The Birth Order Book (10 page)

Oh yes, the fourth group? The lastborns are usually still milling around, their piece of paper lying on the floor unread.

I wait a few minutes and make one more announcement: “You have only a few more minutes to finish your assignment. Be ready to report to the rest of the group at that time!”

The onlies and firstborns look up like startled deer and redouble their efforts to finish the assigned task. While the middles don’t look quite as impressed, they do try to press on toward the finish. The lastborns, however, are usually having such a good time that they don’t even hear what I said. In fact, I remember one seminar where the babies all milled around in the far corner, their circle resembling a figure 8 more than anything else. One man wound up standing on the piece of paper that I placed in the center of his circle, just as oblivious to the proceedings as all the other lastborns in his group.

I’m a lastborn myself, so I’m not trying to make fun of the babies of the family. No doubt if I were put through the same exercise, I’d be the guy standing on the piece of paper! But in the hundreds of times I’ve conducted this exercise, I can remember only one or two cases when the first person to pick up the piece of paper and start “obeying instructions” did
not
come from the firstborn or onlies circles.

Even the reports from the four groups bear out the classic birth order traits: The firstborns report that a definite leader took charge. Among the confident only children, a power struggle often ensues over who will take charge, but it is finally settled. Of all the groups, the middle children probably enjoy the exercise the most as they get to know each other, have little trouble negotiating who will be leader, and do their assignment with no problem. As for the babies, what can I say? Life is a beach!

Driven to Success

If you recall the little quiz you took in chapter 1, you’ll also realize that several typical characteristics of firstborns or onlies are borne out in my lab exercise. Firstborns or onlies tend to be conscientious, well organized, serious, goal oriented, achieving, people pleasers, and believers in authority.

Firstborns are often the achievers because they are driven toward success and stardom in their given fields.

And when you add other signs of firstborns and onlies, such as perfectionistic, reliable, list maker, critical, scholarly, self-sacrificing, conservative, supporter of law and order, legalistic, and self-reliant, you can see why firstborns usually get more ink in the write-ups of life. In fact, I wrote a whole book on the subject of firstborns:
Born to Win
.
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Firstborns are often the achievers because they are driven toward success and stardom in their given fields.

The world cannot ignore the firstborns. If you aren’t one, you have to deal with them somewhere along the line. It may have started early when your older firstborn brother or sister wound up as your babysitter, something that didn’t necessarily sit well with either of you. On the other hand, some firstborns become the guardian and protector of their younger brothers or sisters. That’s what happened with me. My firstborn sister, Sally, eight years older, often went out of her way to care for her baby brother.

The Qualities of a Firstborn

perfectionistic, reliable, conscientious, a list maker, well organized, hard driving, a natural leader, critical, serious, scholarly, logical, doesn’t like surprises, a techie

For example, when I started kindergarten I cried for the first two weeks because they had me in the afternoon session and I had to get to school by myself—a scary proposition for a little cub. Sally couldn’t take me because she was in school herself, and my mom wasn’t available because she was working as a superintendent of a convalescent home for children. We weren’t your classic
Leave It to Beaver
family that was so prevalent in those days. It seemed I was the only kid in the neighborhood whose mom worked. (In fact, I still have a scar on my knuckle, which I cut on some kid’s tooth when he teased me about my mom working.) After two weeks of hearing me sniffle, the kindergarten teacher relented and switched me to mornings so that big sister Sally could bring me to school.

One of my early memories is sitting on Sally’s bike, barely making the pedals turn because my legs weren’t long enough, as Sally and her friend Martha walked beside me for over a mile, helping me steer.

Sally was always sacrificing for me. I’ll never forget the time when I was about 8 and Sally and I took the bus from our home to the Buffalo city limits, eight miles away. Our destination was a low-budget department store called W. T. Grants, which had a luncheonette. Sally offered to treat me to whatever I wanted, and as I looked at the menu, I saw hamburgers for thirty cents and turkey sandwiches for eighty cents. We seldom got real sliced turkey at our house, and my mouth watered.

“Can I have the turkey sandwich?” I asked.

“Of course you can. I’m treating,” Sally said as she dug into her hard-earned babysitting money.

I have never forgotten how good that sandwich tasted and how she spent what was then “big bucks” to make me happy.

Sally also used to throw little tea parties with me as the honored guest. In the summers we’d have them on our lawn; in the winters we would stay inside. But summer or winter, Sally did make her baby brother do something to help with the party. I had to make a one-mile round trip to Hildebrand’s store on foot to get the goodies for the party, which were always the same: Pepsi and potato chips.

Now that we’re adults, Sally still goes out of her way for her little brother. Every fall, after we’ve returned to Tucson for the coming school session, she goes out to our summer house on Chautauqua Lake, not far from her home in Jamestown, New York, and covers all the furniture for the winter.

The Compliant, Nurturing, Caregiving Firstborn

Sally, you see, has always been what is called a “compliant firstborn.” She wants to please. Because I have been painting firstborns with some pretty broad brush strokes as organized, goal oriented, achievers, critical, and so on, you may think they are basically all bossy types who want to run the show. Many firstborns do fit the description of strong willed and aggressive. But there are plenty of firstborns who are compliant—they’re the model children who grew up to be pleasers of others. They still have all those firstborn qualities, but they’re always in a very reliable, conscientious, “how can I please you?” package.

Compliant firstborns tend to be good students and good workers because they started out with a very strong need for Mom and Dad’s approval. Then, of course, they need the approval of other authority figures: teachers, coaches, bosses. When asked to do something, their response is, “Yes, Mom . . . yes, Dad . . . yes, sir . . . I’ll be glad to do it.” Who doesn’t want a few children or employees like that around?

