco; Paul Orfalea, the founder of Kinko’s—to name just a few” (loc. 1162).
So how do we explain the success stories? As Gladwell points out, there are two possible explanations here. The first is that those dyslexics that have gone on to success have managed to do so because they were born with other qualities and characteristics that allowed them to succeed despite their dyslexia. The second possible explanation is that successful dyslexics somehow manage to succeed not in spite of their disability but because of it. That is, that somehow “they learned something in their struggle that proved to be of enormous advantage” (loc. 1165)—and that this advantage allowed them to succeed.
In the examples that Gladwell looked at, what he found is that the latter explanation was far more compelling than the former.
a. David Boies
Take David Boies, for example. Despite having dyslexia, Boies has gone on to become one of the most success trail lawyers on the planet (loc. 1184). How did he do it? Boies’ key to success was compensation learning.
Compensation learning is what you do when you find yourself so poor in one particular area or skill that you compensate by way of devoting your focus and attention to another area or skill that makes up for it (loc. 1231-38). This is the opposite of capitalization learning. In capitalization learning, you take a skill that you are already good at and devote your attention to honing it as much as possible. As you might suspect, compensation learning is much less intuitive and much more difficult than capitalization learning. As Gladwell explains, “most of the learning that we do is capitalization learning. It is easy and obvious. If you have a beautiful voice and perfect pitch, it doesn’t take much to get you to join a choir. ‘Compensation learning,’ on the other hand, is really hard” (loc. 1234).
Still, dyslexics often have no choice but to develop skills that compensate for their disability, and this is the position that David Boies found himself in when he was younger. In Boies’ case, the skills that he focused his attention on (in place of reading) were listening and memorization. And this compensation process began at a very young age. As Gladwell explains, Boies’ “mother would read to him when he was young. He would memorize what she said because he couldn’t follow what was on the page” (loc. 1169). Boies adds that “‘listening is something I’ve been doing essentially all my life. I learned to do it because that was the only way that I could learn. I remember what people say. I remember the words they use’” (loc. 1194).
Thus when it came to school, while other students took notes and studied from their textbooks, Boies listened attentively in class and committed the basics to memory (loc. 1198). Now, when it came to law school, some reading was, of course, required; however, in these instances, Boies found that he could get by by taking short-cuts. As Gladwell explains, “Boies discovered that there were summaries of the major cases—guides that would boil down the key point of a long Supreme Court opinion to a page or so. ‘People might tell you that’s an undesirable way to do law school,’ he says. ‘But it was functional’” (loc. 1193).
And now that Boies has become a lawyer, he essentially relies on the same strategies in the court room. Specifically, Boies takes the following approach: he listens attentively to his opposition, boils down their arguments to the basics, and then commits these to memory. He then constructs his own arguments to address the basic points, and commits what he needs to say to memory (loc. 1203). As Boies explains, “‘If I could read a lot faster, It would make a lot of things that I do easier. There’s no doubt about that. But on the other hand, not being able to read a lot and learning by listening and asking questions means that I need to simplify issues to their basics. And that is very powerful, because in trial cases, judges and jurors—neither of them have the time or the ability to become an expert in the subject. One of my strengths is presenting a case that they can understand.’” (loc. 1209). Gladwell adds that “Boies’ opponents tend to be scholarly types, who have read every conceivable analysis of the issue at hand. Time and again, they get bogged down in excessive details. Boies doesn’t” (loc. 1213).
When we break down Boies’ experience, we may say the following: Boies responded to his dyslexia (through necessity, really) by way of developing qualities and skills that allowed him to compensate for his deficiencies—and these qualities and skills ended up carrying him directly to success. Put in this light (and as paradoxical as it sounds), Boies’ disability begins to look more like a boon than a disadvantage.
Other successful dyslexics that Gladwell interviewed had similar stories to Boies’. In fact, the author insists that “it is striking how often successful dyslexics tell versions of this same compensation story” (loc. 1237). Interestingly, though, what Gladwell found is that the ways each compensated for their disability were not always the same.
b. Brain Grazer
Take Brian Grazer, for example. Grazer has managed to overcome his dyslexia to become a successful Hollywood movie producer (Grazer is responsible for such films as Splash, Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, and 8 Mile [loc. 1370]). Like Boies, Grazer managed to succeed by way of compensating for his disability. However, Grazer’s strategy was far different from Boies’.
