Bea V. Larsen . . . .Commentaries |
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Bea V. Larsen is a Senior Mediator at the Center for Resolution of Disputes in |
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Confession Of An Outlier This entry was posted on 12/27/2008 7:08 AM and is filed under Personally Speaking. In 1986, I was the first woman chosen to be President of the Cincinnati Bar Association. Friends, colleagues, and even lawyers I’d never met before, showered me with praise. I smiled and was gracious, but felt like a fraud. To those with whom I was close, I quietly said: it’s just a matter of being in the right place at the right time. Some told me I was modest to a fault, and others probably thought me disingenuous. Neither was true. I knew what I knew. The position wasn’t earned. I hadn’t paid my dues, hadn’t chaired the committees, hadn’t worked in the trenches of the organization to the extent other Presidents before me had. Here is how and why it came to pass. In the mid-1960s, less than one percent of my law school class was female. By the mid-1980s, women were entering the profession in significant numbers, the second wave of the women’s movement having gained momentum. And by postponing my career until our kids were all of school age, I began to practice at the advanced age of forty, with an appearance of professional maturity not yet earned. Another likely factor in my selection was the publicity I received due to press and TV coverage in the late 1970s, as I fought a losing political battle for the survival of the Public Defender Division of the Legal Aid Society. I then ran, unsuccessfully, for a judicial position on an all male bench, with billboards proclaiming “she’s not one of the boys”. Defeats, but perhaps they highlighted that the time had come for a woman to be recognized as a leader of the Bar. Going back in time even further, I had the great good fortune to marry a man raised by a woman of pioneer stock and strength. So, he wasn't threatened by my entry into what was then virtually an all male profession, but delighted and supportive. And we were both born to parents who lost everything in the Great Depression, who then survived by dint of long hard hours at work. Our models. I write this personal history in confessional mode in the wake of reading Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, “Outliers.” It inspired introspection and a fuller understanding of my own outlier status. Here I offer but a glimpse of the author’s thesis, so as not to spoil for future readers the well told tales of this important work. Outlier is a scientific term used to describe things or phenomena that lie outside normal experience. Picture the outer edges of a bell curve. Those who achieve significant professional or financial success in America are often portrayed as examples of the Horatio Alger story, that talent and exceptional individual effort is the pathway to success. Gladwell suggests this is a flawed concept, at best a half-truth. In his words, “ It is not the brightest who succeed . . . success is not simply the sum of the decisions and efforts we make on our own behalf. It is, rather, a gift. Outliers are those who have been given opportunities . . . and have had the strength and presence of mind to seize them.” I received many gifts and seized the day. Gladwell examines the early years of some exceptionally successful people, Bill Gates and Robert Oppenheimer among them, but also analyzes the lives of some who are equally gifted but led more ordinary unobserved lives. As a researcher of the social sciences, and a lucid and compelling storyteller, he then places each person or group, those who became outliers and those who did not, in the history of their generation, and that of their ancestors. The circumstances of each family’s social and economic standing are explored, to explain both incredible success and disappointing performance. There’s no question that a strong work ethic is found to be a common denominator for those high achievers who became outliers, but of equal or perhaps even greater importance was their date of birth and the opportunities they were given, often by chance, to take part when young, in the social and scientific movements of their time. Gladwell’s message is that strengthening those institutions that nurture young minds would multiply success stories many times over. My hope? He is in the right place at the right time. |
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