Lead the team from centre, not from periphery – HR wisdom of Fishes

Fishes always move in groups called ‘school of fishes’. By forming school and being in the school, the fishes do get several advantages like protection from the predator, find an easy mate etc.

But the beauty is that the school of any given fishes when move, follow the complete disciple of the school by ‘being in the school’ and ‘being with the school’. No fishes will ever try to move away from the school.

One school may have 100 or number of fishes. How all these large numbers of fishes maintain disciple and uniformity in the school? Who controls and guides them? Is there any leader for the school of fishes? If so, where does the leader stay in the school viz.,

a) At the centre
b) In the periphery

The other question is that, from a school of fishes, can the corporate leaders learn any special leadership message? Certainly, both the corporate leaders and the HR function have a lot to learn from the school of fishes.

The fish in the centre of the school is the leader and all other fishes including those in the outer ring or in the periphery of the school simply follow the instructions and guidance of the leader fish that is positioned in the centre.

To be an influential leader, the leader has to occupy the centre stage or the central position. Only from the centre position, they should direct and guide the people and not from the periphery. Especially when there is a problem, the leaders should come to the centre of the problem and only then they can exert their power and authority.

Unfortunately, most leaders move away from the problem and love to push only their subordinates into the problem. Quite contrary to all conventions and etiquettes, most of the corporate leaders love to come to the centre only when there is credit or appreciation or applaud to an achievement. Most corporate bosses love to be a part of appreciation and not criticism.

By being in the periphery or buy away from the problem, how one can guide, lead, inspire and influence the team? The most corporate leaders prefer to be on the periphery because they presume that only if they are in the periphery, they can easily escape and definitely not from the centre.

The saddest fact happening in most corporate is that the corporate bosses always look for ways and means to escape from the situation and how to find an easy sacrificial goat to blame. These kinds of bosses are very common in single man owned corporate than in MNC’s.

A school of fishes follow far superior management essence and principle than the corporate that are probably governed by MBA graduates from premier business schools. The leader fish never looks for a chance to escape but only wish to lead the members to solve the crisis. Therefore, the members sincerely and judiciously follow the leader because ‘the leader’ exists only for and because of the ‘school’.

Dr S Ranganathan