Leadership development traditionally is aimed at individuals who want to advance their career. But is that aspiration, by itself, enough to make a true leader who can change lives?
For example, let’s take someone we all know about who made a difference in the lives of millions, South Africa’s Nelson Mandela. He didn’t just open the newspaper classifieds one day and see an opening for leading his people out the Apartheid system. He didn’t say to his wife, “I’m going to start a new career because we need more money.”
He didn’t see this as a good springboard into a position as CEO of a Fortune 500 company. No, what happened is that he experienced the suffering of his people firsthand, and the inner resources of courage and determination manifested in him, as naturally as a rose opens to the sun.
It takes a huge leap forward when there is insight into the purpose of leadership, or more importantly, when there is an understanding about the meaning of leadership. If the goals of being a leader in the first place are based on the goals of furthering your career, making money, improving the bottom line, or just ego-gratification, then the results can be no more than average and with a high probability of failure.
It has to spring from within if the purpose is to empower people to be the best that they can be, to help them see a broader vision, and live the best lives they can live, then your success at leadership can take a quantum leap forward.
There is a saying that without darkness you cannot appreciate the light. When it comes to leadership (political, corporate, and spiritual) there is plenty of darkness. So as the cast sang in the rock opera, Hair, “…let the sunshine in.”
To be an inspired, powerful leader, you need to be connected to the source of being. You have to get beyond the ego. But the ego has the determination to prevent this from happening. What is really needed is people who make a difference.
The ego always wants to be in control, to stand out, and to be separate. It might use success for that. It might also use its superiority.
It could even use failure. It wants to keep its identity at any cost. So it really takes awareness, inspiration, and a commitment to inner connectedness to succeed in not falling victim to the ego. It is not easy. In fact, at the level of leadership, it is the most difficult.
The trappings of success are just that, a trap. As Emerson said, “The gain is apparent, the tax is certain.” If you succeed in being a great holistic leader, the ego will grab on to that. You have to know yourself. You can’t read the headlines about yourself.
Some famous examples of holistic leadership in the social and political worlds would include Martin Luther King Jr., Mohandes Gandhi, Nelson Mandella, Albert Sweitzer, Mother Theresa, Albert Einstein, and JFK. What you see when you look at any of these leaders is that they didn’t use their authority to dictate, they used it to inspire, to bring about positive change conducive to life.
They didn’t demand loyalty; they inspired it. They didn’t do what they did for the sake of gain. They did what they did in order to leave a legacy.
These individuals were not perfect. But they were connected to an inner source of power. They were inspired. Their lives touched other people in a way that brought out the best in them.
Those were some of the famous ones. There are thousands of others who are not famous–teachers, coaches, small business owners, writers, artists, musicians. They exist around the world in various walks of life.
In every one of them, however, there is a common link. The person makes a connection to his or her source of being, of Presence. They hit the “on” switch. Then the magic happens.
And the magic keeps happening, unless they hit the “off” switch. In other words, the magic will continue unless the ego lays claim to the new success.
There is nothing to prove. No arguments to win. No praise to gain. The only requirement is living in the present moment, which is enlivened by a continuous energy.
If the new leader starts to bask in the accomplishments of the past, it is over. If he or she starts to worry about the demands of the future, the energy will dissipate.
Fear, worry, greed, and anger will undermine the success of the leader if he lets it. They are all limiting forms of emotion. They constrict. They are self-defeating.
If any of these negative emotions come, then awareness of the situation is the only solution. Acknowledge what is happening. Don’t pretend it isn’t there. I heard one Buddhist teacher advise to say hello to it. Give it a hug. Then let it go.
I came across a great example of a “letting go” last week when I checked out from my library a book entitled, Krishnamurti — 100 Years
I was struck by the book’s interview with a psychiatrist from Santa Barbara, California. The psychiatrist, Dr. Benjamin Weinniger, recalled introducing Krishnamurti to all of the psychoanalysts in Washington, DC in 1946. He tells Evelyne Blau in the book, “When he (Krishnamurti) was talking to the psychiatrists and psychoanalysts for the first time in Washington, DC, he came to me and he was shaking with fear. He said, ‘I’m scared.’
“And I tried to reassure him that it would be all right, and then when he went in to talk, I realized that he was able to drop the fear. He allowed himself to experience the fear fully and then let it go. Most of us don’t do that; we stay with the fear instead of letting it go. This is what he means when he says, I have no fear.”
I guess it is fair to say that Krishnamurti was a holistic leader. He was aware of how the mind worked. He understood the trappings of the ego. Read the book. It’s full of wonderful interviews. You will get a first hand glimpse of how someone, rooted in the power of his source of being, was able to impact so many people in an uplifting way.
There is also an interview in the book with quantum physicist David Bohm that offers great insight into existence and oneness. When Bohm was explaining his theories to Krishnamurti, he summed it all up by saying the word, “Totality.” Krishnamurti grabbed his arm and said, “That’s it.”
I’ve been a big fan of David Bohm for a long time. In his book, Wholeness and the Implicate Orderer
“Some might say: ‘Fragmentation of cities, religions, political systems, conflict in the form of wars, general violence, fratricide, etc., are the reality. Wholeness is only an ideal, toward which we should perhaps strive.’ But this is not what is being said here. Rather, what should be said is that wholeness is what is real, and that fragmentation is the response of this whole to man’s action, guided by illusory perception, which is shaped by fragmentary thought. In other words, it is just because reality is whole that man, with his fragmentary approach, will inevitably be answered with a correspondingly fragmentary response. So what is needed is for man to give attention to his habit of fragmentary thought, to be aware of it, and thus bring it to an end. Man’s approach to reality may then be whole, and so the response will be whole.”
If only the world leaders could have that insight. This is one of those passages that I go back to again and again whenever I need my battery charged, whenever I’m feeling fragmented.
That is why leadership development, unless it is based on holistic principles, will never reach its highest goal. We can’t keep giving obstacles more reality than they have. We need to let our consciousness change our world.
Otherwise, our fragmented perceptions of the world, with all of its obstacles and negative forces will only be reinforced, perpetuating the conditions of fragmentation and all the misery that entails. How do you lead people through experience like that?
Did you notice the Zen like thinking at the end of Bohm’s paragraph, when he says to give attention to the habit of fragmentary thought, to be aware of it, and bring it to an end.
It is a challenge to bring it to an end, because it is the product of the ego, which feeds on separateness. It takes persistent effort, throughout life.
It takes vision, consciousness, awareness, and commitment to be the leader who cuts through the illusion of a fragmented world, and inspire people to embrace the oneness.
Here is an article by Brian Tracy on personal leadership development that I found helpful. Enjoy.
