What do Sidney Crosby, Bill Gates and Anna Netrebko have in common?

It was always my target – and still is – to find out similarities in personal profiles of world-class performers. After evaluating thousands of interviews, personal profiles and CVs I did come to the conclusion that the real truth is very unspectacular: There are so many different ways to become world-class, so many different profiles and one of the main points is, that becoming world-class depends very much on the circumstances. Bill Gates wouldn’t be the Bill Gates we do know today if he would have been born 10 years earlier or later. He was „lucky“ to become an adult coupled with his passion for computing and coupled with his brain in the exact time when a computer-revolution was on the horizon. I don’t know about Sidney Crosby and Anna Netrebko for sure but there are strong indications that the same would be true for the world-famous hockey-player and the world-famous opera-singer.  A lot of world-famous people did tell their strategies and wisdoms in books and millions of followers tried to act, decide and live exactly the way they did... only to find out that years later they stayed as unsuccessful as ever. The „wisdoms“ of the world-famous people are just wisdoms in a certain time and in a certain context. The same strategies in another time and/or other contexts don’t work.

So on the one hand I was very excited with my findings in my analytics because I really dare to say that my thesis is the truth. On the other hand I’m also a bit disappointed because I did hope deep inside that I can offer you a real spectacular answer to this often asked question.

I don’t want you to leave you alone with telling „there are no secrets and no similarities in personal profiles of world-class performers“ because in this absolute words it’s also not true. I did find – actually not only me did find out about this... – some „shy“ similarities in personal-profiles:

Here we go:

World-class performers are usually very passionate in what they do, they have a great passion about what they do!

World-class performers usually work harder than competitors.

World-class performers must have the benefit of world-class teachers, educators. Wolfang Amadeus Mozart wouldn’t have become the world famous composer and musician without his father Leopold, who was a world-class teacher in his time.

World-class performers – and this I did especially find in profiles of world-class business-men, entrepreneurs – very often overrate themselves. If they fail – and nearly all world-class entrepreneurs did fail at least once in their career – they never think they failed because they are not clever, not good enough – even it might be even true... – that’s why they try again and again... until they succeeded...

World-class performers have have most often an above average egoism. They are very often not typical team-players, they accept their egoism and act according to it.

Basic talent is overrated, this is not only true in my eyes, it’s also a highly recommended book „Talent is overrated“ by Geoff Colvin / Nicholas Brealey Publishing.