Identifying
SuperAttainers
The
SuperAttainment Research Center is funding a multi-year
study of high achieving individuals across a great variety of
fields and geographies. The purpose is to determine key attributes
indicating an propensity toward superior achievement that can be
recognized by most people with experience managing other people.
The work is ongoing and is being expanded continuously.
The
SuperAttainment Research Center is an initiative to help
people in management positions identify high potential leaders and
channel them toward meaningful contributions to their
organizations and to society at large.
The
8 attributes of SuperAttainers listed below are considered some of
the most common and easiest to identify when accompanied by other
aspects of career success.
8
Attributes of
SuperAttainers
1.
Early Success
The
Early Bird Gets the Worm…and Everything Else
SuperAttainers usually begin doing amazing things early in their
life. In fields like music and sport, it has long been understood
that for a child to have a chance at greatness, he needs to begin
around age 3 and then work at it for many years. In business and
politics, unusual ability is also recognized early in a
SuperAttainer’s career and is followed with many years of
continued achievement. In the greatness game, it is the rabbit who
wins the race -- as long as he persists like the tortoise.
2.
Contrarian
When
in Rome, Don’t Do As the Romans
SuperAttainers generally think of themselves as different and
apart from other people. They can often be described as rebellious
and disobedient by those who try to rule over them and are never
willing crowd followers. Tremendous success seems to require doing
things tremendously different. Doing things a little better will
yield results that are only a little better than others and this
is not what SuperAttainers are interested in.
3. Conceited
The
Pride Before The Rise
In order for someone to be thought of as great in the minds of
others, he must first be thought of as great in his own mind. The
tremendous achievements of SuperAttainers seem to be merely a
realization in the outer world of what is already in their inner
world. Predictably, it is uncommon for such people to be overly
shy about describing their abundant abilities. Many SuperAttainers
have come to recognize that being known as arrogant does not help
their purpose and they do a good job of appearing modest. However,
a bit of digging into their personality should uncover a deep
feeling of self-significance.
4.
Hard-Knocked
Nothing
Succeeds Like Suffering
SuperAttainers have often experienced traumatic periods when their
careers or even their lives were in great peril. It is during
these times that they gain a deep seated feeling of personal
vulnerability that can stay with them for the rest of their lives.
The advantage to the future SuperAttainer is that they become
consumed by the realization that they must accomplish all they can
while they have the chance because it can all come crashing down
at any time. It is a psychological condition that will drive
them to greatness for the rest of their lives.
5. Loner
One
is Company, Two is a Crowd
SuperAttainers are often described by others as dreamers,
outsiders, cold-hearted and similar labels often given to loners.
They are comfortable spending long periods in the company of
themselves to ponder, learn and envisage the future. Many develop
a love of solitary activities such as book-reading early in their
life. They are not usually enthusiastic participants in team
activities except when they are leading the group.
6. Mentored
& Motivated
Behind
Every Great Man are His Parents
Parents often
play the key role in the cultivation and realization of
SuperAttainers, spending immense amounts of time and money to give
their offspring the skills, experiences and relationships required
for immense amounts of success. They tutor baby SuperAttainers
from the crib, send them to the best schools and put them in touch
with the best mentors. It has been shown that mothers, in
particular, can play a strong role if they are supremely confident
in their son's innate abilities and then take devoted and
continuing action to develop them.
7.
Discontent
Patience
is No Virtue
SuperAttainers have an abnormally intense need for continuous
accomplishment. Success does not bring these people a sense of
inner peace. There is always someone else to overtake or a higher
target to aspire to. They are impatient, dissatisfied and edgy
when not engaged in activities that lead to the fulfillment of
their personal goals. They seem psychologically unstable in this
regard compared with most people.
8. Promoted
Self-Flattery Gets You Everywhere
There have been many great people who have lived and died in the
history of our species but nobody knows most of them because their
achievements were inadequately documented. In order to be thought
of as a great success by large numbers of people, someone needs to
be a great success at publicizing the SuperAttainer. In most
instances, it is the SuperAttainers themselves who are great
self-promoters. In other cases, another talented person takes on
the critically important role.
TWO
TYPES OF SUPERATTAINERS
1.
Aristocratic SuperAttainers
Pampered and pompous, these people excel despite having been given
it all. They grow up with all the best things, attend the best
schools and hobnob with the best minds. Because they are so deeply
bonded to a powerful and privileged elite, they are often
conservative and elitist. Real change seldom happens with these
people in charge. On the plus side, they are less likely to lead
themselves and their followers down paths of mutual destruction.
Examples of Aristocratic SuperAttainers include: Winston
Churchill, Peter the Great, Louis XIV and Frederick the Great.
2.
Come-From-
Nothing
SuperAttainers
Rags to riches, these people pull themselves up to greatness
through tremendous obstacles. Luck plays a role but most of their
success is due to relentless force of character. Since they come
from outside the establishment, they can be great agents of
change. Unfortunately, they are prone to crash and burning when
they inevitably overstretch themselves and their supporters.
Examples of Come-From-Nothing SuperAttainers include: Joseph
Stalin, Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Mao
Zedong.
