Eco Leadership

Where have we derived our leadership qualities from? What impact has it created today by producing such leaders and allowing them to lead us so far?

When quantum physics started evolving, Newtonian physics went behind but the application areas are not dismissed. They are still useful. But they are not helpful to understand the quantum nature of the universe.

Similarly, the leadership models that we have followed so far is not going to be useful anymore

All the leadership models have in fact emanated from Scientific Management Theory of F M Taylor. In fact science was the ruling subject of intellectuals of t the time. Objective and logical thinking were the elements necessarily to be held and upheld if you want to prove yourself as thinker. Though not stayed openly, one cannot deny that in those days women and workers were not considered as thinkers as they were known for showing their emotions. The ruling belief was that emotional people cannot be logical and objective. In 18th Century, we find very less women researchers and almost no PhD holders from amongst women.

The advocacy of Scientific Management theory is -
 a) make profit,
 b)make the best of  workers capability,
c)maximise output with less input both manpower and materials,etc.

So the leadership styles were influenced by these concepts. It is not to blame F M Taylor for that matter, we bring this to our consciousness. There is Sanskrit saying: Lokham Thathvamasi which means Concepts defines the Universe.That is to say, we created our world based on these concepts. That is owned by us not to be blamed on Taylor.

There were more concepts than just Scientific Management Theory. There was Adam Smiths economics, Newtons predictive physics,etc. Highly deterministic, applied with specific goals involving what the person wants. The thinking wave of those days was objectivity,logic and deterministic. Even the prevalent psychology that emerged at this time was determinisitic with Freud and the American Behaviouristic schools prevailing over others life Gestalt.

In the name of focus we allowed limited perspective for leaders, in the of specialization, we stepped back from learning other subjects and other areas. It is not wrong to have focus and specialization, but where depth and vastness are needed, we sacrificed vastness. Where holistic thinking and focused approach are needed, we sacrificed holistic thinking. As a result we became selfish and self centred.

Nobody thought about Universal Management Theory. No one thought about Universal Leadership Model.The result is earth gets plundered, nature is abused, political strategy is meant to learn how to interfere with other nations sovernity.

Why should Somalians die without food and why should they now turn out to be hooligans of the ocean. Why should Bangladeshis migrate from their country to other nations and get killed.

For this kind of leadership, the consciousness of universal brotherhood is not a necessary perspective. Enshrined in the charter of UN, universal humanity is left for "flaky non profits", contribution to which eats into business profit, but necessary for publicity. Profit is mainstream and universal humanity is publicity.

Why not the wealth of earth be managed by universal citizens and directed for the benefit of all. We only need to learn higher management aspects in order to become universal citizens. We need to create models that are holistic than fermentative.

Unless we accommodate in our thinking the concept of Partnering with Universe, we cannot evolve further. The eco leadership model will provide foundation to such thinking.

Its time for Queendom!

I am 62 years old and I see the difference very distinctly. They are  there in the office, bus stop, in the malls in the training programs, in conferences, seminars and what not. The women are everywhere!

Not just that. Every year the pass out percentage of girls both in schools and colleges is higher  than men. Statistically, women out live men.

Now a days, I see women more in numbers, freely and effectively participating and contributing. They at times, very nicely nudge the men out and take other women along with them and move forward.

What is amazing to me is like the green cheese spreading, they are slowly but surely occupying every field.

I do not think they are attempting to be equal to man. Their presence communicates something else to me. They are here because their time has come. Its time for Queendom and so they are there, in fact everywhere.

In a rocky mountainous land, the water sneaks below the rock, through its chacks and spread across the rock surface making it possible for the different seeds of trees and plants to grow in it. Women today seem to have quietly emerged everywhere, making the Queendom possible to emerge and establish.

How is it going to happen?
We know how Kingdoms are established. The mighty king will wage a war, conquer the other king and the country and establish the kingdom. If any King does not want to fight, he bows down to the mighty King and gives up.

But the Queendom is not going to be established that way. They are going to seep down every where like water, manoeuvring the sand and the rock to sprout their queendom. They are not going to push men behind or push them out. But certainly they are going to grow out of them.

They are not going to employ the linear method of sword and war to establish their queendom. Their method will be non linear and certainly not war.

Their way is going to be both misty and mystical. One will certainly think whether they are doing it or some divine design with a divine hand is making it happen from behind them. We do not know and we will never know it also. All we know and we can know is that the Queendom is emerging in a most nonlinear way, sprouting here and there but gradually going to be everywhere.

