Are not a male guppy? HR introspection from the world of Guppies

Every employee in corporate and all other organizations live only to serve self-ego, desires, and interest and this is true with the boss as well as with subordinates. This can be easily detected during most boss-subordinate interactions.

Most of the corporate bosses prefer to be in the company of ‘less smart’ and ‘less intelligent’ subordinates and therefore most of the bosses favour, develop and support such less intelligent subordinates. When the subordinates are less smart and less intelligent, the bosses can certainly appear and shine as ‘intelligent’ amongst such people. Further converting some such less intelligent subordinates as sycophant is also not that difficult.

When the boss appears intelligent in the team in comparison with the rest, naturally such opportunity would help the boss to boosts their ego, elate the confidence and helps them to establish the ‘true’ definition of ‘boss’. Such bosses are plenty in most organization. The cleaver and cunning bosses would use the ‘not that smart subordinates’ as the ‘sales counter’ to send out their ideas and see the response. When such subordinates bring success, the subordinate would fully agree to the fact that the success is because of the boss and hence the credit squirrelly be submitted to the boss and if the idea fails, ‘the not that smart’ subordinates never question the intelligence or logic of the boss as they are obviously not that smart to ask such questions. Further failure is quite common with not that smart people.

The traits of some bosses who consciously seek the company of inferior people have its origin strongly rooted in evolution.

Research findings have proved that the male guppy fishes also exhibit exactly the same behavior of most corporate bosses. The mate selection of females is exclusively based on the attractiveness of the male guppy fish. Only the most attractive male gets selected by the female to mate. Hence, the males always grow in diversely attractive colors. This is one the reasons why guppies are the best-preferred aquarium fishes.

To get selected by the female guppies, the male guppy has to be really attractive. To catch the attention of the female the male guppy fishes would ‘wisely’ prefer to be in the company of ‘weak and less attractive’ male guppies. Naturally, when a female sees such male fish and in comparison with other less attractive male guppies, naturally she would get impressed and thus such males get selected.

The male guppies follow one of the finest management techniques to be successful. Indeed they also become successful in most instances, studies have shown.

Be attractive and get selected by the female guppy is one the best ways. But the wise method is ‘be with less attractive guppies’ naturally the chance of success increases.

The guppy behavior or style is very common in most corporate. When a boss promotes less capable people barring the most capable ones, what they exhibit is nothing but guppy style.

Only vigilant and committed HR function alone can change such leaders and bring ‘fairness’ in the system.

Dr S Ranganathan