This video is sponsored by Henson Shaving.
What do Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad
Sir Richard Branson
Billionaire investor Charles Schwab
Walt Disney
And Henry Ford have in common?
All are or were successful entrepreneurs with dyslexia – a learning disorder that
makes it very difficult to read, write, and spell.
People with dyslexia have trouble connecting the letters they see
to the sounds they make and as a result, often struggle in school.
But in the real world, they thrive. They're behind some of the most successful companies on Earth.
Richard Branson is one of the greatest entrepreneurs of our time.
He created numerous businesses under the Virgin umbrella and has a net worth of $5 billion.
Virgin which now employs 90,000 people would not have been successful if I hadn’t been dyslexic.
If you had told Branson’s classmates that he’d achieve this stunning level
of success in life - they may have been dumbfounded.
Branson was seen as “the dumbest person in school” - in his words.
He had a hard time keeping up with his peers because of his dyslexia
and dropped out at the age of 16.
Yet he transformed his weakness into an advantage.
Branson credits dyslexia with his success
because he adapted his management style to suit it which he feels made him a better boss.
He understood the importance of communicating well.
He’s famous for being an inspirational leader who engages with people.
And his dyslexia also forced him to
delegate tasks to those who excelled in the areas where he was weak.
I had to surround myself with great people. Because I wasn’t good at
maths or something, I had to find people who were good at it.
One example is when he hired an accountant during the early days of Virgin.
He credits that with getting the company off the ground.
Branson always struggled with numbers and words. Once, when he was in a board meeting at the age of
50, he couldn’t for the life of him understand the difference between net and gross profit.
Another person in the room kindly took him aside and explained it to him with an illustration.
He drew the ocean. And put a net in the ocean with fish in it.
He explained that the fish in the net were the net profits,
and the rest of the ocean was the gross turnover.
And then everything became clear to Branson.
Delegating tasks to the right people is essential to growing any business.
Yet many find it difficult to give up control. Everyone knows of a boss who’s a micromanager!
Research has found people with dyslexia are more likely to delegate authority
and also twice as likely to own two or more businesses.
That study out of Cass Business School in London found more than
a third of American entrepreneurs surveyed showed signs of dyslexia.
Another commissioned by the BBC found 40% of that
country’s self-made millions showed some signs of the learning disability.
That's significantly higher than the estimated 5% to 10% of the
general population with some degree of dyslexia.
The question is: Are their entrepreneurial strengths a result of nature or nurture?
A dyslexia expert believes they are naturally better at certain things,
like picking up social cues.
In an article in the Sacramento Bee about California governor Gavin Newsom who has dyslexia,
Dr. Marilu Gorno-Tempini of UC San Francisco said:
“He can understand what people need and their emotions more than others.
I don’t think that’s a compensation. I think that’s the superpower of his dyslexic brain.”
She and other scientists at UC San Francisco recently discovered children with the disorder
had greater changes in heart rate and facial behavior when they viewed video
clips of others experiencing emotions compared to children without dyslexia.
Eleanor Palser, one of the researchers who conducted the study, concluded to Newsthink:
“This tells us that dyslexia might be associated with biological differences in empathy…”
Being able to see things from the other person's perspective
is extremely important for any entrepreneur.
Walt Disney, who was diagnosed with dyslexia, could read people very well
and was extremely empathetic according to those who knew him.
He dreamt up a world that children and adults could enjoy and transformed Disney into an empire.
Turns out, the brains of people with dyslexia are wired differently.
University of Cambridge researchers used artificial intelligence to map
out the brain differences of hundreds of children.
They discovered those with dyslexia had poorly connected “hubs” within the brain
which they attributed to their learning difficulties.
You can liken these hubs to a train station with few or poorly organized connections.
So people with dyslexia literally have a different way of thinking and seeing the world.
Their unique brains are believed to make them brilliant spies.
In fact, some intelligence agencies are actively recruiting people with dyslexia,
such as the UK’s GCHQ. The agency calls their
thinking skills “mission critical” because they’re great at spotting patterns that
others don’t see - crucial in trying to prevent acts of terrorism for example.
And increasingly important with warfare moving into cyberspace.
As AI and machine learning automate routine tasks, creative thinking
skills could be in higher demand. And their creativity apparently
leads to original ideas that translate into million-dollar or billion-dollar success.
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Thanks for watching. For Newsthink, I’m Cindy Pom.