Who is a leader? – LEAD acronym

[Talk at University of Bridgeport, Connecticut, USA]

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This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Thank you.
I spoke on the theme of who is a leader. Started by talking of how there is public leadership and personal leadership. And without the foundation of being one’s own leader, leading one’s own senses, one’s intelligence, being collected, without that, even if one has the qualities by which one can be charismatic and control people, but that will simply increase the height from which we fall and we get others to fall.
So public leadership is the foundation for the building of, sorry, personal leadership is the foundation for the superstructure of public leadership. And the Gita is a book about personal leadership. It is between two leaders, Krishna and Arjuna.
Leadership is not so much a matter of designation as of disposition. And to develop the disposition of leadership, I talked about an acronym LEAD. Does anyone remember what was LEAD? L was? Learning.
Learning, yes. So learn to learn from life. The universe is like a university.
So a leader is one who is a constant learner. We learn by observing external situations. We learn by going inwards.
We become receptive to inspiration from a higher source. We link with the inner leader. The Gita gives us the spiritual principles of devotion by which we can link with our inner leader.
And thus, we can be on a mood of learning and sharing. Then E was? Expanding. So those who are managers or may-doers, they get caught in nitty-gritties of small things.
The leader sees the big picture. And to see the big picture, the Gita expands our vision of the self. We are not the roles and the goals that we set for ourselves.
We are bigger than that. Our worth is more than our net worth or our grade points. We are not like a river that has to be stuck to one channel.
We can find another channel and move on in life. And talking about work, work in a mood of worship. That instead of obsessing over specific things to do and get them done, we see work as a mood of contribution, doing our best in a mood of service and worship.
Work itself is not worship, but work can be done in a mood of worship. And third was success. If we are attached to results, then we are basing our sense of success on something that is not in our control.
And that sets us up for frustration and depression. But setting goals enables us to bring out our best. The Gita tells us, be detached from results, but do set goals.
And that way, we can always be on the path where we are making our best contribution. And I talked about how the result comes from not just our karma, our work, but also our destiny and our time. So sometimes these are favorable, sometimes it is unfavorable.
So recognizing that life is like a tennis game, we act according to whether we have more control or less control. Then what was the next one? A was appreciating. The most important virtue of a leader in terms of relationships is to inspire others to do their best.
And I talked about how appreciation is fuel for the heart, just as we have petrol or diesel fuel for the vehicle. And why should we reserve the appreciation of our appreciation of others to their memorial service? Appreciate them right now. Make a habit of appreciating people once, one person at least per day.
And flattery is where we want others, we just speak untruth to get people to do what we want them to do. Appreciation is where we observe others, see the good in them and speak it out. And last D was determining.
So determining means we are able to decide. How do we decide? We look at what is in our direct control, what is in our indirect control and what is not in our control. And appropriately shape our actions.
A spiritual vision helps us to see that things that are not in our control are still not out of control. There is a higher plan. And thus we can tap the power of letting go of things out of our control so that we can do things in our control.
And just as Arjun was disheartened at the start of the Gita, but he picked up his bow with confidence at the end of the Gita. Similarly, understanding the Gita’s message can infuse us with similar determination. Even if there are adversities which dishearten us, we can with a sense of divine purpose march forward in our life.
And be a leader internally and externally. Thank you very much. So any questions or comments?