Perfect Boss…. A HR Message From Pride of Lion

How to define the leadership qualities of the corporate bosses as ‘perfect’? What is ‘the’ fundamental quality the bosses need to be called or described as ‘perfect’? The meaning should be derived or understood only from the corporate angle and not from the ‘lexical’ side.

The perfect boss/leader in a corporate is the one who does little or no job but enjoys all paraphernalia and pride at the expense of others, especially from his/her team. The perfect boss who knows how to make his team to work for him and once the result comes, he will be the first to take his share.

The above leadership style, many bosses do display in the corporate world and the subordinates always carry lot of complaint, grief, dissatisfaction and frustrations against such bosses. But most of them loves to and continue to live in such situations due to their ‘precariousness’.

Such leadership display is not strange in nature or in animal kingdom. Even the king of the jungle, the lion do display such bossism in its pride. It has been reported that about 80% of the hunt are made by the lioness in the pride. Once the hunt is made, the dominant lion in the pride claims his share first. The lion never allows anyone to come near the kill until he finishes his meal.

The possible reason is that the lion wants to be always strong, indeed stronger than other members of the pride. Only when he is stronger than others, he can continue to claim his authority on the pride.

Challenge from within and challenge from a new lion, both has to be dealt wisely. This is an absolute necessity for lion in nature.

The state of ‘perfection’ is more in saying than in ‘achieving’. The wise bosses make the team work hard and enjoy the benefit of their toil. The confusion starts only when the bosses operate their ‘perfect’ leadership style from ‘physical’ space than from ‘intellectual’ space.

Lion in the pride uses its physical strength to control and contain the pride. Animals are said to be less intelligent than man and hence their leadership display through physical strength is accepted. But the corporate bosses are instead of using ‘the physical power’ i.e. ‘the designation and decision making powers’, they should use their intelligence and experience to establish their leadership dominance.

Once they prove they are good at articulation, reasoning, understanding, analysis and interpretation, naturally they can claim their ownership on every bit of the work the subordinates does.

But unfortunately, most bosses know only to ‘use’ the powers, and know only to scare the team. Scaring the team through the use of power is easier than becoming ‘intelligent’ and developing many ‘virtues’ is the simple belief system of most corporate bosses.

The subordinates must lookout for the existence of any ‘perfect’ bosses in the corporate. Remember that they can be dealt easily as they are not intelligent and confident.

Dr S Ranganathan