This is an interesting article that I’d like to bookmark for myself, and thought I’d share it with you.

In the same way, leadership can also be demonstrated in a number of contexts, whether as the head of an organization, or as the unassuming Everyman (or Woman) who may not have an official title but who still wields tremendous influence through relationships.

For Boomers, this means being open to more fluid systemic models. “Emergents tend to emphasize organic process over linear organization, and relational networks or webs over hierarchies,” Irving notes. And Bruce Butterfield, CEO of the Forbes Group, agrees. “Leadership ladders have to give way to leadership bridges.” In ministry, this is currently reflected in the greater use of “strengths-based” job descriptions (à la Marcus Buckingham) rather than static hierarchical roles, and the preference for ministry coaching instead of consulting.

Looking for Leaders

A friend writes:

As I was reflecting on how easy it is to become in a “victim” mentality I thought how your “lead, follow, or step aside” is also relevant there in a similar way. You can either lead your life, follow your life as it drags you around, or you can step aside. Goodness-passion-ignorance.

Here are some excerpts from my personal notes on the first chapter of Bhagavad-gita that relate to effective and authentic leadership, which relate to the previous post.

It’s important to distinguish between the two. Within all organizations there are leaders and managers who are more or less effective, in terms of their capability to effect change. Then there are leaders who are more or less authentic, in terms of their alignment with universal principles. Ideally we need leaders who are both effective and authentic.

However, if we have to choose one or the other, we prefer inefficiency over inauthenticity.
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What is Leadership? There are many definitions of leadership that highlight its different aspects. John Maxwell, author of “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership” defines leadership as “influence, nothing more, nothing less. He who thinks he leads but has no-one following him, is simply taking a walk.” This is a functional definition of leadership, one that basically says that a leader is someone who has followers.

Leadership has been described by leadership educator Todd Duncan as “a total commitment to purpose, accompanied by the determination to carry it out.” This is a characteristic definition that describes the personal qualities of a leader.

My personal definition of leadership is “the supply of vision and direction in a situation of confusion and uncertainty”. This is a definition that highlights the identity of the leader as a service provider.

In his 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership John Maxwell presented the idea that leadership can be described as a set of principles that can be learned and applied. When practices align with these principles, leadership is effective.

In his book Principle-centered Leadership Stephen Covey takes this a step further. Not only are the practices, or the “how” of leadership governed by principles, but the actual direction and goal of leadership, or the “what” and “where”, are also subject to universal principles.

No-one can deny that Adolf Hitler was a leader in the sense that he effectively mobilized and directed the energy of many followers toward the pursuit of distant goals. However, not many people would be comfortable with a book entitled: “Leadership Secrets of Adolf Hitler”. We are sure that he is not a leader worthy of emulating. We have a sense that leadership in not only its form, but also its function, is governed by moral imperatives. These moral imperatives, signalled by our conscience, or our “internal compass” in the language of Covey, indicate fundamental principles of the universe. Leadership which conforms with these principles in terms of its form is Effective Leadership. Leadership which conforms with these principles in terms of its form and function is Authentic Leadership.

In these terms Hitler may have been an effective leader, but he was not an authentic leader. It’s not just how you lead the people that is governed by principles that you should be aware of and consciously align with – where you lead them is also governed by principles. With great power comes great responsibility. Those who lead not in accordance with these principles, intentions not withstanding, are guilty of misleading.

Bhagavad-gita describes these fundamental universal principles – the underlying framework of the universe that reflects the purpose of the universal architect. Leaders who align their practices with these principles will be effective leaders. Leaders who align their goals and the goals of the organizations they steward with these principles will be authentic leaders – leaders who are empowered to create a better world.

Leadership is absolutely crucial. As the oft-repeated saying has it: “everything rises or falls on leadership”. Failures or lack of leadership can be found near the root of all problems. At this present moment in time, with so many social and environmental indices tottering toward the red line, the world is crying out not just for effective leadership, but for authentic leadership. Bhagavad-gita contains the timeless principles that will empower leaders to be effective and authentic leaders. The greatest need at this point in time is for those people who have been called to lead to step forward and take up the Service of Leadership.
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In contrast to the conchshell sounded by Bhishma, the conchshells sounded by Arjuna and Krishna are described as “transcendental” (divya in the original Sanskrit). This is an indication that the leadership of Arjuna and Krishna is in accordance with underlying universal principles, as will be further explained in this work.

