The Strength of Difference

Bosses and managers from atypical backgrounds have succeeded in avoiding socially pre-determined outcomes by
turning their differences into resources. This did not, however, mean that they
became "normal". They are leaders, but they remain excluded from convened social
positions.This distance leads them to listen, to look upon, and to
analyse their environments, their pasts and their relations with others much
more than "normal" people do. Furthermore, this distance facilitates
entrepreneurial risk-taking and the creation of networks, complicity and
solidarity. It requires the mobilization of extraordinary social intelligence.
This book describes the
processes through which stigma can be mastered, if not forgotten. It also
explains that the position of outsiders, in the broadest meaning of the term,
translates the social experiences of all those who belong to several worlds,
and who find themselves condemned simultaneously to engagement and detachment.