In his bestseller the Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell enlists a number of factors that he deems important to the attainment of professional success or prominence. He cites the “10,000-Hour Rule” as an important pre-condition for successful professional outcomes. According to Gladwell, in order to secure what can be deemed a measure of expertise in any endeavour, one needs to expend at least 10,000 hours honing that particular skill.

Gladwell also credits timing, particularly that of one’s birth, as an important factor in achieving professional success. He points out that 1955 was a great year to have been born if one were to become a major player in the first wave of contributors to the IT sector.

He notes that both Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were born in that year. I have pointed out in an article appearing in this newspaper that 1945, and those years immediately around it, might have been the ideal time to have been born were one to become a successful reggae artiste. Bob Marley and most of the others who came to prominence as exponents of that genre were born around that time.

In the book Freakonomics, Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner point out that the most statistically significant factors for corporate success in the United States is to be a white male who is over six feet tall, which would have disqualified this writer on a number of counts.

While Levitt and Dubner’s observation seems to have predictive powers ,the analytical value of Gladwell’s approach seems retrospective in its value — you will only know if you were born at the right time after you have become successful. Gladwell rightly points out that talent is overrated in the achievement of success as, in many instances, the most outstanding are usually not the most gifted. The 10,000-Hour Rule seems to suggest that perseverance, rather than talent, is a significant pre-condition for successful professional outcomes.

However, I would want to look at another factor which from my anecdotal observation is one of the most statistically significant features of success: conveying a sense of self-regard. The fact is that, if we should scan our cultural landscape we would conclude that, in many instances, those who have risen to the top, or close to it, are not often the most talented. The fact is that we communicate to others how we want them to treat us. If we convey a sense of our own importance to others they will take it for granted that we are of worth. You are the first reference point for an assessment of your own value.

It should also be borne in mind that most of us are intellectually lazy and do not want to engage in rigorous analysis. We love to be spoon-fed, and so prefer to rely on the endorsement of others to determine that which is valuable, rather than making our own assessments. This explains the herd mentality. This is why many commercials and advertisements try to tell us that a product is popular and this is the reason we should use it.

The media and politics are two areas in which the power of self-regard is quite evident. If we do a survey of those who occupy positions of influence and prominence in these two fields one would determine that they are often occupied by persons with considerable self-regard. Even if one is unable to make an exact assessment of the intellectual value of Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Al Sharpton, Chris Matthews, Wendy Williams, Rachel Maddow, Glen Beck, Richard Quest, or Bill O’Reilly, one thing is very clear, they all share a high regard for themselves and their own opinions. On the other side of the Atlantic BBC personalities such as Zeinab Bedawi, Stephen Sackur and Tim Sebastian all give the impression that they have a very robust impression of their own intellectual gifts. The fact is that by most objective measures these British journalists would all be considered very bright. So, too, would many of the others mentioned above.

In Jamaica, Ian Boyne, John Maxwell and Wilmot Perkins could never have been accused of lacking in self-regard, though many would argue that these men would all be classified by most measures as being intellectually solid. The question that must be asked is whether these intellectually gifted people were able to steal a march on others who might have been equally or more talented than they might be due to their enormous sense of self-regard.

Now it should be pointed out that having self-regard is not the equivalent of being rude or abrasive. Many of those who convey this sense of self-importance might even be quiet in their manner. Aloofness is sometimes a sign of self-regard, as it often suggests that others should come to you rather than the other way around.

Quantum physicist Murray Gell-Mann was often disgruntled with his collaborator and fellow Nobel Laureate Richard Feynman, whom he thought was a tireless self promoter. Feynman, who is now deceased, was at various points considered “the smartest man on the planet”. Gell-Mann, who is still alive and who objectively might have been just as brilliant as Feynman, does not occupy the exalted status of his rival in the popular imagination. The difference in their relative popularity, I believe, can be partly explained in how they conveyed their sense of self-regard.

cpamckenzie@gmail.com