Shadow and Sathyam

As I further work on the concept of shadow and the questions that people(including me) have about it, a few of the confusions on it are the following -
1. Shadow is the storehouse of evil.
2. Psychology talks of being positive and nurturing the positive in us, how does Shadow which is dark, painful, unwanted part fit with this ideology?
3. There is a reason why certain behaviour cannot be accepted in society, that is why they are rejected.

My thoughts on these topics go on the lines of Sathyam Shivam Sundaram.
Shadow is not evil. It never was. It is a part of ourselves we have not learnt to integrate with our everyday lives. Parts of it might be offensive to some of our close people, parts might be immature, some parts might be so brilliant that their acknowledging might necessitate major changes in life. There might be several reasons for a part to be in shadow rather than foreground. Some parts even come to play only with age, for ex what we typically associate with spirituality. This part more often comes to play in individuals in the second half of life and is in the shadow till then.

Evil is a word most often used in context actions with immoral, malevolent or with destructive intent, deliberate actions designed to harm others. Thus often when we find a part of ourselves bearing ill will towards another person maybe out of jealousy or something else, we label this part of ourselves as 'Evil'. We believe that it is this 'Evil' that makes people do bad things. This 'Evil' is to be fought in every way.
But approaching this with a very non judgemental and incisive perspective, we see that in labelling this part of ourselves as evil, we have been hasty. We have forgotten the words 'deliberate action'. The part is only talking of what it is feeling. If you hear more deeply it till tell other things than ill will and jealousy, those are only to catch your attention.
Evil will come into existence when you - the conscious being, 'choose to act' on this feeling knowing its consequences. Till then it is only fear of a part of yourself that might be immature, repressed or something similar - i.e your shadow.
Thus shadow might be container for many of your feelings of your ill will. But it is not evil. It may be trying to tell you something else - a caution that may need you to heed it.
Evil comes into existence when you consciously act on it, impacting others negatively. You are the key, not the shadow. This is also very critical in working with shadow that we do not yield to it. We need to understand it and bring its understanding to us. From this place of knowing, our action may then flow. This is the place of Self. From here what seems to be Evil is not being in touch with this Self of ours.

For me the concept of Sathyam Shivam Sundaram talks of this. The Truth is the one that is absolute and is a reality. This reality is free of your wishes, projections, etc. When you see it thus, devoid of your projections, devoid of you shadow/persona, it just is. Everything that emanates from this space devoid of shadow is Divine - Shivam. The beauty is what is the feeling you -the conscious being  are left with.

This is what I link with Positive psychology. The minute we label something as positive we are creating its opposite also. But the same search when we apply to looking for the truth devoid of projection, everything seems positive and beautiful. Action then is to grow that which is appropriate to the situation alone.

Why do I have a shadow? Could I have grown up without a shadow?

1.       

           As we work with shadow, one of the way it eludes work with us is by blaming others for its creation -

          "Others did this to me.They should be working on their shadow."
            Blaming others for the shadow that I have., can we grow up without developing a shadow?

Ans to my shadow

It is a euphemistic idea of growing up such a way that we would not have a shadow. Our abilities, feelings and capacity to impact others existed before our minds developed enough to recognize and deal with it.  A new born child for ex, has such a huge impact on its parents. Its actions can drive people around it crazy. But it has no awareness of it and in no way can deal with this power that it has over others.Thank God for it, otherwise it would have been an ignorant tyrant on the parents. Though the newborns dont realise this, kids as young as 7 month olds start realising this and start manipulating to get their way done!

Our sexuality develops before our ability to build strong and responsible relationships with others. Our abilities to build relationship as adult is the basis for marriage which we now understand has to be done only after we reach 20s

Our minds are a tad slower in developing compared to these basic human aspects.We often cannot fully understand the consequences, advantages and disadvantages of our energies. 

Hence there is a need to safeguard these wild energies in us before we can understand and deal with them, to be able to take responsibility of them. Hence it is essential for our parents and society to help us from our wild emotions before we can deal with them. In the process these parts gets pushed underground for us to deal with them later. But as we grow up, our abilities become better, it is natural for these forces to start putting pressure asking us to deal with them again. Unfortunately, even after we grow up, many a time, this need to deal with these energies is forgotten. Our parents and societies also often are not geared to teach us how to deal with them effectively.

For ex, if you are 30 and not yet fully understood and expressed your sexuality, that emerged at puberty, then you are in for trouble!

It is when our ego and self are ready, that we can bring out our shadow and deal with it effectively.

