HR must know about Praying Mantis…

The behaviour of female praying mantis, especially ‘during and post’ mating has an important management message for the corporate world to learn. It is reported that, during mating, the female praying mantis would chew off the head of her partner either fully or partially. Although such an event is not that regular but at the same time not uncommon as well.

The removal of the head of the male praying mantis during mating is understood to have no negative effect in the mating process, as the brain that is situated in the head of the male praying mantis is responsible only for controlling the inhibition, while the ganglion located in the abdomen only controls the movements of copulation. Both function independently and separately and hence the removal of the head does not affect the mating process.

When the head is chopped off, the male praying mantis would lose the inhibition and involve deeply in the process of mating continuously without any aberration as it requires no command from the head. Certainly cutting the head of the male has an advantage to the female praying mantis during mating.

The irony is that the partner, who is responsible for the female praying mantis in achieving its very biological purpose of procreation, and making her happy, looses its life at the end. The truth is that only when the male loses its head, the male praying mantis can make the female happy and that is the world of praying mantis.

Many corporate leaders do follow the same approach or practice. They involve many people in executing some projects at the beginning and ensure the success of the project. Once the project becomes successful or moves close to success, the leaders would suddenly discover some strange reasons and remove the people who had made definite contributions to the project and had ensured success.

The reason being is that the ego of the bosses never allows them to have an achiever or a talented person in their team. Only when the talented person is removed, the bosses can comfortably claim the total and complete credit and ownership on the success of the project. The ego of such bosses never allows an achiever to be in the scene and hence they love to have ‘weak’ people or personalities in the team.

The least contributors in team go unaffected as the ego of the bosses would never target these people. When the bosses are more egoist, greater the possibility that the contributing and talented people will be removed once the project meets success.

Only the hungry female praying mantis are said to kill the male by pinching off its head. Unless the HR function understands the psychology and egocentric working style of the bosses, the corporate might loose many talents.

When a project becomes a grand success, the corporate by default listens only to the bosses and they believe that only because of these bosses, the corporate could make a success. This ‘situation’, most of the egocentric bosses exploit smartly to remove the ‘real achievers’. This problem is rampantly seen in corporate that are run by a single man or family show.

Only the ‘right’ intervention by the HR function and the top management, the praying mantis behaviour of some bosses can be corrected.

Dr S Ranganathan