It’s the Year of the Rooster! So, how good are you at leading your chicken coop — I mean, your team — to succeed in business?
Roosters hold the highest position in the chicken-coop hierarchy. In today’s society, we are trying to get away from giving too much power to one person.
Politically, that leads to dictatorships, and the concept of autocracy is definitely negative nowadays. The archaic notion of leadership by a single person has been replaced in business by a team philosophy.
The New Leaders
In today’s pecking order, even if the rooster is the one in charge of everything, he has to make sure no one feels excluded. He has to be careful not to overuse his control. The rooster is supposed to rule the roost, even though ruling is outdated.
Feel like you’re walking on eggshells? The new roosters, like the new entrepreneurs, know that ruling the roost is not what it used to be. Leadership skills have been updated, and the new roosters have to know the new rules.
Whether or not a team philosophy is better than an authoritarian style of leadership, at the end of the business day, it’s the entrepreneur who puts up the money and makes sure the business succeeds in the current economy.
What does the symbol of the rooster mean to you as an entrepreneur, a business owner, a career person?
Natural-Born Leaders
In the Chinese zodiac, the Rooster is one of the few signs ruled by only one element, the earth. This means that people born under the sign of the Rooster are naturally grounded, down to earth, and likely to be in charge.
Rooster leaders take their job seriously and expect the rest of the chicken coop to rely on them. Roosters perch high on the fence so they can oversee everything. The bottom line is, when the fox comes, it’s the rooster that sounds the alarm and fights to protect the brood, very much like a business leader fights to protect the company.
In today’s business world, with Millennials expecting to contribute equally and be evaluated as equals, the rooster is definitely losing his perch.
How do today’s leaders overcome the dangers of over-leading and overruling?
Leadership Skills and Mythology
To hone more layers of leadership skills, I went back to observe mythology. Mythology was inspired by the gods and humans living together and struggling to coexist. It offers lessons born of behaviour both godlike and human, both good and bad, and it always offers a silver lining.
In Greek mythology, the word “rooster” comes from the name Alectryon. Alectryon was a young boy put in charge by the god Ares of guarding the door while Ares indulged in illicit love with Aphrodite.
Alectryon fell asleep, and Helios, the sun, walked in on the couple. Ares turned Alectryon into a rooster, which never forgets to announce the arrival of the sun in the morning.
In Norse mythology, Gullinkambi, meaning “golden comb,” was a rooster who lived in Valhalla. Gullinkambi was one of the three roosters whose crowing would signify the beginning of the end of the world.
The Vikings believed that one day the world would end. They called that day Ragnarok. Ragnarok would mark the doom of good and evil and would include a final battle between the Aesir (gods) and the Jotuns (the giants, the malevolent forces).
Chris Hemsworth in the new Ragnarok movie models many of the new leadership skills. In this movie he is the leader and, yet, he offers a good example of teamwork with the multiple characters from the Marvel Universe.
Japanese mythology seems to find its silver lining by blending the Greek and the Norse. The rooster is a collective solar symbol, a bird that signals the dawn with its crowing and disperses evil spirits as the light of the day disperses darkness.
Worldwide Leaders
So, in sum, the rooster in Greek mythology symbolizes a young lad who learned from his mistakes by announcing the sun every day. In Norse mythology, the Vikings gave the rooster the power to announce the end of the world. In Japanese mythology, the rooster is a solar symbol, representing the power of light over darkness.
In Chinese astrology, people born in the Year of the Rooster are natural-born leaders whose commitment reassures the team.
If you were born under the sign of the Rooster, it’s time to update your leadership skills to match the mood of today’s business world. To do this successfully, you must be grounded in your strength and your power to announce change.
Like the Rooster, you are an entrepreneur who doesn’t fear protecting your ideas and who fights to promote transformation.
Every morning, you announce the arrival of a new day, because you are always ready and willing to participate.
Why a Leadership Development Coach?
Monica Magnetti is a leadership development coach who was born under the sign of the Rooster. Like many entrepreneurs born under this sign, she works well both in a team and alone. Monica understands the responsibility of today’s leaders and works with them to update their leadership skills for business success.
Book a free consultation with Monica Magnetti via our online form on our contact page!
Want more? 30 Days to a New You is a free download by life coaching author Monica Magnetti. It isn’t just a self-empowerment book. It’s also a manual designed especially for entrepreneurs, written in conversational style, with an easy-to-read font and eye-catching graphics.
Originally published at www.lunacoaching.com on January 20, 2017.
Originally published at medium.com