Corporate leaders with bowerbird syndrome

Some people, perhaps, most people in corporate may behave like ‘male bowerbird’. If the corporate leaders discover the ‘male bowerbird syndrome’ in people, have to attend such people immediately to bring them to the mainstream.

To court the female bird, the male bowerbirds are known to build ‘bowers’ (a pleasant shady place to rest and lay eggs). The male bower birds use different materials to build the bower to look differently and uniquely so that they can catch the attention of the female bird easily. Research studies have found that the male birds always resort to the old methods and own techniques and never accept any new suggestion or ideas or materials to build bowers. The selection of a male by the female bird is purely based on the uniqueness of the ‘bower’ it had made.

Scientists have provided different materials to the male bower bird so that they can use them in building the bower and could attract the female bird easily. The study findings say that the male bower birds have never accepted anything provided to them and opted to build the bower only with what they use traditionally. The findings suggest that there may be a mind block in these birds and hence goes back to their old practices.

To collect the same materials to build the bowers, the male birds move and search but when more attractive building materials are provided, they refuse to take as they want only what is known to them and have been using. But interestingly the female birds have shown special flavour and likes towards the bowers that are built with unique and different materials than what is traditionally used.

Something is blocking the male bowerbirds to change their attitude, style and accept novelty and ‘newness’ is hypothesis of scientists to explain why they refuse to use anything new to build bowers. Should we call them ‘honest’ or ‘stupid? The question is not about that.

The female birds look for uniqueness and novelty but male birds are not interested in changing the tradition and old practices.

Most corporate expects the people to think and do things differently. The corporate used to spent money in training people, providing facilities and knowledge, extraordinary comfort both at personal and professional life but many people may not like to change their old practices. They are rigid, adamant and unacceptable to change the way of thinking and doing. Many corporate bosses also posses the strong behaviour of ‘male bower bird syndrome’.

The people with such syndrome in corporate will definitely delimit the growth of the corporate and also challenge the creative people who wants to experiment new things. These people are crippled by some old mundane practices and neither they likes to change such culture and nor do they allow others to change the same.

The bower bird is the finest example for the corporate to learn about people and their working culture. Unless the ‘true’ leadership qualities of people are understood, engaging them with different responsibilities is difficult. When corporate learn about bowerbird, must start evaluating people to understand their ‘true’ leadership qualities.

Dr S Ranganathan, ClinRise Derma Pvt., Ltd., Chennai