Rules
for Managers
Rules
for Self-Help
Rules
for Parents
Men
Vs. Women
The
SuperAttainment Research Center is operated as a CSR
(Corporate Social Responsibility) activity of Chalre
Associates Executive Search to help business people identify
and develop future leaders for their organizations and society at
large.
Chalre
Associates is a regional provider of Executive Search services
in the emerging countries of the Asia Pacific region.
Multinational companies use them to bridge the gap between the
local environment and their world-class requirements in countries
like Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
 +632
892 6703
 +63
908 880 4178
 leaders@chalre.com
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SuperAttainer:
Bill Gates
Founder
of Microsoft Corporation:
Bill Gates
Main
Life Accomplishments:
Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs
of the personal computer revolution. Although he is widely admired, his
business tactics have been criticized as anti-competitive and in some
instances ruled as such in court. Since amassing his fortune, Gates has
pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of
money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs
through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000.
The annual Forbes magazine's list of The World's Billionaires has ranked
Gates as the richest person in the world from 1995 to 2007, with recent
estimates putting his net worth near $59 billion. When family wealth is
considered, his family ranks second behind the Walton family, heirs of
Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton. In July 2007, Fortune Magazine reported that
the increase in value of Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim's holdings of
stock caused him to surpass Bill Gates as the world's richest man. Forbes
however, maintains that Slim is still second to Gates as of its last
calculation of billionaire fortunes. Forbes does not plan to recalculate
Slim's wealth until next year.
Basics:
Born:
October 28, 1955 (1955-10-28) (age 52) Seattle, Washington, U.S.
Religion:
Agnostic
Nationality: American
Fields: Business
Main Accomplishments: An American film maker and
entrepreneur, Walter Elias Disney (1901-1966) created a new kind of
popular culture in feature-length animated cartoons and live-action
"family" films.
Chronology
of Life Events:
1955
William Henry Gates is born in Seattle,
Washington, on October 28 1955
1973
Enrols in Harvard to study computer science,
but drops out during his third year
1975
Mr Gates founds Micro-Soft (later to become
Microsoft) with his childhood friend Paul Allen on April 4 in Albuquerque,
New Mexico.
1975 - 2000
Gates serves as chief executive officer for
Microsoft
1979
The firm moves from Albuquerque to Bellevue,
Washington; it later moves to Redmond, WA, where it still has its
headquarters
Jan 1, 1994
He married Melinda.
1998
Antitrust Court case United States vs
Microsoft
1999
Bill Gates' worth passes the $100bn mark
2000
Bill Gates and his wife Melinda found the Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation, an organization focused on tackling global
health and education problems
2000-2006
In 2000 Mr Gates assumes the title of chief
software architect and stays on as company chairman; Steve Ballmer takes
over as chief executive
2004
The European Commission fines Microsoft 497m
euros (£339m, $627m) and forces it to offer a version of its Windows
operating system without Microsoft's own media player
2006
Anti-competition hearing in which Microsoft
appeals against the EU's 2004 ruling
2006
In June Mr Gates announces he will cease
handling day-to-day operations by July 2008, although he will remain
chairman of the firm. He says he will focus on running his and his wife's
foundation.
Early
Life:
William Henry Gates III was born in Seattle,
Washington to William H. Gates, Jr. (now Sr.) and Mary Maxwell Gates. His
family was wealthy; his father was a prominent lawyer, his mother served
on the board of directors for First Interstate Bank and the United Way,
and her father, J. W. Maxwell, was a national bank president. Gates has
one older sister, Kristi (Kristianne), and one younger sister, Libby. He
was the fourth of his name in his family, but was known as William Gates
III or "Trey" because his father had dropped his own "III" suffix. Several
writers claim that Maxwell set up a million-dollar trust fund for Gates. A
1993 biographer who interviewed both Gates and his parents (among other
sources) found no evidence of this and dismissed it as one of the
"fictions" surrounding Gates's fortune. Gates denied the trust fund story
in a 1994 interviewand indirectly in his 1995 book The Road Ahead.
Gates excelled in elementary school, particularly in mathematics and the
sciences. At thirteen he enrolled in the Lakeside School, Seattle's most
exclusive preparatory school. When he was in the eighth grade, the school
mothers used proceeds from Lakeside's rummage sale to buy an ASR-33
teletype terminal and a block of computer time on a General Electric
computer. Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC and
was excused from math classes to pursue his interest. After the Mothers
Club donation was exhausted he and other students sought time on other
systems, including DEC PDP minicomputers. One of these systems was a
PDP-10 belonging to Computer Center Corporation, which banned the Lakeside
students for the summer after it caught them exploiting bugs in the
operating system to obtain free computer time.
At the end of the ban, the Lakeside students (Gates, Paul Allen, Ric
Weiland, and Kent Evans) offered to find bugs in CCC's software in
exchange for free computer time. Rather than use the system via teletype,
Gates went to CCC's offices and studied source code for various programs
that ran on the system, not only in BASIC but FORTRAN, LISP, and machine
language as well. The arrangement with CCC continued until 1970, when it
went out of business. The following year Information Sciences Inc. hired
the Lakeside students to write a payroll program in COBOL, providing them
not only computer time but royalties as well. At age 14, Gates also formed
a venture with Allen, called Traf-O-Data, to make traffic counters based
on the Intel 8008 processor. That first year he made $20,000; however,
when his age was discovered, business slowed.
