{"id":3197,"date":"2007-04-02T12:57:40","date_gmt":"2007-04-02T11:57:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=3197"},"modified":"2007-08-17T11:36:08","modified_gmt":"2007-08-17T10:36:08","slug":"leadership-lessons-from-bhagavad-gita","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/?p=3197","title":{"rendered":"Leadership Lessons from Bhagavad-gita"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Sita-pati das<\/strong><\/p>\n

I would like to make a humble offering to the Vaisnava community of ” Leadership<\/p>\n

Lessons from Bhagavad-gita<\/a>“.<\/p>\n

In 2001 I was asked to take a leadership role in an ISKCON yatra in South America. At the time I had received no formal training in leadership or management and I quickly realized my inadequacy in discharging my assigned duty. I began to search around for literature to help me, but had difficulty locating anything that really spoke to the issues that I was facing. There were a few “temple management guides”, but they didn’t really go to the level of depth that I needed. Practices are one thing, but they are bound to a specific time, place and circumstance – principles are portable.<\/p>\n

What I really wanted to see was a “Nectar of Management” book (like the Nectar of Book Distribution) filled with interviews and realizations, with successful leaders and managers in ISKCON talking about their lessons learned over many years and how they have faced changing situations.<\/p>\n

His Holiness Bhakti Tirtha Swami visited me twice there and spoke into my situation, and then sent me a copy of his book “Leadership for an Age of Higher Consciousness Volume Two”. Receiving this book lifted a huge weight from my shoulders. As I read through it I heard the voices of many people who had faced the same issues I was facing, and shared their experience and realizations. I began to follow the same path that Bhakti Tirtha Swami had tread, reading the same source material and integrating it with my knowledge of Srimad Bhagavatam and Bhagavad-gita.<\/p>\n

Just over one year ago, as an exercise in integrating these two bodies of knowledge I wrote a commentary on the first chapter of Bhagavad-gita from the perspective of its lessons on Leadership. My purpose in doing this was to help myself to integrate the knowledge that I have obtained, and also to demonstrate that Bhagavad-gita speaks to these issues.<\/p>\n

A recent article in Businessweek magazine (http:\/\/www.businessweek.com\/magazine\/content\/06_44\/b4007091.htm<\/a>)<\/p>\n

asks the question: “Has the \/Bhagavad Gita\/ replaced \/The Art of War\/ as the hip new ancient Eastern management text?”<\/p>\n

The answer is, simply: “Yes”. Bhagavad-gita has replaced all books. People just haven’t fully realized it yet.<\/p>\n

When I went to meet Dr. John C. Maxwell, Christian pastor and author of the New York Times best seller “The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership”, along with a few other interested associates, some devotees at the local temple said: “Everything is in Prabhupada’s books!” and rhetorically asked: “Why are they going to a non-devotee to hear about Leadership?”<\/p>\n

My response to that was quite simple, and I believe speaks to the point that we should be considering: “Yes, everything is<\/em> in Srila Prabhupada’s books. However, the question is not: ‘Why are they going to a non-devotee to hear about Leadership’, the question that should be asked is: ‘Why are they not coming to us<\/em>?'”.<\/p>\n

We need to demonstrate in practice that we have knowledge that empowers us to be more effective, and we have to be able to explain that knowledge to others in a way that empowers them to be more effective.<\/p>\n

I am not particularly qualified in any sense. I simply have a desire to share what I have learned and to demonstrate the value of Bhagavad-gita in every sphere of life. It’s not a final answer, it’s a contribution to the growing Krishna Conscious culture of knowledge of all aspects of human existence (“Vedic culture”).<\/p>\n

I offer this commentary now to the wider community. Please feel free to ignore it, or take the opportunity to revise it. It is released under a Creative Commons license that allows reuse and modification.<\/p>\n

You can download the commentary from here: Leadership<\/p>\n

Lessons from Bhagavad-gita<\/a>.<\/p>\n

If, as I was, you are struggling in a position of responsibility for Srila Prabhupada’s mission, I hope that this comes as help to you in some small way.<\/p>\n

If you have some feedback it is welcome. I would like to issue a revised edition based on community feedback at a later date.<\/p>\n

an aspiring servant of the Vaisnavas, Sita-pati das<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"HareBy Sita-pati das<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 2001 I was asked to take a leadership role in an ISKCON yatra in South America. At the time I had received no formal training in leadership or management and I quickly realized my inadequacy in discharging my assigned duty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-sita-pati-das"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}