Show Me The Person At Seventy

^{"Give me the child until he is seven, and I will show you the man."}

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That old Jesuit saying opened Seven Up! in 1964. This week the series ended. Like many people, I found it very moving. It raised a question that runs through much of the personality research I've read: how much of who we are is fixed, and how much is still being written?

It matters to parents. It matters to anyone who manages people too.

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One Tale: The People We Become

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In 1964 Granada filmed fourteen seven-year-olds from across Britain's class divide. The premise, broadly, was that the class you're born into sets your course. Michael Apted, the director, went back every seven years for more than half a century.

At 70, most of them could still trace a line back to their seven-year-old self. But Jackie, who famously took Apted to task on camera, saw it differently. She accepts that many foundation traits existed as a child but added:

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^{"I think you are there to be moulded. And that depends on so many aspects in your life. You need the right people around you, and if you're lucky enough to get that, then you've got a really good chance of turning out to be the man or woman that you should be."}

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Then there's Neil, the bright, bouncy Liverpool boy who wanted to be an astronaut. He has lived with depression since he was 16, and by 28 he was homeless. At seventy he lives quietly in France and volunteers in a bookshop half a day a week because, in his words, "It gives me a framework for the week." He spoke about his depression with something close to quiet pride in how he'd managed it. His request was simple: accept it as part of him, and work with it.

For most of them, the series seemed life-affirming, a chance to leave a mark. But not everyone enjoyed being filmed. Some felt boxed in, reduced to their class or to the child they'd been at seven. Nobody likes being stereotyped. It's also the worst habit of popular personality tools, which take something as rich as a person and sort it into one of four colours.

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One Tip: Understand People Before You Try to Change Them

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Emma Jacobs, the FT columnist, recently shared a reader's comment on parenting that captures much of what the Up series teaches. It sets out three steps:

1. Find out who your child actually is.
2. Get comfortable with what you find.
3. Help them flourish over time.

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The reader's point was that most parenting books treat step three as the whole job. Getting to know your children, and accepting both their strengths and their flaws, is the foundation.

Management often makes the same mistake. We have development plans, competency frameworks and stretch goals, which are all step three. We invest far less in steps one and two, yet they're what separate a good boss from an adequate one.

Of course, management isn't parenting. You choose your team, so choose carefully. But once someone joins, the job is to adapt to who they are. Perhaps not with a parent's infinite patience, but with some.

Try this in your next 1:1: Ask, "What are you working on, in or out of work, that you really care about right now?" Then listen, write it down, and don't fix anything this week.

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One Truth: People Change, Just Not on Your Schedule

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The research shows that personality is both stable and open to change. It just changes slowly, and not on anyone else's schedule.

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• There's a core, and it moves. A US study followed nearly 1,800 people from age 16 to 66. Their personalities kept a stable core, yet between a fifth and three-fifths of people showed real change on any given trait. It's the Up series in data. (Damian et al., 2018)
• We tend to mature. On average we become more conscientious and emotionally stable, mostly between 20 and 40. Emotional stability keeps rising across the whole lifespan. (Roberts et al., 2006; Bleidorn et al., 2022)
• But there's no single path. A 2026 review of 229 studies found that people differ in how they change at every age, not just in youth. The authors link this to both genes and environment, which is exactly Jackie's point. (Haehner et al., 2026)

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None of this supports four boxes. Traits work like dials rather than types, and the dials move.

Psychologist Brian Little adds the part that matters most for managers. We act out of character, and sometimes grow, when we're pursuing personal projects we care deeply about.

So a manager's job isn't to change who people are. It's to help them find the work worth changing for.

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