Do not allow ‘Green turtle leaders’ to flourish in your corporate – a HR message

Exhibition of a stereotyped behviour / style or a kind repetitiveness in doing things is often seen among most people in corporate. Even when plenty of new opportunities are available, such people prefer to go back to the same old rules and old methodologies in doing things than experimenting or adopting any new methods. The question is why many people follow such leadership style?

If we look at the egg laying behaviour of green turtle we can easily correlate the secret of why many people often use the same old rule books and styles and show the least willingness to adopt newer methods.

It is proved that green turtle would travel several 100 kilometers to navigate its nesting site to lay eggs. It chose its site based on from where it had hatched out from egg. It means it would tack down the site from where it had hatched out and safely moved to ocean. The question is why it travels several 100 kilometers to find the same nesting site and why it doesn’t select any other nesting sites linked with the tenets of evolution.

The possible reason may be from own experience. The green turtle may be assuming that the site from which it had hatched out is most safe. Only because of such safety, the green turtle could safely reach ocean and live for several years, attain sexual maturity and come to egg laying stage. From own experience the green turtle may be thinking that the nesting site from which it had hatched out is therefore most safe to lay its eggs.

The age old leaders in most corporate perhaps would have adopted some methods or leadership styles to achieve some results. The achievement of result by adopting some odd methods would have made them to believe in such methods to be the best methods for success. The relevance, contemporariness and how workable such methods or leadership styles are for the present context, most of such age old bosses never assess and never show any willingness to question. They continuously argue from the premise that it had worked for them several years ago and hence would work even today.

These bosses are nothing but green turtles. The emergence of new predators, changes in the climate over the years etc., in the nesting site from where the green turtle has hatched out, the green turtle does not seem to recognize or analyze. Ironically it lay over hundred eggs and out of which possibly one alone survives. If the green turtle had used better methods to select nesting site other than the site from which it had hatched out, the survival chance of its young ones could have increased. If the age of bosses in corporate are willing to change their leadership style than going back to the age old rule book, the organization can be taken to great success.

The larger message is that the corporate bosses must move away from some traditional leadership practices and must adopt new practices that are relevant and contextual. They need to change the history and evolution to bring a change.

Dr S Ranganathan