As always, I begin my thoughts with the timeless wisdom of our sacred texts. I would want to follow the same here too. The Bhagavad Gita teaches us:
Yad yad ācarati śreṣṭhas tat tad evetaro janaḥ…
(Whatever a great leader does, others follow.)
This verse beautifully captures the essence of leadership not merely holding authority, but setting an example through action. Leadership remains the core of management and the most influential part in guiding individuals and organizations towards purposeful achievement.
What is leadership as per Bhagavad Gita?
According to the Bhagavad Gita, effective leaders must first have a firm understanding of who they are. Understanding one’s own self entails more than just being aware of one’s own physical and psychological conditions. Deeper levels of consciousness are reached by this understanding.
“Leadership continues to be the core of management, playing the most critical role in guiding teams, shaping vision, and ensuring goals are successfully achieved.”
Leadership is the art of motivating a group of people to act toward achieving a common goal. A true leader is not only defined by their position or title but by their ability to inspire, influence, and guide others with integrity and purpose. Throughout history and into the present day, great leaders have emerged who have left lasting impacts on societies, nations, and the world.
Here’s a curated collection of insightful inputs, teachings, and thoughts on leadership drawn from a mix of great leaders and sacred texts, including the Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads, and more. These reflect both practical wisdom and timeless spiritual principles that can guide any leader today
leadership according to Vedas?
Practicing one’s dharma according to one’s true nature is at the heart of Vedic leadership. Dharma has a universal value, and it also has contextual values. For example, empathy toward others is universal Dharma, while the exploitation of the weak for self-gain is the opposite of Dharma.
How Chanakya viewed leadership
As a strategic, people-centric, and ethical pursuit. He stressed that a leader’s success depends on the happiness and well-being of their people, emphasizing a duty to be accountable, fair, and accessible. Key leadership principles include making timely decisions, fostering a skilled and motivated team, maintaining ethical standards, and thinking long-term to ensure organizational stability.
Core principles of Chanakya’s leadership philosophy:
People-centric approach:
A leader’s primary role is to ensure the welfare of their people, as their happiness is intertwined with the leader’s own. This requires a focus on employee well-being and creating a motivated workforce.
Ethical conduct and accountability:
Leaders must act with integrity, fairness, and transparency to earn the trust of their subjects and team. They must hold people accountable for their results, rewarding high performers and addressing underperformance.
Swift and decisive action:
Chanakya advocated for prompt decision-making, noting that postponing solutions can make problems impossible to solve. Leaders must be quick to act on urgent matters.
Long-term vision:
Leaders should be strategic thinkers who plan several steps ahead to ensure the long-term stability of the organization, rather than focusing solely on short-term gains.
Accessibility and communication:
Leaders must be accessible to their people to address issues and avoid creating disaffection through inaccessibility or reliance on intermediaries.
Competence and dynamism:
A leader must be a hard worker who delegates effectively and fosters a team of capable, ethical, and motivated individuals. They should be brave, quick, and energetic in their approach.
Leadership according to Vivekananda?
According to Swami Vivekananda, a leader is an individual. that has a greater vision and who ensures that his subordinates grow along with him. He states that no individual can grow if he does. not think about the growth of others (Vivekananda, 2019). He believed in ‘humanism’.
Leadership according to APJ Abdul Kalam?
He firmly believed transparency was crucial to establishing trust and building a strong team. Humble Leadership. According to Dr. Abdul Kalam, genuine leadership did not involve displaying one’s authority or position, but rather, it was all about serving others
Leadership according to Ratan Tata?
“Leadership is not about being autocratic; it’s about being humble and communicative,” Tata emphasized, encouraging students to focus on authenticity and humility in their leadership styles
The “father of leadership” is Warren Bennis, an American scholar and author who is widely regarded as a pioneer in the modern field of leadership studies. He is known for his extensive work and research on leadership, which includes books like On Becoming a Leader and a focus on transforming leadership from a static concept to a dynamic process of growth and change.