This also reason for us not to blame others, particularly our parents for our shadow. Ultimately shadow exists because we did not acknowledge it in ourselves. Now, after our minds are mature enough, we can choose to acknowledge these parts of ourselves and thus bring them out.

This natural process may however be deviated at times because of injuries to the ego-self. This may leave us incapable of handling our shadows effectively. These may be cases of severe abuse, lack of safety for young children, etc. Such times, the adult may seek professional help in the form of therapy to heal the injured part and then develop the ego well.

Below is a link to the flyer of our upcoming prog on Shadow
https://sites.google.com/a/partneringwithuniverse.com/home/the-programs/light-from-the-shadow

The Invisible Feminine in the Organisation

I have been in discussion with a friend past month regarding how 'uninclusive' today's corporate organisations are of the Feminine. The Feminine with a capital 'F' is my way of saying not women or females but the aspect of nature. That one which is part of the Masculine-Feminine duality which is present everywhere, in both man and woman. We, me and my friend, and a lot of others we talked to, agreed that there is a need to include the Feminine, value it, etc. We were convinced of its utility even. But the challenge was to describe the function and the contribution of the Feminine in the organisation, or even to fully describe of it works,the aspects of an organisation that falls under the Feminine nature. This definition should then help us to understand how it contributes to the organisations and how an organisation is doing on those aspects. As we continue to dialogue on it, I had an interesting metaphor to describe the way the dichotomies play which shows how difficult it is to describe the Feminine.

The metaphor is that of an object and its background.
From time immemorial we have admired, respected, valued  a finished work like a construction project - bridges, buildings, a product of literature - poetry or novels, fiction and non fiction,  theories on physics, psychology and all else. All of these come under the definition of success as we understand it. Or rather I should say production of such an entity is what we call success. Then we further had to measure it with wealth, fame and other associations that we make with success.
We naturally understand the struggle which goes behind the production of such an entity. The vision, planning, skill, knowledge, hardwork. This is what is the basis of calling it a success, of respecting it and of the sense of pride.
All is fair, so what is my point. My point is that these entities are always the fantastic object in the foreground. We never notice the background. In reality it is the background which inspires, nourishes, supports, gives a context based meaning to the foreground object. Imagine a beautiful picture of a black swan is meaningless in a black background. One of the most fascinating aspects of Monalisa is its variation of the background. The foreground is that of a woman with a slight smile, but what holds you to the painting without you becoming aware of it is the background of it. On one side near and on the other far. But for the conscious mind, we only see the foreground object of the woman with the smile.

Similarly in each of our supposed achievements, our successes, we rarely look at the background. There is a commons saying - Behind every successful man there is the hand of a woman. While we may recognise a woman as an inspiration, the credit of the success is still given to the man. Unless that unclear 'hand of a woman' is articulated more, it will remain a mystery and never credited.

In organisation setting, I see this as the culture, the values, the relationships, etc which form the context of the individuals to work in. When we assess an organisation we asses its IPs, its fixed assets, its clients, its orders, its inventories, etc. How do we value the more subtle context in which these exist? It is impossible to get the full meaning of the assets without its context. What do you think will happen to the company which asseses another company on its fixed assets, IPs, clients and orders, accordingly buys the company. But having not fully understood its context, culture, relationships, can this company integrate it into its own?

Without the right context, can creativity, ownership, commitment from employees exist?

Modern management science has put all this in the area of HR and OB and then put HR and OB into the back seat. How many people do you know who were HR VPs and gone ahead to become CEOs? This is depsite many companies declaring that our people are our assets (interestingly, the one person I know who went from being a VP HR to COO and then CEO is a woman -Anne Mulcahy of Xerox. See this link -http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_18/b4176133023904.htm).
The lack of psychology applied in organisation is indicated in this - A sound plan to deal with employee turnover is to have back-up for your key people! This is an HR practice with no application of Psychology to employees, only of Project management. What happened to creating a space where employees would like to work, building relationship with employees such that they have commitment to the company, to the project and may even help in finding, grooming replacements for themselves. Which is the strategy followed in your company?

For me personally this is how the Feminie in the context is difficult to see, value and quantify to grow. It is like the what we see in a Shiva temple. How often do you notice the Yoni around the erect Phallus?

Invoking the Connection

We are a part of the Universe and this fact is either known to us only as Knowledge or as an Idea but not really as an experience to us.

This aspect, which is out of our experiential realm, does create great damage in our everyday life; we are totally living unconnected with the environment causing a great damage to it and thus causing damage back to us.