Specifically, when Grazer was in grade school, he made up for his reading difficulty by way of strategizing around his school work. As Gladwell explains, “before any test or exam, [Grazer] would start to plan and strategize, even in elementary school. ‘I would get together with someone the night before,’ he said. ‘What are you going to do? How do you think you will answer these questions? I’d try and guess the questions, or if there was a way to get the questions or the tests beforehand, I would.’” (loc. 1244).
In later years, Grazer began supplementing this scrappy strategy with another: arguing over his grades. Here’s Grazer to explain: “I challenged all my grades, which meant that literally every time I got my grade in high school, after the report cards came out, I would go back to each teacher and do a one-on-one. I would argue my D into a C and my C into a B. And almost every time—ninety percent of the time—I got my grade changed. I would just wear them down. I got really good at it. I got confident. In college, I would study, knowing that I was going to have this hour-long meeting afterward with my professor. I learned how to do everything possible to sell my point. It was really good training.’” (loc. 1251).
What Grazer means by his arguing and negotiating being ‘good training’ is that it is a skill that not only helped him improve his grades, but that it also helped him excel at his chosen profession: producing movies (loc. 1254).
And what we must not forget here is that Grazer would likely never have become such a good negotiator if he wouldn’t have had dyslexia. As Gladwell explains, “all good parents try to teach their children the art of persuasion, of course. But a normal, well-adjusted child has no need to take those lessons seriously. If you get As in school, you never need to figure out how to negotiate your way to a passing grade, or to look around the room as a nine-year-old and start strategizing about how to make it through the next hour. But when Grazer practiced negotiation, just as when Boies practiced listening, he had a gun to his head” (loc. 1254).
Just like Boies, then, Grazer responded to his disability by way of developing skills that allowed him to compensate for his deficiencies (strictly out of necessity)—and, like Boies, these skills ended up carrying Grazer straight to success. Once again, then, we have a case of a disadvantage becoming a benefit.
7. Dyslexia and Risk-Taking
One final point about dyslexics. What Gladwell found is that many successful dyslexics owed their success not only to compensation learning, but to a particular personality trait: they were risk-takers. And once again, what Gladwell learned is that this trait tended to be cultivated because of (as opposed to being there in spite of) having dyslexia.
The logic is as follows: Dyslexics tend to endure repeated failures when they are younger (as we have seen above). And while repeated failures in youth have the potential to (and often do) completely crush the spirit, they can also have the opposite effect: they can inure the individual to failure, thus rendering them more likely to take risks, and try things that others would not—which is often a sure path to success.
One dyslexic that Gladwell interviewed put it this way: “‘My upbringing allowed me to be comfortable with failure. The one trait in a lot of dyslexic people I know is that by the time we got out of college, our ability to deal with failure was very highly developed. And so we look at most situations and see much more of the upside than the downside. Because we’re so accustomed to the downside. It doesn’t faze us. I’ve thought about it many times, I really have, because it defined who I am. I wouldn’t be where I am today without my dyslexia. I never would have taken that first chance’” (loc. 1354).
The individual who made this comment? A certain someone named Gary Cohn, president of Goldman Sachs (loc. 1359).
Dyslexia is a very serious disability that ends up debilitating the vast majority of those who have it. However, dyslexia also sometimes drives people to a place that ends up helping them in life. Thus this just goes to show that, under certain circumstances, a disadvantage can indeed become an advantage.
8. Severe Trauma: The Trauma of Losing a Parent in Childhood
Another instance wherein a disadvantage can become an advantage is in the case of trauma victims. Take the trauma of losing a parent in childhood, for example. Without question, losing a parent in childhood is one of the most traumatic experiences that can befall one. And many of those who endure this experience never fully recover from it. As an indication of this, consider that “the psychiatrist Felix Brown has found that prisoners are somewhere between two and three times more likely to have lost a parent in childhood than is the population as a whole. That’s too great a difference to be a coincidence. There are, clearly, an enormous number of direct hits from the absence of a parent” (loc. 1582).
