Be a ‘Skink’ boss in corporate and do not play to the gallery – a HR message

‘Skink bosses’ are essential for the corporate. Maybe to send such message only, the skink is displaying a very unique and strange behaviour that is ‘eating own eggs’ when a threat from a predator is high/rampant. Reptiles, in general, are animals that show poor parental instincts. But the skinks are different. They do exhibit at least limited level of parental care.

The most striking behaviour of skinks is that they eat own eggs when there is a high threat from predators. Like most animals, the skinks also identify only a safe place to lay their eggs. When a predator comes to attack the eggs, they try to ward them off. But the threat of the predator become frequent & unavoidable and the predator is about to eat the eggs; the female skink would immediately eat all her eggs, leaving nothing to the predator.

Scientists have hypothesized that may be to meet the own nutritional requirements to lay next set of eggs, skinks are eating own eggs. If they do not eat own eggs, the predator would eat them and become stronger. Instead of giving a chance to the predator to become stronger by eating her eggs, skink eats own eggs. By eating own eggs, certainly she could become fit to lay next set of eggs. Skink wants to benefit even from a possible loss or failure and not her opponents or predator.

The management message to the corporate leaders is quite loud and clear. In corporate meetings, some bosses would allow the people from other functions to scold/criticize and find fault at their subordinates/team members. Later, these bosses also join them and attack own subordinates and making them feels helpless and vulnerable. By this way, the bosses safeguard themselves from getting criticized for own failures or flaws. The unfortunate truth is that if their team members have failed, the bosses are also equally responsible. They should own the responsibility.

They should behave like the skinks. They should criticize and scold their team members and should not allow people from other functions to do the same. Like how skink never allows the predators to eat its eggs and the skink itself eats them up, the bosses only should interact and intercept the communication with their team. If the boss scolds his or her team after owning the responsibility and protects them from others, such bosses would certainly appear strong and respectable to their team. But instead, if the boss allows people from other functions to criticize their team, the actions of such bosses must be condemned.

Look at the leadership instinct of skinks. The behaviour of skink eating own eggs may look strange and incredible. But if we dwell deep, will understand the great management message.

In some organization, the R&D head would conveniently shift the blame for the product failure squirrelly onto the formulator/manager. In corporate meetings, such bosses will ensure that the marketing team, sales team and other functions ruthlessly criticize the formulator/manager for the product failure. Unfortunately, none of them would ever question the R&D and its head for what responsibility he/she and the R&D own for such failure and how it squarely goes to the formulator.

Such sordid scenes are relatively more common in corporate that are directly governed by the entrepreneur or are run as a family show.

Dr S Ranganathan