Many people talk to make us understand the dangers of our way of life, though such talks and writings causes some kind of awareness, it seems we are not in reality aware of it in toto and what to do to save us. We may perhaps know certain responses like reducing the use of vehicles which cause danger to atmosphere through its emission of carbon monoxide, reduced use of electricity, restriction in the use of water and so on. And we expect that such initiatives should lead to continued availability of the natural resources leading to a conducive environment for human existence. But, year after year, the deteriorations are only increasing despite our so called efforts. We have, of course reasons to defend. We can say that all such efforts are really insufficient to alter the state and we need to do more and so on.

What we really need is to understand that we are all at the moment considering our existence as something separate, individualistic and in fact inimically isolated to the environment and to the Universe. We have not yet fully realized that we are parties to the Universe and we have to partner to the universal processes. This is the process we need to take on immediately. Such an initiative from our side will create a total change in our way of living and alter our current turmoil with the environment. We will inherently know what we have to do and how we have to live which alone is the solution to the current problem we are facing. Any initiatives other than this will always be short of achieving the desired goal. If we have to do that our current belief that we are individuals, separate beings will have to change and a new belief that we are part of the Universe has to come in; and our primary task is to partner with the Universe.

Is this too far away from reality? An approach to this answer is in checking our own experiences to see if we have experienced this. We have, sometimes, in our life experienced this one-ness with the Universe.

When we have felt a kind of sadness which cannot be explained properly when we see other human beings suffer in life, when we felt indescribable joy and energy when we are in the midst of nature, when we cuddle with our pets without inhibition, when we felt the soft touch of grass and flowers, and so. All such occasions have felt for more than ourselves, we have perceived more than what the 5 objective sensed have sensed, we have felt we are a part of a larger whole. It has mildly communicated to us our reality of interconnectedness. But we have moved away from such feelings and experiences by thinking bringing rational thinking.

We are also crippled by our inducted belief that we are not one with the Universe but are one above the Universe. Evolutionally, we set out to use the environment around us for our benefit to survive and then to thrive. However, in the industrial era the heroism of humanity was thought to be in manufacturing dream machines to artificially regulate every aspect of our life. The image of the hero was the enterprising man to mine, manufacture, build sky scrapers, machines, cities, etc. With rise of our expertise in this area we have now come to see ourselves as masters of our environment; our environment existing for us to use it, people included. A reflection of this attitude is in the disdain we have for rituals for nature like worship of the rain gods. Our belief in our own ability to predict rain, get water from dams and canals has reduced our reverence for the power of nature in the form of rains. Rains are no longer to be prayed for, they are now to be forecasted. It has also changed our relationship from being connected to it and partnering with it, to using it.

So, we have to resurrect our belief of oneness, see the systemic connection, feel interconnectedness, relate with responsibility and move to an attitude called holism.

We have such connection with the Universe in us. It is natural in us. But without realizing it, we cut the links and loose the interconnectedness at several locations.

Sita's incomplete Individuation Journey?

In Ramayana, Sita does not seem to have completed her individuation journey.

The most striking point for me is when Janaka tells Rama while giving away Sita that she will be a shadow to you, following through thick and thin, Sita herself also says this before they set out to the exile. From this ideal position of wanting to give everything, she comes to a point where she has no other go, read - her Ego is so assaulted that she wants to disappear into her origin, her mother, read - unconscious, again.

As I have been thinking about this myth for a couple of years now, one perspective that is emerging freshly to me is that, Rama has taken her as a partner to his Ego, the conscious Persona that has been groomed to be the Righteous King. This Persona is the one that marries Sita. His own journey with his Anima is still incomplete. In the life led by this Persona, he accepts difficulties, he accepts the 'weird' 'irrational' behaviours of the ununderstood Anima either in the form of Kaikeyi asking for his exile or Sita asking for the Magical Deer. His conscious and righteous response to this ununderstood, irrational demand of the Unconscious is how he stands and builds a Rama rajya. All his agonies, his love, his passion, his foolishness are all either undealt, kept personal or dealt with the help of Lakshmana. There are many a places where Lakshmana counsels him in his search for Sita.

Sita seems to have set out to give her full to Rama but unreceived in her entirety, she finally has to go into the greatest container of all, the Mother Earth herself. She hardly spends any time as the Queen.

To this day, mothers treat their daughters with a bit of extra pampering. They say, after all, she has to undergo difficulty at her in law's house.