Still, as with the case of many dyslexics, many people who have lost a parent in childhood have gone on to enjoy a tremendous amount of professional success. And, in fact, various studies (both formal and informal) have shown that an outsized proportion of highly successful individual across many fields—from ‘creatives’ such as artists, poets, innovators and entrepreneurs; to scientists; to presidents and prime ministers—have lost a parent in childhood (loc. 1548-71).
Consider the following study, for example: In the early 1960s, the psychologist Marvin Einstadt took both the Encyclopedia Britannica, and the Encyclopedia Americana, and “made a list of every person, from Homer to John F. Kennedy, whose life merited more than one column in either encyclopedia. That, he felt, was a rough proxy for achievement. He now had a list of 699 people. He then began systematically tracking down biographical information for everyone on the list… Of the 573 eminent people for whom Einstadt could find reliable biographical information, a quarter had lost at least one parent before the age of ten. By age fifteen, 34.5 percent had had at least one parent die, and by the age of twenty, 45 percent. Even for the years before the twentieth century, when life expectancy due to illness and accidents and warfare was much lower than it is today, those are astonishing numbers” (loc. 1562).
And if that doesn’t impress you, consider this: When the historian Lucille Iremonger investigated the biographies of English prime ministers in the period between the beginning of the 19th century and the start of the Second World War, she found that “sixty-seven percent of the prime ministers in her sample lost a parent before the age of sixteen. That’s roughly twice the rate of parental loss during the same period for members of the British upper class—the socioeconomic segment from which most prime ministers came” (loc. 1568).
In a similar vein, it has been noted that an inordinate number of American presidents have lost their father in childhood. As Gladwell explains, “twelve of the first forty-four U.S. presidents—beginning with George Washington and going all the way up to Barrack Obama—lost their fathers while they were young” (loc. 1568).
Clearly, something strange is happening here. What could possibly explain why an event that devastates most also marks a high proportion of those who go on to great success?
According to Gladwell, the phenomenon can be explained in a way that is similar to the explanation that makes sense of why some dyslexics go on to become risk-takers (and achieve success thereby). Specifically, losing a parent in childhood triggers some to respond with the mind-set that now that they have lost a parent, that nothing could ever be so bad. This liberates them from the fear of failure, which then allows them to take risks and try things that others would not—and, as we have seen, this is often a sure path to success. As Gladwell explains, “losing a parent is not like having your house bombed or being set upon by a crazed mob. It’s worse. It’s not over in one terrible moment, and the injuries do not heal as quickly as a bruise or a wound. But what happens to children whose worst fear is realized—and then they discover that they are still standing? Couldn’t they also gain… a self-confidence that is the very father and mother of courage?” (loc. 1690).
a. Emil ‘Jay’ Freireich
To give just one example, take Jay Freireich. Feireich not only lost his father when he was very young (to suicide), but he also endured several other trying and traumatic events in his youth (including poverty, and a very poor relationship with his mother) (loc. 1384-1409).
Nevertheless, Freireich survived to become a highly successful physician—and one of the leading figures in finding an effective remedy for childhood leukemia (loc. 1761-65). Not that this accomplishment was easily achieved. For the fact is that Freireich had to fight the establishment every step of the way—and risked being fired, if not thrown out of his profession, on numerous occasions. And for very understandable reasons—for Freireich’s experimental methods were often very risky and painful for his patients (loc. 1789) (though, in Freireich’s defense, he was desperately trying to find an effective treatment for a disease which, at the time, killed 90% of sufferers within 6 weeks [loc. 1603]—and 100% of sufferers within a few months [loc. 1859]).
Still, Freireich was nothing if not stubborn, and he simply would not take no for an answer—consequences (and casualties) be damned (once again, we must remember that Freireich was battling a desperate situation). And where did Freireich get the confidence to behave in this way? Gladwell suspects that Freireich’s strength came directly from having survived his excessively traumatic youth. As the author explains, “there are times and places… when all of us depend on people who have been hardened by their experiences. Freireich had the courage to think the unthinkable. He experimented on children. He took them through pain no human being should ever have to go through. And he did it in no small part because he understood from his own childhood experience that it is pos