How can the Gita’s teaching on work as worship inspire corporate excellence?

Podcast:

Disclaimer: This transcript was generated using AI and may contain occasional errors or inaccuracies.

Summary

Transform your daily work from a mundane chore into a powerful instrument of purpose by aligning your professional goals with a grander vision.

• The Power of Vision: Your motivation is directly tied to your perspective; just like the teacher shaping the future, viewing your work as part of a larger mission dramatically changes your level of inspiration.

• Work as Worship: The Bhagavad Gita teaches that the divine presence extends beyond temples into our workplaces, allowing us to worship through our daily labor and benevolent contributions.

• Combating Workplace Burnout: When you connect your daily efforts to a reality bigger than yourself, you overcome existential questions like “does what I do make a difference?” and find long-lasting meaning.

• Contribution Over Pure Materialism: While recognition, position, and remuneration are natural desires, making a genuine contribution should be your primary purpose to avoid feeling discouraged or deflated.

• The Psychology of Selflessness: Working for a cause beyond yourself—similar to a caregiver looking after a child or pet—brings out your better side, inspiring you to tap into your full potential and talents.

• Positions as Endowments: Servant leadership reframes special abilities and roles as temporary endowments rather than entitlements, making leaders custodians rather than proprietors who act non-exploitatively.

Full Transcription

How can the Gita’s teaching of servant leadership and work as worship inspire people towards corporate excellence? Answer, our motivation depends on our vision of what we are doing. The grander our vision, the greater will be our motivation.
If a teacher is teaching students and, say we go ask three teachers teaching in three consecutive classes, the first teacher we ask, what are you doing? They say, can’t you see I am teaching this dumb subject to these dumb students? Second teacher we ask and they say that, I am trying to earn my living. Third teacher we ask and they say that, I am trying to shape the minds of those who will shape the future of the world. All three are doing the same activity of teaching, but their inspiration, their motivation will be very different, at a different level.
So, understanding this, what is the vision that the Gita offers for our work? The Gita says that the jurisdiction of the divine is not limited to the temple or the place of worship alone, but extends all over the universe including our workplace. That, that Lord, that ultimate reality from whom everything has come and by whom everything is pervaded, that ultimate reality can be worshipped through our work. So, God is the, God as explained in the Gita is the well-wisher of everyone.
And as parts of God, we can be instruments of his benevolent intention and vision for making things better in the world. We all face the challenge, sooner or later in our life, wherein we ask ourselves the question, does what I do make any difference? Does it count? Does anyone care? Why should I even strive so hard? So, to the extent we can see our work as a part of something bigger than ourselves, to that extent we can feel inspired to work. And the Gita tells us that each one of us is already a part of the biggest reality.
And now it is up to us to translate that, that spiritual identity into practical activity, wherein we focus on doing our work in a mood of service and contribution. Now, of course, we want some remuneration, we want some position, we want some recognition. All these are natural, but those don’t have to be our primary purposes for doing things.
Primary purpose can be to make a contribution. Not everyone can act in a way that will make a difference or actually make a difference that is visible to us. But we all can make a contribution towards making a difference.
And that way, each one of us can have a greater sense of meaning in our work. While we may all find meaning in the individual goals that we set and the achievements that we aim for, but such goals and their aims accordingly are not long-lasting. One goal after another after another will go on, but eventually we will feel discouraged, deflated.
The goals may not be promising enough, but our spirituality can help us. Our vision of servant leadership, where we see our work as a part of our connection with the Divine, and our contribution to the world in our service to the Divine, can actually inspire us to fully tap our talents for a higher purpose. It is something mysterious about human psychology that when we are working for a cause beyond ourselves and bigger than ourselves, we actually work better.
Many times people who may have recovered from severe sicknesses, even after recovering from sickness, they neglect taking the medicine regularly. Those same people, if they have a child, they will ensure that they will give the medicine to the child much more carefully. What to speak of a child? Even if they have a pet and their pet is sick, they will give medicine to that pet regularly.
And if they are the only caregiver of the pet, then they will take greater care of themselves because they would like to take better care of their pet. So that, working for a higher cause, working for something beyond ourselves, has the potential to bring our better side out. To make us better than what we presently are.
To inspire us to change for the better. And thus, we can progress towards greater excellence in our field through this higher vision of service. And as far as servant leadership is concerned, those of us who have been given some special abilities, some special positions, those are not our entitlements, but they are our endowments.
It’s not that we have earned them, we may have worked to get them, but they have ultimately been endowed to us for a particular amount of time. And we are custodians of our positions, not the proprietors. In that mood if we act, then each one of us can actually lead in a way that will be non-exploitative.
In a way that will be non-possessive. Lead in a way that will actually be benevolent and beneficial for others.