1. Pioneer of a new field:
Bennis is credited with establishing leadership as a distinct area of academic study, focusing on the behavioral and psychological aspects of leadership.
2. Visionary and transformational:
He is described as a visionary who could both anticipate and guide change in the world through his work.
3. Author and academic:
He was a prolific author and a University Professor at the University of Southern California, where he headed The Leadership Institute.
4. Key ideas:
Bennis challenged the idea that “leaders are born” and instead argued that they are made, emphasizing emotional intelligence, integrity, and self-expression.
The term “growth mindset” was coined by psychologist Carol Dweck. She popularized the concept in her 2006 book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, and has researched how an individual’s beliefs about intelligence and ability influence their approach to challenges, learning, and success.
5. Origin:
Dweck first introduced the academic concept of “implicit theories” in 1988, which she later popularized with the more accessible terms “fixed mindset” and “growth mindset” in her book.
6. Core idea:
A growth mindset is the belief that one’s abilities and intelligence can be developed through dedication, hard work, and learning from mistakes. This contrasts with a fixed mindset, which is the belief that abilities are innate and unchangeable.
Misconception: It’s Not All Effort
It’s not simply about putting in the work with a growth attitude. The most widespread misunderstanding is that the development mindset is synonymous with effort. Effort is important, but it isn’t the main ingredient for the recipe that leads to success. When a leader is stuck, they should try new tactics and seek help from others. They require a variety of techniques to learn and progress, not just pure effort.
Growth Mindset is, at its core, a learning theory. Learning is a difficult and tedious process. It becomes something it is not if people make it sound as simple as ‘working harder alone.’ As a result, it becomes easy to criticize and evolves into something it isn’t. As the Growth Mindset theory gains traction in every field, it’s critical that we’re taking all the aspects that need to be considered and delve deeper into its definition with the application.
The goal is not to put forth the effort. The term “growth mindset” refers to how we view ourselves and how we may best improve and learn. Carol Dweck recently warned against exaggerating praise for effort. ‘Too often nowadays, executives who are putting forth effort but not learning are praised in order to make them feel good in that certain moment. Learning, not merely striving hard.
Growth Mindset: A Brief Explanation of Its Effects in Leadership
A Harvard Business Review article examining typical growth-mindset fallacies included a term that I believe is both significant and meaningful. A growth mindset, according to the article, is the conviction that one’s talents and abilities may be enhanced. It is a concept that people may improve their talents, abilities, intelligence, and emotional intelligence. Growth mentality basically indicates that you feel that success comes from making a persistent effort to overcome obstacles. Thus it is an idea that implies a person’s professional goal and responsibility is to develop skills and abilities.
Leaders who have a growth mentality are more concerned with the process than with the ultimate result. So this is the main reason that a growth mindset is vital in leading if you want to develop your team into proactive, accountable, and motivated problem-solvers. The company will develop and evolve as your staff does. Growth mindset provides a perspective that one’s characteristics can be changed. It is a concept that has influenced the way people think. It began in the sphere of education and has recently made inroads into the commercial world.
When a leader approaches things with a growth perspective, then fresh possibilities and opportunities that lie beneath the apparent failure or dead-end are just stepping stones to raise the notch of success higher. Instead of looking back with dismay, guilt, and disappointments, a leader with a growth mindset will look forward, developing the vision to see past faults, challenges, and failures by exploring new ideas and possibilities. That person will not panic or give up; rather you have faith and confidence enhancing his or her ability to find a solution will emerge and be magnified. This is extremely motivating for you, your team, and everyone else.
Now, let’s check the how’s and why’s in the application of growth mindset in leadership.
Inspiring Others to Think and Do the Same
Companies that want to foster a growth mentality should devote time and resources to training and developing their employees. Providing opportunities for employees to learn and grow can aid in the development of strong leaders with complementary leadership styles. You may realize that you are much more conscious of the outcomes you generate with your actions and decisions when you adopt and maintain a growth mindset. Since you are in charge and have the ability to identify your own thinking patterns and behaviors it will eventually affect others and they will have such consciousness as you model growth thinking patterns. How you speak and act in front of your employees will influence how they speak and act. Your team will be more willing to follow you if you adopt a growth mindset.
