Birth Order and Leadership: Were You Born to Rebel?

The ability of companies to anticipate changes and adapt to them is a fundamental condition for survival in a world as uncertain and changing as the current one. This is a classic management problem. That’s why we can say that, in the face of the enormous challenges our organizations face in the Age of Collaboration, the key questions remain the same:

Why is it that there are companies that perceive changes and are able to adapt to them, and others that do not, or think that everything can be fixed by applying the same old practices and a bit of “DIY”?

Why is it that some people are quick to accept new ideas and new challenges, and are able to abandon their previous way of thinking and adapt to the new situation, while others cling tenaciously to the prevailing dogma in the organization?

Accepting or rejecting the status quo is a fundamental decision that we have all faced at some point in our lives. Frank J. Sulloway, researcher at the Institute for Personality and Social Research Berkeley, and best-selling author of the Born to Rebel, shows with his studies that we all face this situation for the first time in our own family, that it is there that we learn to respond to it, and that this happens in the first years of our lives. Hence, birth order is one of the factors that most powerfully contribute to the configuration of our personality and our ability to adapt to changes. This is an exciting topic, which has a great impact on all areas of society, including the leadership and management of our organizations, and which certainly deserves reflection.

The family as a starting point

Why do brothers and sisters who have lived in seemingly identical conditions often interpret reality in such a different way? Why, within the same family, do some children abide by authority while others are rebellious? What group do I belong to? Am I predisposed to defend the established system or am I one of those who rebel and bet on change?

You may have wondered more than once why you are so different from your brother or sister, even though you have the same parents, are very similar ages, and have lived in the same family. You may also have noticed with some surprise that your “soul mates” – those people who think, feel and see life in a very similar way to yours – do not come from your family environment, do not share a single gene with you and, in addition, have grown up in environments, and even cultures, totally different from yours.

My personal case is a pretty clear example of what we are talking about: I am the second child in the family, and my older brother and I are only 11 months apart. We both studied the same degree – Industrial Engineering – in the same city – Barcelona – and stayed in the same residence. Even though I was one year behind, we had the same teachers and the same books. But, despite all the common circumstances, when I hear my brother talk about that time, I get the impression that he went to a different university, that he studied a different career, and that he was somewhere else. In other words, we seem to have lived through two completely different realities.

Our surprise at discovering the differences between members of the same family stems from a false premise: the family is not a “common environment”, as we have traditionally thought, but a set of niches or micro-environments determined by variables such as gender or birth order. Each of these niches offers siblings different points of view and, therefore, different life experiences that, when recorded in the first years of our lives, are decisive in the configuration of our way of feeling and understanding the world, that is, in our personality.

As with many species of lower animals, human offspring compete for parental favor. The personality of siblings varies to the extent that each one adopts a different strategy to compete, that is, to obtain the resources – material and affective – of their parents. And the strategy adopted depends, to a large extent, on birth order, which is closely related to basic variables such as difference in age, physical size, energy, and status within the family.

By itself, sibling competition does not lead to differences in personality. But the birth order conditions the strategy that each sibling will follow to obtain the maximum performance. In other words, a different strategy implies a different way of understanding things and coping with situations. These disparities cause siblings to experience family relationships differently, even though they theoretically share a common environment, and end up occupying different roles within the family. Of course, this is not a new phenomenon: many years ago, it was normal for the eldest to go to war, the second to devote himself to a liberal profession and the third to take up the habits.

In evolutionary terms, we are talking about survival: in order to reproduce we must first overcome infancy and childhood. Personality differences within members of the same family reflect the different strategies we have employed to this end.

Biology and Sibling Competition

Competition in the family environment and differences in birth order are not, of course, a matter exclusive to human beings. A wide variety of animal species exhibit behavioral differences based on this factor. Sometimes the competition goes so far as to turn into fratricide.

On a recent trip to Costa Rica, I had the opportunity to visit the Caño Negro Wildlife Refuge, one of the most ecologically diverse areas in the country. There I had the opportunity to contemplate a cruel and fascinating spectacle. The alligators waited patiently in the river, stationed under trees laden with nests. The chicks of a local bird species had just hatched. What’s most surprising is that alligators didn’t need birds to make a mistake to put prey in their mouths. It was the chicks themselves that tried to push their little siblings out of the nest to ensure their survival.

The alligators knew, from experience, that sooner or later their patience would be rewarded. Fratricide is quite common among birds, especially seabirds and birds of prey. So much so that in some species the female lays two eggs, and the first chick born pecks at its younger sibling during the first days of life until it dies.

Sibling competition is also well documented in mammals, insects, fish, and even plants. One case that has impressed me is that of an Indian plum tree that develops seeds with 25-30 eggs, all siblings. Only one egg survives, and it’s usually the fertilized one first. The surprising thing is that this seed, the first to be fertilized, secretes a chemical that prevents the sister seeds from metabolizing sucrose, and therefore causes them to starve.

