Peer group and self-esteem play a huge role in what you believe you can achieve and where you end up.
I ended up Helsingin Sanomat's Monthly Supplement as a summer editor in the summer of 1987.
In my career as a journalist, I have remembered three encounters related to personal independence – and self-esteem.
In the first one in the story, I am my boss at the time, the editor-in-chief Heleena Savelan at the little Christmas party. Heleena used to pester us younger journalists to go and talk with the other guests. That's probably why I ended up talking to the dean of Cambridge University at some point.
In the same autumn, I had been in London interviewing asset managers of Finnish stock portfolios. I then asked many of them about their education, and the answers surprised me: one majored in anthropology, another in history, and a third in literature. When I asked how they had ended up in the investment business, the answer was usually that the legalities of investing and finances can now be learned in a couple of weeks.
The answer surprised me. In Finland, I was used to the fact that the portfolio managers are finance experts who have attended a business school, professionals who have graduated from Pol's production economics, or banking lawyers.
I told the dean about this. He smiled and explained that the essence of university education in Britain is that there are many different routes to the top of the mountain. Then he took a short break.
“Actually, we only teach one thing at university,” he said.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Self-confidence“, He answered. Confidence.
In another in the story, I'm in Budapest in the early 2000s, when Sanoma Osakeyhtiö's little bosses were being trained during the golden age of newspapers. One of the teachers was a professor of management skills and business strategy at the famous London School of Economics (LSE), a funny Corsican man.
He said that the success of LSE students is largely based on one single day a year. That miracle happened every fall at the beginning of the semester, when the rector gave a speech from the loft on the second floor of the university to the students gathered in the lobby. The principal told the same story every year – that according to the statistics, 2-4 people from the group present will win the Nobel Prize.
“
“I guess I can if John and Paul can.”
The notion that as an LSE student you are likely to be capable of achieving something big solved everything, the professor teaching us argued. Each student knew that he was a member of the talent pool, and the peer group obliged him to believe in himself.
The Beatles George Harrison is a great example of peer group influence. According to the story, when Harrison was asked how he ended up writing and composing his own songs, the answer was: “I thought I could, if I John and Paul know how.”
From the third it's been a few years since we met. I interviewed the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Helsinki. The Indian man who experienced many kinds of adversity was so bright that it made me ask where his faith in a better tomorrow comes from.
Even the dictator of North Korea Kim Jong-un can live in fear, knowing that if he deviates from the pattern he is accustomed to, he will be killed, he replied. The web of lies is more fragile than you think. That's why there's always a need for gibberish to tell what everyone already knows: the emperor has no clothes. It often goes badly for these truth-telling fools, but not always.
“The most important thing is that you don't agree to think that you are someone's puppet. You can't always win battles, but you should never accept the pos
ition of a victim,” he advised.
The author is HS's financial reporter.
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