As a youth, Bill Gates was active in the Boy Scouts of America where he
achieved its second highest rank, Life Scout. According to a press
inquiry, Bill Gates stated that he scored 1590 on his SATs. He enrolled at
Harvard College in the fall of 1973 intending to get a pre-law degree, but
did not have a definite study plan. While at Harvard, he met his future
business partner, Steve Ballmer, whom he later appointed as CEO of
Microsoft. At the same time, he co-authored and published a paper on
algorithms with computer scientist Christos Papadimitriou.
Wife
Background:
Melinda French Gates (born Melinda Ann French
on August 15, 1964) is the co-founder and co-chair of the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation and a former unit manager for several Microsoft products
such as Publisher, Microsoft Bob, Encarta, and Expedia. In 1994, she
married Bill Gates, founder, chairman, and former chief software architect
of Microsoft. They have three children: Jennifer Katharine Gates (b. 26
April, 1996), Rory John Gates (b. 23 May, 1999) and Phoebe Adele Gates (b.
14 September, 2002).
Father
Background:
William Henry Gates, Sr. (born William Henry Gates III on November 30,
1925) is a retired American attorney and philanthropist. He is the father
of Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
Gates was born in Atlanta, Georgia to William
Henry Gates II or Jr., later Sr. (Bremerton, Washington, March 14, 1891 –
Bremerton, Washington, August 17, 1969), and wife (married c. 1913)
Lillian Elizabeth Rice (Bremerton, Washington, 1891 – Bremerton,
Washington, November 27, 1966). He was the third in his family to have the
same name, his grandfather being the first William Henry Gates. After high
school he enlisted in the United States Army, changing his name to William
Gates, Jr. to avoid the appearance of elitism. He fought in World War II
and was honorably discharged in November 1946. He attended the University
of Washington (UW) under the G.I. Bill, where he earned a B.A. in 1949 and
a law degree in 1950. He practiced law until 1998, primarily with the law
firm which he co-founded as Shidler & King in 1964, later known as Preston
Gates & Ellis LLP, today known as K&L Gates. Gates also served on the
board of Planned Parenthood.
In 1998, Gates retired from PGE. He currently serves on the Board of
Regents for the University of Washington, and is a co-chair of the Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation, which his son Bill and his son's wife
Melinda founded. He has adopted the suffix "Sr." to distinguish himself
from his more famous son.
Gates is co-author, with Chuck Collins, of the book Wealth and Our
Commonwealth: Why America Should Tax Accumulated Fortunes, a defense of
the policies promoted by the estate tax.
He married Mary Maxwell Gates, whom he met at UW, and who died in 1994.
They had three children: Kristi (Kristianne), Bill, and Libby. In 1996
Gates married Mimi Gardner Gates, who is director of the Seattle Art
Museum.
Mother
Background:
Mary Maxwell Gates (July 5, 1929—June 9, 1994)
served 18 years (1975-1993) on the University of Washington board of
regents. She was the first female president of King County’s United Way,
the first woman to chair the national United Way’s executive committee
where she served most notably with IBM's CEO, John Akers, and the first
woman on the First Interstate Bank of Washington's board of directors.
Mary's son Bill Gates is the co-founder of Microsoft.
SuperAttainer
ANALYSIS
SECTION:
1. Early Success
When
did the SuperAttainer first display ability that was greatly above average
and what were his accomplishments?
REFERENCES:
1.
2. Contrarian
What actions did the SuperAttainer take that demonstrated a mindset that was
very different from those around him?
REFERENCES:
1.
3. Conceited
What are the actions and documented statements that exhibit an elevated
sense of self importance of the SuperAttainer?
REFERENCES:
1.
4. Hard-Knocked
During what events did the SuperAttainer experience personal misery and
severe anxiety?
REFERENCES:
1.
5. Loner
Is there evidence of the SuperAttainer being comfortable spending time apart
from others?
REFERENCES:
1.
6. Mentored &
Motivated
Who was vital to developing the SuperAttainer and guiding his career and
what significant actions were taken?
REFERENCES:
1.
7. Discontent
What evidence is there that the SuperAttainer was unsatisfied with even
great personal accomplishment?
REFERENCES:
1.
8. Promoted
What actions or events were responsible for publicizing the tremendous
achievements and abilities of the SuperAttainer?
REFERENCES:
1.
Overall
Score:
x
out of 8 = xx%
PASS
SuperAttainer
Type:
Describe
the factors in the SuperAttainer’s background to indicate whether he is a
Come-From-Nothing or Aristocratic type..
Conclusion:
Executive Search
& Management Consulting:
Chalre
Associates provides its Executive Search & Management
Consulting services throughout the emerging countries of the Asia
Pacific region with specific focus on Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand,
Malaysia, Vietnam and Singapore. Regional Managers use us to help
bridge the gap between local environments and the world-class
requirements of multinational corporations.
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