The conclusion we can draw is that sibling competition has a strong biological component and is particularly prevalent among species that care for their young. Human beings are no exception to this behavior, which is ultimately associated with survival and reproduction.

Brothers yes, but very different

We tend to think that what differentiates us from our siblings is, essentially, that half of our genes are different. Hence our “attribution” to one or another “part” of the family, embodied in such common expressions as “he is nailed to his father” or “he is a portrait of his mother”. But Frank Sulloway’s research teaches us that there are other very important differences in personality, and that these differences are due to the fact that we have lived and experienced the family environment in a totally different way. That is to say, that The family is not a monolithic experience for the different siblings. The reality is that many of the factors that have conditioned your family experience, such as age, size, and power, as well as the status and privileges you enjoyed as a child, were very different from those of your brother or sister.

If you are the oldest in your family , it is very likely that you have made an effort to imitate and please your elders, that your childhood strategy has been to align yourself with them, adopting the familiar perspective of your parents. You may have noticed that the family album is full of photos of you in which you appear next to your parents, proudly by your side. Your status as the firstborn was higher than that of your younger siblings and, therefore, you will have fought to maintain this primacy in the face of the “invasion” that the arrival of your brothers and sisters entailed.

For all these reasons, you will tend to identify more closely with the values of the family and be closely linked to it. Plus, your parents will have always expected you to be more mindful and responsible. That’s why you’ll remember perfectly well that when you were up to some joint mischief with your younger brother, your father would scold you twice: first, for misbehaving, and then for “teaching your brother those things.”

This added responsibility leads older siblings to act, on many occasions, as “surrogate parents”. This means that, as adults, they tend to be more authoritarian, more oriented towards the “teaching function”. Their greater awareness of what is right and what is wrong makes them less prone to rebellion.

If you are the second – or later – son or daughter , you faced a completely different challenge: the struggle to conquer an alternative and valuable space, located beyond the positions already occupied by your older brother, clearly identified with the position of your parents. You must have had your older brother as a model; You will have insistently sought their acceptance, you will have struggled unsuccessfully to sit in the front seat of the car… In any case, you’ve likely traveled more than your older sibling and are more open to other cultures and perspectives. Your natural strategy was to look for new spaces, to try to excel in other domains where your older brother had not yet occupied a position of superiority. This is why non-firstborn children—second and later—are more open to experience and exploration.

If you’re in second place, you’ll still find a photo of yourself in the family album. If you are the third or fourth, don’t keep looking because it is likely that only the photograph of your first communion will appear, or one that was taken at school.

If you have fallen into the middle position, you have not enjoyed the dominance of the firstborn, nor the greater degree of attention that the last born usually get. Therefore, you will have learned how to survive in a more precarious situation than everyone else, how to use your good humor to get attention, and how to be diplomatic and political in order to get your way.

The fundamental conclusion of Sulloway’s research is precisely this: that siblings’ personalities vary because they adopt different strategies in seeking favor from their parents. And their most important finding is that older children identify with parents and authority, and with support for the status quo, while younger children rebel against it.

Sulloway presents evidence in his book that these differences between firstborns and youngest children are the best indicator of whether a scientist would support a radical theory, such as Darwin’s theory of evolution, when it was first proposed. In analyzing 28 different scientific revolutions, Sulloway found that younger sons were up to ten times more likely to support a new theory than firstborn sons of more conservative minds.

Of course, there are substantial differences between families according to nationality, culture, economic situation, etc. But, in reality, as children we are more concerned with differences in position and power within our own family, and it is these differences that affect us the most, and that shape our adult personality.

A Matter of Probabilities

It is important to note that, with his theory, Sulloway does not intend to create an infallible method to predict adult personality, nor to detect in what position each person was born based on his or her current personality. Far from it. Sulloway stresses that personality is affected by so many variables that it makes no sense to pretend that birth order, by itself, can serve as a predictor of personality. In his words, the personality traits associated with birth order have “a relationship of probability, not cause and effect.” In other words, the fact of being the oldest or youngest in the family does not necessarily determine a personality characteristic, but rather increases the probability of developing it.

In the end, understanding that sibling rivalry is a type of competition used by human beings to survive, and that some critical personality traits are forged as a result of our efforts to occupy and defend different niches in our own family, reveals to us one more facet – perhaps little known – of diversity in human beings.

Sulloway himself points out that there are several exceptions to the archetypal relationship between birth order and personality. Variables such as gender, family size, social class, lack of a parent, divorce and, above all, the degree of conflict between siblings and parents can alter the typical effects of birth order on personality. A very clear example: first-born children who have a strong conflict with their parents tend to assume the attributes of rebellion that are normally associated with second and later children; As a consequence, and always with the aim of differentiating themselves, younger siblings will tend to occupy the niche of responsibility commonly associated with the older child.

