In the animal kingdom there has to be a pack leader to bring a crucial order their collective behaviour which enables the group to survive and thrive.
Anyone who has been privileged to share their life with a dog will know the importance of making sure you are the pack leader and not your pet. If your dog eats before you do and has the run of your house and sleeps on your bed, guess what he or she thinks their position in the family hierarchy is?
Cesar Milan the “dog whisperer” sums this up nicely.
In the wild, most dogs are followers, but if they don't have a leader to follow, a dog ' or dogs ' will attempt to take control of the situation. The lack of strong leadership leaves the dogs in an unbalanced mental state, and they will do whatever they have to do to fulfill their needs. In nature, this can create chaos in a pack.
However is this necessarily true in the working professional world. Do we all need pack leaders to avoid chaos in the office? And if you become a leader in say a law firm what happens when your term in office is over? I recall talking to a chief executive at a law firm who was stepping down after several years at the top. He told me he was very happy to be relinquishing his role and going back to fee earning.
Often as professionals we don’t really want to be managers or leaders anyway. We mainly want to carry out our work and not be dictated to by others. Leading a professional services firm is a subtle art likened by some to herding cats.
So in the world of professional work the pack leader analogy does not quite work in the same way. We still need leadership and direction to some extent if we work in any kind of organisation, but we are not so dependent on a hierarchical structure to succeed or for our well being.
We may at times be the top dog in a professional organisation, but if we never are or cease to be then we have other fulfilling work to do. And the natural order of things in a professional services firm maybe does not depend so much as it does in a dog pack on there always being a forceful leader.
Anyone who has been privileged to share their life with a dog will know the importance of making sure you are the pack leader and not your pet. If your dog eats before you do and has the run of your house and sleeps on your bed, guess what he or she thinks their position in the family hierarchy is?
Cesar Milan the “dog whisperer” sums this up nicely.
In the wild, most dogs are followers, but if they don't have a leader to follow, a dog ' or dogs ' will attempt to take control of the situation. The lack of strong leadership leaves the dogs in an unbalanced mental state, and they will do whatever they have to do to fulfill their needs. In nature, this can create chaos in a pack.
However is this necessarily true in the working professional world. Do we all need pack leaders to avoid chaos in the office? And if you become a leader in say a law firm what happens when your term in office is over? I recall talking to a chief executive at a law firm who was stepping down after several years at the top. He told me he was very happy to be relinquishing his role and going back to fee earning.
Often as professionals we don’t really want to be managers or leaders anyway. We mainly want to carry out our work and not be dictated to by others. Leading a professional services firm is a subtle art likened by some to herding cats.
So in the world of professional work the pack leader analogy does not quite work in the same way. We still need leadership and direction to some extent if we work in any kind of organisation, but we are not so dependent on a hierarchical structure to succeed or for our well being.
We may at times be the top dog in a professional organisation, but if we never are or cease to be then we have other fulfilling work to do. And the natural order of things in a professional services firm maybe does not depend so much as it does in a dog pack on there always being a forceful leader.
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