Why polar bears avoided Antarctic zone...a corporate leadership message

Why polar bears are not present in Antarctica? Why are they restricted only to the arctic region? The question has to be answered from the management perspective. Polar bears are one of the top predatory animals. Large numbers of flightless birds like Penguins are widely distributed in Antarctica region. Imagine, if the polar bears had preferred to live in Antarctica region, perhaps they can easily hunt Penguins as they are flightless birds. But ironically they have not preferred the Antarctic region to live.

In arctic region, availability of food for the Polar bears, scarce. Hence, the life of polar bear in arctic region is hard and harsh. But still they prefer to live in arctic region than in Antarctic region. Perhaps the polar bears might wants to be a leader. If they prefer the Antarctic region to live, certainly they may get enough food to eat and grow so easily. It looks like they have understood the fact that they may get easy food (prey) in Antarctic region not because of their predatory skills or strength; but purely due to the fact that the prey animals like Penguins are weak and flightless. No strong leader will ever prefer to attack weaker people. In fact the true leaders always support and protect the weaker people. This instinct only would have triggered them to be in much harsher environment.

Perhaps the polar bears may want to re-instate their highest position therefore they would have preferred to be in the arctic region than the Antarctic zone.

Corporate people should not engage in the intellectualization of the above hypothesis. Leaders should understand the fact that they own the responsibility of supporting and facilitating the people who have recently joined the team, especially at the junior level. But unfortunately most of the corporate leaders tend to show their power and might only to the people who are at the junior most level. The people at junior most cadres generally will not resist much and hence the corporate leaders tend to experiment all their leadership capabilities (talents) with them.

Look at the habitat preference of polar bears. They have preferred the region where they have to toil hard to get a hunt. The region where they get an easy hunt, they have not preferred to live.

Leaders should always love to achieve success not by exploiting the weakest but only from the strength and character of their leadership. Use your leadership merit to strengthen your leadership character and never use against the weakest is the message, the polar bears convey.

Creation and conversion of junior people into the sycophants of the boss is relatively easy as the people in junior position are generally novice at the time of joining. Further, they can also trained easily. Therefore the HR function should look carefully into the true leadership style of people in corporate.

Dr S Ranganathan, ClinRise Derma Pvt., Ltd., Chennai

Desire, Dream and Destination – Social Entrepreneur Forum