As if this were not enough, studies carried out on the genetics of behaviour have allowed us to know that the environment is responsible for only 50% of the variations recorded in personality. For all that said, although it seems quite evident that there are real and lasting personality differences between people who have occupied different family niches, we cannot take birth order – by itself – as an infallible predictor of people’s attitudes or behavior.

Order of Birth and Leadership

Although Sulloway’s studies only refer to the business world in a tangential and somewhat anecdotal way, the topics he addresses are very relevant from a management point of view. Especially when we refer to the ability of organizations and individuals to face the challenges posed by the new Era of Collaboration. Why have companies such as Eastman Kodak, Digital or General Motors not been able to face the new challenges, while others such as Apple or IBM have managed to adapt and flourish in the new situation? Obviously, the reasons are multiple and complex. And Sulloway’s conclusions only allow us to venture an interesting working hypothesis for research: the order of birth and the family environment of the people who occupied positions of maximum responsibility in the company when it faced the challenges of transformation could have played a key role in the adaptation process.

Bearing in mind that openness to change is a personality trait, and that it reflects the flexibility we have when it comes to modifying our “mental models”, if Sulloway’s predictions are confirmed we can infer, as he says in his interviews, that “When a drastic change has to be made, it will probably be more difficult for a first-born CEO to do it”. As we have discussed, their research indicates that firstborn children are more intellectual, conformist and authoritarian, ambitious and disciplined, and that they are generally interested in preserving the status quo. In other words, they are experts in the management and maintenance of the established order. So much so that more than half of U.S. presidents have been firstborns. On the other hand, second or later children tend to be the most rebellious, adventurous, and receptive to innovation. The French Revolution, the Theory of the Evolution of Species, or the Protestant Reformation are some of the examples in which non-firstborn children have played a leading role. In all these cases, the birth order was the best indicator that there was a personality with the germ of rebellion.

According to Sulloway, firstborns, because of their own orientation to order, hierarchy, and achievement, are over-represented among presidents, political leaders, and boards of directors in general. At work, they tend to put the emphasis on the task, and have a tendency to be authoritarian, conservative, inflexible, and fearful of losing their position or rank.

According to Sulloway’s studies, second and later children are open to new experiences, are more innovative, are concerned about fairness and justice, are more politically liberal, and generally show greater empathy, good humor, and social skills. They are usually good at negotiations and seeking compromise, so they tend to be good salespeople.

If this is confirmed, it would certainly be good news for future children because, as we always say, the Age of Collaboration requires a more flexible and adaptive leadership, capable of going beyond the traditional “command and control”.

By way of summary

Birth order is one of the factors that most powerfully contribute to shaping our personality and our ability to adapt to change. This is an exciting topic, which has a great impact on all areas of society, including the leadership and management of our organizations, and which certainly deserves reflection.

Accepting or rejecting the status quo is now a fundamental decision that we all face at some point in our work. Frank J. Sulloway, a researcher at the Institute for Personality and Social Research at Berkeley, and author of the bestseller Born to RebbeHe shows with his studies that we all face this situation for the first time in our own family, that it is there that we learn to give it an answer, and that this happens in the first years of our lives. In general, firstborn are dominant, conscientious and ambitious, while those who follow them tend to be more open-minded to taking risks and challenging the status quo that their predecessors defend.

Human beings, as with other species of lower animals, compete for the favor of our parents, and to do so we adopt different strategies depending on the niche or family position we have occupied during our childhood. Each position in the birth order has its own unique set of characteristics and attributes, and its own advantages and disadvantages. For example, achievement and ambition are very common traits in firstborns, while persistence and creativity are more prevalent among later children.

Few will disagree that early family experiences and sibling rivalry are important influences in personality formation. Similarly, few readers will deny that personality is a crucial factor in a leader’s behavior, leadership style, and personal and professional success. Actually, the debate occurs when we try to describe the specific ways in which birth order influences personality, the way in which personality influences leadership, and therefore the specific ways in which birth order influences leadership.

Personally, I believe that the most valuable contribution of birth order is that it allows us to ask courageous questions about our personality and our leadership style, and not so much in the possibility of obtaining unambiguous answers. What seems increasingly evident is that Adaptive Leadership requires mobilizing people to take on the new realities and face the new challenges posed by the Age of Collaboration. And everything seems to indicate that, regardless of whether they are firstborns or not, we are going to need people capable of reinventing themselves as leaders, of changing priorities, attitudes and behaviors in order to thrive in an uncertain, changing and increasingly complex world.

Are you one of these people?

I’d like to hear from you. Do you think birth order influences people’s personalities? What has been your experience? Do you have any personal anecdotes that corroborate or contradict Sulloway’s conclusions?