Sometimes the most important thing to change is how people perceive  something.  We all label things and that label dictates how we respond to them; good or bad, hard or easy, important or trivial.  As a leader, one of the key things to do is to get people to see things the way that you do.  In yesterday’s blog one of Mark Evan’s main challenges was to get the local community to see the Quins as their team, not a bunch of toffs making a noise on their doorsteps.

Last year Hollywood made several very successful films about penguins, Happy Feet & March of the Penguins especially, where much lauded as models of love and especially monogamy.

I came across an incredible story yesterday that challenges this perspective.  Apparently the discoveries of Captain Scott’s expedition a 100 years ago were so shocking they were kept under lock and key and written up in Greek, least commoners were lead astray!  Apparently the behaviour of the Adélie penguins was so appalling, they indulged in not only homosexuality but necrophilia and rape!  Dr Levick, an expedition member wrote a pamphlet describing what he found which was only recently uncovered by Douglas Russell, curator of birds at the Natural History Museum, who said:

 “The pamphlet, declined for publication with the official Scott expedition reports, commented on the frequency of sexual activity, auto-erotic behaviour, and seemingly aberrant behaviour of young unpaired males and females, including necrophilia, sexual coercion, sexual and physical abuse of chicks and homosexual behaviour,” states the analysis written by Russell and colleagues William Sladen and David Ainley. “His observations were, however, accurate, valid and, with the benefit of hindsight, deserving of publication.”

So two perceptions literally poles apart, one controlled by withholding information and the other with all the power of the Hollywood glitz.  Communication and perception are often the key to Change

Resources:

1. The full story in the Guardian