Do not be a Eurasian Roller or Potato Beetle – A HR Leadership Message

Defending oneself from every risk is one of the biggest challenges of people in most corporate. Hence, people regularly adopt and invent different methods and tricks as some of the best defense strategies.

The defense strategies of people in corporate vary vastly from sycophancy to chameleon-ism. Many people in corporate also develop many others skills like ‘Yes boss to everything’; ‘I can be your spy’ etc. A few people are also known to exhibit the ‘Eurasian Roller’ behaviour or ‘Potato beetle’ traits, as their best defense method in some corporate.

Whether one develops ‘scare and fear’ technique or any other technique, the purpose is only to save oneself and nothing else. Some bosses, while dealing with their subordinates, acts friendly and benevolently just to show that they care them the lot, wish to mentor them, couch and develop them etc. When the bosses feel inferior in their content and quality when compared to their subordinates, naturally they have to develop ‘extra-friendly’ gesture towards their subordinates so that their ‘true capabilities and abilities’ doesn’t get exposed.

While, some bosses resort to totally a different technique. They cause fear, scare and terror with people. In truth, these people also lack ‘content and quality’ and only to cover up the same, they use a different weapon – cause fear and scare.

There is also another less known strategy the people employ in corporate. The strategy is similar to the defense strategy of Potato beetle and Eurasian Roller. Both these animals are reported to makes themselves dirty and stinky with their fecal materials and with some substances that they vomit. Due the obnoxious smell, the predators simply avoid them from eating.

Some people in corporate do exhibit such strategy. They employ ‘street fight approach’, means, engaged in fighting with people with least ‘etiquette’ and ‘decorum’. Because of the above behaviour, the people would prefer to avoid them. Although the ‘street fight tendency’ of these people never put them in bright light or highlight about their leadership merit, they use such strategy as the best tool only to deal people and situations. The Potato beetle and Eurasian rollers are not liked by many because of their bad smell. They choose to smell bad only to get avoided by their predators. But such strategy never limits to predator avoidance alone.

The corporate people who employ these defense methods must realize the fact that such development or evolution is unidirectional and hence will never help them to grow upward. To grow upward, instead of adopting the strategy of how to make people to avoid them, they must focus on how to make people to follow them and learn from them. For the Eurasian roller or Potato beetle, the strategy they follow is best as they have no expectations from corporate as they are not employed in corporate. But the people who resorts to such strategy in corporate must review the same otherwise it might affect their growth and career development.

Understand the different dimensions of leaderships and learn about them from nature. Do not try to get avoided by others but engage in how to earn the acceptance of people thorough your merit.

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