Who Wants to be the Alpha Male? Not Me!

Hiker Cafe, Hengistbury Head

Last Friday Susan went for a windy walk down in Dorset, and I, not being as spry as I once was, stayed in the Happy Hiker cafe talking to my new friend, Pat.  I enjoyed the talk, and I especially enjoyed it being one-to-one: I tend to go silent in a group when the numbers get to four or above (unless I'm the group facilitator).

Dwayne Johnson, my alter ego

I was talking about how I relate to a group that I'm a member of and Pat asked me whether I was competing to be the Alpha male of the group, and I protested that that was the last thing I wanted to be.

But it got me thinking.  I'm 6'4" and about 22 stones (1.93 m, 136 kg, 300 lbs).  I'm white, male, reasonably well spoken, middle class, reasonably intelligent, reasonably well educated.

I have noticed in the past that many people seem to automatically assume that in any group I'll either be the alpha male, or will compete to gain that role.  And that is absolutely not me.  I neither relate to the role, nor do I want the role, and nor do I relate to typical alpha males in popular culture (although if some maleficent witch insisted in waving a wand and transforming me, I'd chose Dwayne Johnson, because he's always seemed like a really nice guy).

Tyson Fury, Heavyweight Champion

Jacinda Ardern - Soft Power

I'm writing this on Sunday 23rd February and it's interesting that there are two pieces of relevant news this morning.  One is that Tyson Fury won the world heavyweight boxing championship yesterday, and the other is that New Zealand prime minister Jacinda Ardern is featured on the latest cover of Time Magazine, with an article about "Soft Power".
I did read a few paragraphs of the Tyson Fury story, because I'm curious, but I read the Jacinda article in Time magazine all the way through, because she's a real hero of mine, whereas I couldn't care less about Tyson Fury (or any other "sporting hero" if it comes to that!)

In the Time article author Belinda Luscombe writes:

"Ardern’s real gift is her ability to articulate a form of leadership that embodies strength and sanity, while also pushing an agenda of compassion and community”, (she) has “infused New Zealand with a new kind of soft power” and doesn’t have to request meetings with world leaders anymore, they are now lining up to be associated with her."

She's my kinda gal!  The article is a long read, but really worth it.

On the way home from Dorset I was talking about this with Susan and she asked why I don't want to be the alpha male.  After all, she said, if I had that sort of power in a group it would be easier to pursue my agenda and get things done ... the sort of things that I want to get done.  It was an interesting question, because Pat had seen through me enough to get me talking about the sort of things that I write about in this blog and said that it seemed to her that I had a passion about these things, and wouldn't I want to see them come to fruition?

I found that very interesting, because I've pretty much withdrawn from the group, apart from having coffee with people and writing this blog, precisely because it is complete anathema to me to get involved in the sort of peacock posturing that "real men" seem to enjoy.

Susan still wasn't convinced, and I suddenly remembered something that happened years ago, back in the days when I was very involved in co-counselling (both as a practitioner and as a facilitator).  It was a meeting of our local co-counselling community, the first meeting following the end of a course I had facilitated, and some new co-counsellors had joined our community.  We were sitting around, chatting about this and that, and one of the new members, a woman in her mid-forties, came up with an idea and said, "somebody ought to ..." (I forget what her suggestion was).  We all sat silent and after a few minutes something seemed to pass across her face, her eyes lit up and she looked round the circle.  "Oh!" she said, "I suppose I could make that happen".  It's moments like that that I live for, and that's why I don't want to be a steam-rollering Alpha Male, all out for power and glory ... but ...

Surprising alpha males

... at that point in writing this I went searching on the Internet for a picture of, say, a silver-back gorilla as a prime example of the alpha male, and I stumbled upon this totally fascinating TEDMED talk by Frans de Waal, a Dutch primatologist who knows more than a little about Alpha males (and females).  I heartily recommend spending 15 minutes enjoying this video.  I learned an awful lot!  By the end you will understand why I might choose Dwayne Johnson as my alpha male role model, and why, maybe, I wouldn't mind being a true alpha male after all (I still don't think it's a role I'm cut out for).

I think that Jacinda Adern embodies all the positive traits of alpha females and males that de Waal discusses in his talk.

So, where does that get us?  Well, when I got home on Friday this Quora question was waiting in my inbox.  Ordinarily I'd just dismiss that as a silly question, or answer it in a very sarcastic way.  But it seemed germane to what was going on for me just then.  Was I shooting for global domination, and if not, why didn't it matter?  I think this post so far has already answered that.  Had I answered this Quora question I think I would have said, "because we have finally grown up" (although recent UK political shenanigans give that the lie).

I think in future, when confronted with some sort of question about how I might behave in a group, I might use a new meme of mine:

What would Jacinda Do?

I think my next blog post might be about the work of Dr Meredith Belbin on "Team Roles".  Watch this space!