By Dr Pius Musau
They say every dog has its day, but I am sure the underdogs would rather they didn’t have to wait that long for their turn. In a world of limited resources, it helps if you have some status that gives you a quicker access to the comfort zone.
The alpha male leads the pack and gets the best of what is available. With regard to humans, this is the man whose presence turns the rest into subordinates. The confident, effacing male who until recently was thought to have everything going for him and whose traits are now thought to be a possible handicap.
Understanding the alpha male
The good things of life are never gotten as a birth right. You win a woman, build your success, rise up the pecking order and develop charisma on your own. Most of us do not get to have the confidence, self-drive, competitive edge and certainty of our actions that constitute the standard behaviour of an alpha male.
As such, these are the males, and increasingly in the modern world, females, who will take charge of unexpected developments while the rest of us cow under our perceived inadequacies. They will strategise, coordinate and execute plans as they steer teams into victories only they were sure about.
But the alpha males have their downside too. Some move from being confident to belligerent, coordinators to commanders, self-assurance to snobbishness and team player to illogical competitor. Those in companies occasionally have to be managed because their energy could easily be used in a counter-productive manner to the detriment of the common goal.
