Peacocks
When you think of peacocks, the image that comes to mind is probably the male peacock. Like the one below –>
If you didn’t know the male peacocks are the really beautiful ones; they have pretty colors on their feathers in hopes of attracting a female to them. The brighter and bigger the feathers the more likely they are to get that attention because it means they’re more fertile – so better chances of the female’s offspring to becoming healthy.
When put into a situation where we aren’t necessarily sure what we’re doing, or we actually don’t know what we’re doing we look to someone who is … or someone who seems like they know what they’re doing. So, how does this happen? If everyone’s capable of becoming a leader then how do people decide who to look to? What makes someone seem more like a leader, or better capable as a leader than does someone else? I know the answer to this is complex and can’t be answered in a few simple words, but I think I’ve figured out an important aspect to it. I think of it as the peacock theory; it’s the person who can hide their fear, or uncertainty the most. The person who takes charge and says “lets try this, not sure if it’ll work but we’ll find out”.
Mr. Berkowitz and Mr. Rabinowitz seem to think so too, check out their article under the challenges section
November 7th, 2012 at 4:26 pm
Wow Liz, I think it is great that you can come up with ways to relate real issues within leadership to physical components of the natural world. As far as a leader being good at hiding their fears and uncertainties, I think you are on to something, but I don’t think its an issues of hiding them more so than letting them be known by facing them and then encouraging others to conquer their fears as well.
November 14th, 2012 at 2:29 pm
Sounds like it’s a lot of fun being a peacock.
But yeah I agree with what you’re saying. It’s not easy to distinguish who a leader truly is just based off of their appearance.
But you do contradict yourself.
When you said “I think of it as the peacock theory. The person who can hid their fear, or uncertainty the most.”
Then you go on to state that it’s the person who takes charge and says “Let’s try this, not sure if it’ll work but we’ll find out.”
But that person isn’t hiding their fear or uncertainty, at all.
A person hiding their fear would have said “Let’s do it! 100% chance it’ll work.”
November 14th, 2012 at 4:55 pm
I really like this article here. It is hard to see who the leader is when there are a lot of leaders. Your peacock theory really makes sense. The saying you put after it really supports that theory.