Summary
Contents
For professionals navigating negative corporate karmas, Leadership Lessons from the Bhagavad Gita offers a way forward for overcoming self-defeating habits and managing the mind's negative chatter that is often the main obstacle to effective leadership. By promoting a leadership approach of caring for followers, stakeholders and future generations, the book offers hope for harmonious workplace relations and a protected environment. Based on leadership by inspiration as opposed to leadership by control, Leadership Lessons from the Bhagavad Gita provides an alternative to conventional leadership. Particularly, in the times we live, where there is a crisis of faith in leadership, the insights from this book presents a vision of linked-leadership—leaders who are linked through loving-connection or bhakti-yoga with themselves (through self-knowledge), with other beings, with nature and with the supreme source. As exemplified by Krishna taking over the reins of Arjuna's chariot, the crux of this book is leadership, not as a title or position, but as a commitment to service, excellence and virtuous character that motivates and inspires others to pursue the same. The unique insights from this book will help you make sense of different personality types to motivate others according to their natures and inclinations, which will support you in forming effective teams and creating a harmonious and prosperous organizational culture. In short, this book challenges and equips leaders to step up and cultivate unity and diversity, and achieve sustainable wellbeing and happiness in their organizations.
Divine and Demoniac Dispositions
Divine and Demoniac Dispositions
We knew the world would not be the same. Few people laughed, few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita … ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.
—Robert Oppenheimer (1904–1967)1
Overview
Leaders should cultivate divine qualities and avoid demoniac instincts, both personally and professionally. Organizational commitment to higher values must be supported by integrating espoused virtues into company policies, even in the aspects of recruitment, reward and leadership promoting criteria. The demoniac disposition is like a disease that can infect the leader, causing the destruction of all that is good and sucking the leader into a whirlpool ...