A classic example of a compliant firstborn is my wife, Sande. Once we were at a five-star restaurant in Tucson, and our meal had been served in the usual impeccable and precise manner. As I ate with gusto, I glanced over at Sande. She was simply picking around the edges of her poached salmon.

“How’s your dinner?” I asked. “Does everything taste okay?”

“Oh . . . yes. Everything’s great. Isn’t this one of the nicest restaurants you could ever ask for?”

I went back to eating, but Sande continued picking and not really getting into that poached salmon. Finally I voiced my suspicions: “Honey, is your salmon really done to your liking?”

“Well, it’s really not quite cooked in the middle . . .”

Actually, the poached salmon was so raw it should have still been swimming upriver to spawn. As a baby of the family, I’ve found that compliance has never been one of my strong suits. I quickly let the waiter know the condition of the salmon, and he as well as the maître d’ and chef were horrified. In no time, an entirely new serving of salmon appeared, cooked to perfection. And a little later, the chef sent out a peace offering in the form of a giant baked Alaska dessert, “compliments of the house with apologies to madam for the inconvenience.”

The story of the uncooked salmon nicely illustrates Sande’s “I’d rather not complain about it but just grin and bear it” nature. Like my sister, Sally, Sande is a pleaser, a nurturer, and a caregiver, all classic characteristics of the compliant firstborn. And if you’re thinking that Cubby Bear Leman is lucky to have two women like that in his life, you are absolutely right!

The downside of being a compliant firstborn is that you can attract the great white sharks of life. I often counsel compliant firstborns who are getting chunks taken out of them by a spouse, a boss, or friends. The classic scenario includes a compliant firstborn working in middle management for a superintendent or manager who has a way of piling on the work. As he drops little projects on this firstborn’s desk, he also manages to mention that “evaluations are coming up soon.”

The downside of being a compliant firstborn is that you can attract the great white sharks of life.

While having a wife and four kids at home to feed and clothe is an obvious motivation, an even bigger one for the compliant firstborn is the psychological hammer that’s been pounding on him ever since childhood. He’s always been the responsible one that had to get everything done—take out the garbage, mow the lawn, wash the dishes—because his brothers and sisters were too little or perhaps undependable. Parents have a way of relying on (and taking advantage of) their firstborn child. I call it the “let Ryan the firstborn do it” syndrome.

Many other such scenarios could quickly be sketched. Team up the compliant firstborn with a selfish, narcissistic, or insensitive boss or spouse and you have the making of trouble in River City in a hurry. Compliant firstborns are well known for taking it and being walked on by a world that loves to take advantage of them. They are also known for nursing their resentments quietly, and then venting with one grand explosion. And that’s usually when they come to see me.

Aggressive Firstborns: Movers and Shakers

While compliant firstborns have a strong need to be conscientious, caregiving servants, there is another brand of firstborn who is assertive, strong willed, a high achiever, and a hard driver. These assertive firstborns set high goals and have a strong need to be king or queen pin. And along the way, they often develop badgerlike qualities—in other words, they can scratch, claw, and bite.

Assertive firstborns set high goals and have a strong need to be king or queen pin.

One classic example of the hard-driving, assertive firstborn is the executive who goes around uptight and immersed in his or her work for fifty weeks a year. Then, while on a two-week vacation, this same executive becomes a new person. I have had wives tell me, “When we go on vacation, Harry is just great. He relaxes and lets go. He’s almost normal with the kids and with me. But about two days before vacation is over, he gets his game face back. Even before we get home, his old hard-driving personality is in high gear.”

In recent years a growing part of my practice has included conducting seminars for groups of corporate executives. I make it a point to do a little surveying to see just how well firstborns are represented in these groups. In one CEO organization, nineteen of the twenty attendees were firstborns. In a meeting of the Young Presidents’ Organization, twenty-three of the twenty-six dynamic men and women present told me they were firstborns in their family.

Exacting, Precise, and Picky

While some firstborns become powerful leader types, others stay in the background doing exacting work like editing, bookkeeping, and accounting. Over the years while publishing more than thirty-five books, I have had twenty-seven editors, all firstborns or only children, with one exception. He turned out to be the secondborn male in his family who had done a role reversal on his older brother and was, in effect, a functional firstborn.

Being a baby of the family, I deeply appreciate editors and what they can do to save me from disaster. But I really don’t know much about them except that they love red pencils and ask lots of picky questions, such as, “What is this sentence that starts on page 33 and ends on page 35?”
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One of the most striking examples I ever saw regarding firstborns and exacting professions occurred when I spoke to the Ohio Society of Accountants. After being introduced, I stood looking at 221 accountants, who were either giving me baleful stares or glancing at their watches. Deciding I needed to loosen them up a bit, I said, “Will all of you firstborns and only children please rise.” I wasn’t too surprised when almost the entire room stood up! So I asked those remaining to stand up next, and in that small group we counted nineteen middle children and lastborns. Before letting them sit down, I had one more question: “What are
you
doing
here
?”

Everyone roared with laughter, and had the evening ended right there, it would have been a success. It isn’t often that you can get more than two hundred accountants to smile, much less laugh aloud!

Accountants take their jobs seriously. In fact, many a CEO will tell you that a company rises or falls based on how careful a “bean counter” they have. Harvey Mackay, chairman and CEO of Mackay Envelope Corporation and author of many bestsellers on business, including
Swim with the Sharks without Being Eaten Alive
, believes that the first person you need to hire (after yourself) is a good accountant.
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When I interviewed Mackay, his powerful aggressiveness came out immediately. Firstborns are typically analytical and love to ask questions. My interview with Mackay was over the telephone, and while I couldn’t see him, I quickly became convinced I was talking to a firstborn (he’s the firstborn male in his family). After ten minutes, he was still asking me the questions, and I was the one who was supposed to be conducting the interview.
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