The Personality of Bill Gates

Out of all the personalities in the world, the personality of William (Bill) Henry Gates III is the one of the most unique. Everyone seems to want to know what kind of personality drives a man to become the richest man on earth. Certainly family issues, hereditary genes, and environmental influence were important in the making of this personality.

According to Walter Isaccson (2005), Bill Gates is one of the most important minds in our era. Issacson took a close look at the family and environmental influences in the upbringing of Bill Gates. Bill's mother was the daughter of a banker and comfortable in business or social settings. She had a strong personality and sat on boards such as the University of Washington and First Interstate Bancorp. Bill Sr. the father of Bill Gates was a successful attorney. Parents who are intelligent and well off are both an environmental and hereditary influence.

Isaccson (2005) relates countless people who have met with Bill Gates describe him as the most intelligent man they have ever met. Isaccson (2005) reports others saying he has unbelievable power to process, no limit to his capacity, and has incredible ability to multitask. Isaccson (2005) also quoted others as saying, "his mind may indeed be digital: no sloppy emotions or analog fuzziness, just trillions of binary impulses coolly converting input into correct answers." (p. 2)

Isaccson (2005) gave this insight into the childhood of Bill Gates. When Bill was in the sixth grade, he was at war with his mother. Bill's mother after tiring of Bill's disobedience sent him to counseling with a psychologist. After a year of counseling and many tests, the psychologist's conclusion was Bill would win any contest of wills with his mother. The fact was that Bill's mother was very strong-willed herself but still no match for Bill.

Isaccson (2005) found through interviews with the Gates family that Bill was entered into a private school after elementary school because of his intense intellectual needs. This decision put him into contact with his first computer and led through a chain of events to the establishment of the company of Microsoft.

Jane Piirto (2004) in classifying personality types of entrepreneurs shows certain environmental influences are similar in people like J. Paul Getty, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. They each came from wealthy families; all had good advice in life and in legal matters. They were both readers and thinkers. They were all intelligent in math and each from their youth had an avid interest in money. Piirto (2004) reports Bill Gate's score on his SAT was 800. Isaccson (2005) in an interview with Bill Sr. tells of Bill Sr.'s description of his son. According to Bill's father, Bill was not good at social interaction. He remembers that Bill took two weeks to get the nerve to ask a girl to the prom and then the girl said no.

Describing Bill Gates Isaccson (2005) relates that Bill had only a small circle of friends in his school days. Paul Allen Bill's partner in Microsoft has been Bill's friend since the eighth grade. Paul and Bill were together constantly working on computer programs and even in their childhood spent their evenings working at a local company debugging a computer. Bill was so happy doing this work he would sneak out of his house to work on the computer. In addition to Paul, Bill had a best friend Kent Evans. Together Kent and Bill read Fortune magazine together and made plans to take over the world. Later Bill had his first experience with death when his friend Kent was killed in a climbing accident.

Isaccson (2005) explains in the ninth grade, Bill came up with a new kind of rebellion. He decided to get straight A's and never take a book home. He quit going to math class since he was ahead of the class. Bill was confident he could do this since he was in the top 10 in the nation on a math aptitude test.

Personality Theories

Robin Kowalski and Drew Westin (2005) wrote extensively on Freud's psychodynamic theory explaining Freud's proposal that children go through psychosexual stages. One of these stages was the phallic stage. During the phallic stage, a child must come to resolution with the Oedipus complex. This complex exhibits the desire to have an exclusive relationship with the opposite sex parent. Following the phallic stage comes the genital stage when the child represses this desire by identifying with the opposite sex parent.

Bill Gates falls into Freud's psychodynamic theory quite nicely. Bill's mother was strong-willed and intelligent (Isaccson, 2005). Bill's father had an emotional side (Isaccson, 2005). The genital stage according to Freud occurs between the ages of 9-11 (Kowalski & Westin, 2005). In the 6th grade Bill's continual disobedience to his mother led to psychological counseling (Isaccson, 2005). During this counseling, Bill's psychologist gave him books on Freud to read which Bill read enthusiastically (Isaccson, 2005). This leads this writer to believe Bill was in the genital stage and began to believe this intellectually through his reading.

Kowalski & Westin (2005) wrote on Esyenck's trait theories explaining cognitive, emotional and behavior tendencies are the base of personalities. Bill Gates is a deep thinker, can multi-task, is a high-level mathematician, very competitive and is highly intelligent (Isaccson, 2005). Games of trivia and cards were part of the relaxation of the Gates family and winning was important (Isaccson, 2005). Both Bill's parents were intelligent, wealthy and gave Bill good schooling, a stable home life, good advice and good legal protection of his ideas. These traits and opportunities are common in many successful entrepreneurs (Piirto, 2004).

Conclusion
The personality of Bill Gates falls into Freud's psychodynamic theories and Esyenck's trait theories. His intelligence came from intelligent parents who were wealthy enough to give him the right training and to protect his ideas. Bill's childhood family life was competitive which led him to be one of the most competitive entrepreneurs in the world today. His parent's decision about his schooling after elementary school put him in the right place at the right time to be in front of a computer in a time when computers were very rare. The ingredients of environment and genetic inheritance led to the personality of a man who became the richest man on earth.

References

Isaccson, W., (2005). In search of the real Bill Gates, Time in partnership with CNN, Retrieved October 28, 2007 from http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/ 0,9171,1120657-4,00.html

Kowalski, R., & Westen D., (2005). Psychology, (4th ed.) Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons

Piirto, J., (2004). Understanding creativity in domains using the piirto pyramid of talent development as a framework, Retrieved October 28, 2007 from http://personal.ashland.edu/~jpiirto/Australia%20keynote%201.htm