When someone make you loose..remember this - a HR message

‘Spoilsport people’ in corporate world are well known. Jealous, anger, greed, sadistic pleasure and revenge are the common reasons why people play spoilsport and would snatch the success or spoil the effort to success/achievement. In most occasions, those who play spoilsport are generally people with negative attitude and temperament. They gain nothing for themselves by doing so but would certainly cause lose to others. Such spoilsports are quite common and plenty in most corporate.

In nature also we can find such spoilsports but are indeed different. They are quite positive in their approach, creative and are result centric.

The water bird Jacana is one such example.
In the world of Jacanas, the female birds are stronger and bigger when compared to male birds. The complete parental care, starting from incubating the eggs to rearing the chicks, male bird does. The interesting point is that when a female bird happen to see a male bird incubating eggs, would generally destroy the eggs to ‘own’ the male bird. She wants to own the male bird to mate and produce her offspring. Polyandry is quite common among Jacanas.

To get the male bird to mate and produce own chicks and to rear them up, the female bird would make the male bird to loose the eggs that they are incubating or chicks that they nurse.

The female birds in fact play spoilsport but for a good cause. They do not make the male bird to loose but ensures a gain and benefit even from the loss. The gain for the male birds is that they get another chance to mate, incubate eggs and nurse chicks.

The big question is whether people who play spoilsport in corporate ever carry the good intent of jacanas?

Many leaders play spoilsport in corporate. They do so mostly with bad intent. They only want the performers to under perform for leaders self gratification otherwise the subordinate must loose the goal and fail. They use the technique of spoilsport mostly to cover up own inefficiency and failure. When leaders resort to such activity, unfortunately they undermine the success of the organization.

Look at the leadership instinct and management wisdom of Jacana, they do not make the male birds to looser when they destroy the nests and eggs but they make the male bird to lose only to gain.

Dr S Ranganathan