Effective leadership follows principles of practice which empower it to effect change. Authentic leadership follows principles of purpose which empower it to effect holistic positive change. Duryodhana was expert in applying the principles of practice, and as such he was able to amass a large force of capable, competent leaders. However, he had no interest in any purpose other than his own - the goal and direction of his leadership was not in accord with principles, therefore he was misleading these people. Leadership which follows principles in its form but deviates from or ignores universal principles in its function is actually little more than manipulation. A leader has been given a gift in the form of their ability to lead. With great power comes great responsibility. A leader exists within the context of a universal order, as do the people he or she leads. It is the responsibility of the leader to know what that universal order is, and to lead in accordance with it. Bhagavad-gita is just for this purpose.
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Krishna had vowed not to fight in the battle, but to join one side of the conflict. His army would fight on the other side. Duryodhana elected Krishna’s army, and Arjuna chose to have Krishna on his side. The inner meaning of this is that leadership which is lacking in effectiveness, in efficacy, due to a lack of understanding of the principles of practice is preferable to leadership which is lacking in alignment with the principles of purpose. It’s better to be going in the right direction at 5 miles an hour, than off a cliff at 100.

For all the efficiency of modern western civilization we see a number of alarming statistics, among them rates of violent crime, suicide, divorce and other indicators that efficiency is not everything.

Nityananda-kari dd asks:

(You) said ‘Level 5 leaders hold organizational priorities above ego priorities because they value the mission above themselves. ‘ and ‘level 5 leaders are committed above all to the mission. Followers or leaders who are not committed to the mission will destroy the organization.’ What’s the standard of a level 5 servant? If I know that I’m not a leader, but want to be a good follower, what guidelines should I follow? Can you put some light on this?

Thanks for your questions Nityananda-kari. I will do my best to reply.

Leaders and followers are both servants. After all, jivera svarupa haya, krsnera nitya-dasa. In his book The Courageous Follower, Ira Chaleff makes the point that followers do not orbit around leaders - both leaders and followers orbit around and serve a higher purpose. Just as teachers and students form a “learning circle” around a body of knowledge, similarly leaders and followers form an “action circle” around a common purpose.

Take away the knowledge, and the teacher-student relationship disappears. Take away the purpose, the mission, and the leader-follower relationship disappears.

Both followers and leaders work together in order to advance in an organized fashion toward common goals.

The term Level 5 Leader comes from Jim Collins, and was first introduced in an article that he wrote for the Harvard Business Review, entitled Level 5 Leadership: The Triumph of Humility and Fierce Resolve. The idea was expanded and fully explained in his book Good to Great.

You can read about the concept of a Level 5 Leader on Jim’s website.

Here is a graphic from there that describes the hierarchy:

OK, so your question is, if I understand it correctly: “How can I be an effective follower?”

We are actually all leaders, because our actions influence others. There will always be someone who looks up to us, and even apart from that our actions contribute to an overall culture by reinforcing it. Even a follower leads by setting an example of how to follow. The best followers are leaders.

By asking this question you have already demonstrated a leadership quality - proactivity. You are not sitting back waiting for someone else to do something - you are doing something about the situation.

His Holiness Bhakti Tirtha Swami, in his book Leadership for an Age of Higher Consciousness, explains that people end up with bad leaders because they do not know how to choose good leaders. Our present-day governments are elected democratically, so the people bear some responsibility for the leaders they end up with. Of course, the fairness of the electoral system in many countries is disputable, but in other arenas of life who we choose to follow is our own decision.

The first duty of a follower is to know who to follow. The qualification of a disciple is that they should know who is a real guru. Srila Prabhupada gives the example of gold - if you want to buy gold, then you had better know what real gold is, or you will be cheated. Similarly, if you are going to follow, then you had better know who is a real leader.

Blind following is condemned. We sometimes give the example of a soldier who kills on the command of superior officers and is thereby immune to prosecution. The analogy goes that this same person killing on their own prerogative is held accountable for their actions. This example is given to illustrate the idea that one who acts following the directions of the Supreme Personality of Godhead does not enjoy either the fruits or the reaction of their work.

However, to continue with this analogy, we find that the Nazi German soldiers who tried to use this defense at the Nuremburg trials after World War Two had it struck down. The court would not accept that they had “simply followed orders”.

Following these trials, every serviceman around the world now knows that they have a duty to refuse to obey illegal orders. This means that the soldier must know what constitutes legal and illegal orders. It is not enough to be a mindless automaton.

Similarly, we must know what are valid directions. We may not be able to take responsibility for other people, we may not be able to courageously initiate action, to inspire others to action, and to strategically navigate the way through a metaphorical battlefield, but we should still know enough to be able to recognize someone who can, and to know whether or not they are headed in the right direction.

If we are not a front-line person who leads the charge, but rather a second-line person who comes in directly behind lending support, then other second-line persons, and third-line persons will look to us for cues on who they should line up behind.

