THE ORCHID ADVANTAGE

Are you familiar with the child that few people can control? That child may be the future CEO of your company. Genetics tells us a lot about why people behave as they do, but until recently most behavioral genetic studies have been done on people with clinically diagnosed mental illnesses. “Most genetic researchers,” says Jay Belsky (2009), a child-development psychologist at the University of London, “don’t see the upside, because they don’t look for it.” Researchers are beginning to see the advantages of genes that make people vulnerable to dramatic mood swings, risk taking, and attention deficits. Bakermans-Kranenburg and van Ijzendoorn (2004) wanted to see how children with a risk gene allele for externalizing behaviors (crying, screaming, hitting, throwing toys) would respond in a positive environment compared to children with a no risk gene allele. The results were astounding; in protective environments children at risk reduced externalizing behavior by 27% compared to the no risk children that reduced externalizing by merely 12%. In a subsequent study of the environment-gene interaction Bruce Ellis from the University of Arizona and Thomas Boyce a pediatrician from the University of British Columbia recognized that some people are like Dandelions who can adapt to almost any environment and others are like Orchids that will wilt if they are ignored or mistreated, but will become spectacular when nurtured in the right environment.

The less numerous and more vulnerable orchids in our society offer great potential. The orchid perspective is a new way of looking at people that don’t fall in the normal range. Malcome Gladwell (2008) in his book Outliers describes in detail successful individuals that lie outside the bell curve, “I think you have to look around them—at their culture and community and family and generation. We've been looking at tall trees, and I think we should have been looking at the forest.” The environment-gene interaction may be an important indicator in predicting the money maker in our society. Imagine what could happen to a society that recognized potential for the kind of success we’ve only begun to realize. Consider the possibility of identifying and transplanting orchid individuals into an environment that nurtures success.