When we observe changes taking place and allow ourselves to feel the benefits of learning new abilities and concepts, it becomes addicting, and we want to learn more. You may feel motivated to stay on the path if you continue to focus on improving your growth attitude. In this way, organizational executives and managers can use a variety of leadership skills to help people develop leadership qualities. Employees are more likely to continue attempting to develop themselves if their efforts at learning, growth, and innovation are recognized and praised. Even if the effort is unsuccessful, recognizing the effort will motivate staff to keep going despite the setback.
The Impact of Improvement
High-impact leaders refuse to accept the status quo. However rigid leaders despise it. Furthermore, a follower wants to keep things the same. High-impact leaders are always seeking new methods to improve. Followers are excellent at sustaining gains, but they are frequently averse to making changes. Leaders aren’t content to simply hold their victories. They are always looking for ways to enhance themselves, their team, and their company. There can be no improvement without change. There can be no impact without progress.
There are leaders who are content brought by accidental progress. Yet high-impact leaders are intentional when it comes to their desire and will to grow since growth is their passion. The very air that drives them to live. They are always seeking a new territory to conquer, a fresh definition of achievement. Leaders with a high impact are intent on making a difference. They are the ones who make things happen.
In the course of gearing towards the end of being a high-impact leader, one must reflect on its own thinking patterns. Strip off the sheets of denial and be humble enough to see one’s reflection in a clear mirror without reluctance. Are you willing to develop? Do you have what it takes to evolve no matter how uncomfortable and sometimes painful the process one must undergo? When confronted with annoying reality and the awkward situation it creates, are you prepared to deal with your own imperfections that run in the system of your own company? Growth mindset is both a professional and a personal issue. One cannot separate these two when it comes to mindset since it will be both a career and a lifestyle. Growth mindset is a habit a person must struggle to build and maintain.
A Never-Ending Journey of Progress
The most crucial thing for growth mindset leaders is that they will never stop developing themselves. They understand that they can’t build other leaders or their organizations without first developing their own leadership skills. These high-impact leaders are tenacious in their pursuit of personal improvement, investing many hours and thousands of dollars just to make sure they reach their goals for development. To stop learning is to simply be another leader among the masses with average achievements. This would surely happen if they didn’t have this desire to grow and enhance their own leadership abilities.
When it comes to developing their own pool of leaders, growth mindset leaders are not selfish or stingy. They have a mindset of abundance. They put high-potential leaders on an expedited leadership development program once they’ve been identified. They want their top executives to be totally committed to leadership development at all times. As a result, they provide finances, guarantee time for development, and encourage them to participate in leadership training seminars and certification programs. Growth mindset leaders understand that, despite being difficult to quantify, the cost of developing their leaders outweighs the benefit.
Executives with growth perspectives elevate their organizations’ leadership to new heights. From the top to the bottom, they develop an internal, continuing leadership curriculum for their entire workforce. They are in charge of training the trainers. They not only hire outside leadership consultants to assist in the development of their top leaders and themselves, but they also actively train their lower-level leaders and followers. These one-of-a-kind types of leaders understand that teaching leadership is the most effective approach to learning leadership because it holds them accountable for demonstrating what they teach.
As a result of all the things discussed, we can examine the practice of leadership. We can see that it is made up of three aspects. Skills, practice, and mindset are the three main categories. Each of those components, whether we’re discussing practice, mindset, or skills, is insufficient. To actually have an impact on your company we must develop all three inside ourselves and the groups that we are cultivating. Growth mindset is crucial in developing skills and the habit or practice of all those skills.
Conclusion
A growth mindset for leaders is the belief that abilities and intelligence can be developed through dedication, effort, and continuous learning, leading them to see challenges as opportunities for growth. Such leaders are resilient, seek and embrace feedback, and inspire their teams to take risks and innovate. They focus on the process of learning and development, which in turn fosters a culture of innovation and adaptability within their organization.