One of the arguments for Krishna being the Supreme Personality of Godhead that Srila Prabhupada would give was: “Vyasadeva has accepted, Madhvacarya has accepted, Ramanujacarya, Lord Caitanya, Srila Bhaktivinode Thakura and Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati have all accepted. Therefore we also accept.”

We exist somewhere in a hierarchy. Both in front of us and behind us others are linked in. Our service is to lend our support in all directions. This is called 360 degree leadership. Whether our role is to demonstrate leadership in cleanliness by washing the floor with a cloth every morning, leadership in sadhana by rising early and chanting as an example for others, whatever it may be, we also have the responsibility to show others how to link into the hierarchy.

As Duryodhana exhorts his men: “Now you all show support from your different positions in the phalanx to Bhishmadeva” (Bg. 1.11).

So I would say this: Learn to recognise authentic and effective leaders, and follow them. Back them up. Help them by lending support and giving honest feedback, in that order.

You may not exercise leadership directly in a formal role, but you should still seek to learn about it in order to be able to recognize and support those who do, and in order to take responsibility for your influence on others. This is a very important service.

Thank you for your questions and the opportunity to respond to them. You have already taken the first step in your leadership development journey by asking them. I hope some of the above points are of service to you.

your servant,
Sita-pati das

Interviewed in the latest issue of Leadership magazine are Andy Stanley, pastor of Northpoint Community Church and author of 7 Principles of Effective Ministry, among other titles, and Jim Collins, author of Good to Great.

There is a teaser article on Christianity Today. I’m eagerly awaiting my copy to arrive in the post. I subscribe to two magazines - Back to Godhead (we actually have two subs, one for the ashram, one for Atma Yoga), and Leadership magazine.

As an addendum to that last post: credible vision alone is also insufficient for authentic leadership. There have been people who have had credible vision. They have convinced people to join them in their cause, but they’ve gone the wrong way.

One definition of leadership, which I consider to be a powerful but incomplete one, is that it is “simply your ability to inspire the men through your communication”. That’s definitely an important factor, but far from the only one.

Thought for the day:

I heard John Maxwell say once that “previously it was thought that if you could cast vision, you were a leader. But there is more than one thing to being a leader - in fact there are 21″ (a reference to his 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership).

I certainly know some people who can cast vision like anything, but I was left wondering - “why does this person sound like a leader, but have no-one following them, and not inspire me to follow them either?”

I realized that vision is not sufficient - it has to be credible vision to be effective. I wrote about that in a post on Effective Vision in May of last year.

Today’s thought is a re-expression of that.

Vision gains credibility as you execute on it and get results.

In the beginning perhaps no-one else “gets” your vision. No-one else pays it any heed, believes in it, or wants to contribute to it. But you don’t let that stop you (if you do you definitely don’t have a credible vision). You execute on it anyway, because your vision has at least enough credibility to have one person who believes in it (you), and as you execute on it and make it happen, it rises in credibility.

Here is an example:

My first job in the tech industry was assembling PCs in a small firm in Auckland, New Zealand, called Eclipse Technology. After about 6 months there the company went bankrupt. I remember bumping into the CEO, Carmel, in the hallway during the windup process. She asked me what I was going to do. I told her that I thought I’d be a sysadmin, maybe with Unix machines. Six months previously I’d come from a job I’d held for a year washing dishes in a cafe.

She looked at me and scoffed: “You’ll never do that - you’ve got no experience”.

I didn’t want to point out to her that as the CEO of a company that just went bankrupt she didn’t enjoy so much credibility with me. Obviously my vision of my employment future didn’t have so much credibility back then for people other than myself. Three years later, on the cusp of Y2K I was a sysadmin, albeit for Windows machines. Ten years later, I’m working administering Linux systems.

Ok, to round off this post - here’s another thought I’ve been having for a while:

Vision - if you can hold it, you can have it.

The bigger the vision, the more opportunities you’ll get to give it up, before you get it.

Three very inspirational stories for me from the sacred literature are the stories of Dhruva Maharaja as a child, and also his encounter with the mystical illusions of the Yaksas, and the life story of one of my personal heroes, Hiranyakasipu.

Here is another early morning meditation from my trip to NZ back in December - The Four Natural Character Flaws of a Leader, and How to Overcome Them.

I wrote those realizations down one morning, but never finished it. I may rewrite it at a later date, but I think that there is something valuable for someone in there. I would like to recognize my indebtedness to His Holiness Bhakti Tirtha Swami for helping me to connect with this.

(Let’s hope that this one is a little less controversial than the last….)