Dominant Personality

We do need dominant persons to be able to move quickly in a given situation, make decisions, lead the indecisive ones, and show the vacillators how to be sure in making a decision. Dominant personalities engulf the weaknesses of the fellow men and serve as role models.
On the other hand, if a dominant person is wicked thinker then no one harms as much as he does. Because of his dominant personality, others submit their will to his will. In that sense, dominant personality is a two edged-sword.But there is much more than that to dominant personality. Dominant personality is like a big tree underneath of which the siblings cannot grow to their full potential. The creative minds give way to the dominance of one person and synergies cannot take place.
Dominate personalities exist everywhere if we look around. They can be in the form of parents, teachers, spiritual leaders, and political leaders, CEOs or CFOs. The phenomenon of dominant personalities is not restricted to humans only even an organization can be considered a dominant personality if it is in the position of dominating other small competing organization.

Let us talk about what these dominant personalities can do at all to us when we live with them or be in their circle of influence. Before talking about their actions and the possible repercussions of these actions upon us, it is better to numerate some of their characteristics in terms of psychology. Persons with dominant personalities like to live in the environment of power; they are risk taking, quick in decision making, want to get things done without ifs and buts. Persons who score high in the trait of dominance are hard-driving and risk-taking., and are competitive and goal-oriented. They want to be leaders – to be in charge and to control others. Confident in their ability, they are authoritarian and fearless. They may also be abrasive at times, critical and insensitive of others. They fear being taken advantage of and being controlled.

There is no denial of the fact that such people are effective in achieving their goals and are natural leaders, however, we should also confess that when these persons move ahead with their bold steps of initiatives they trample down the toddlers who may have greater potentials but are shy to express or not able to dictate like the dominant ones. Many creative ideas are rotten deep in their hearts and become submissive to things imposed upon them.
One byproduct of dominant personality is creation of pressure on others who live under the influence of it. There are many examples of very dominant parents whose children afterwards could not get out of their shadows. The reason is that those with lower dominance fear doing anything; they grow with the habit of taking orders; they do not develop their own full potentials to take initiative or learn through trial and error. With every observation of dominant person doing things in a perfect way, they add on to the fear of doing the same thing in an imperfect way by themselves. It is this fear when developed will continues with them even after they leave one dominant person and come under some other one. And thus the adage proves itself to be right that siblings cannot grow to their full potential under the shadow of a big tree.
Attaullah Shah
2006