WISDOM AND LEADERSHIP

When I was 10 years old, in a hot Sunday afternoon , my father asked me to climb up a coconut tree to pick coconut fruits. This was because coconut juice was the best refreshing drink, on a hot day, in the village at that time.

The tree was almost 25 feet tall. While I was climbing on the way up the coconut tree, my father kept complete silence; my father’s friends and all my brothers and sisters also kept total silence. I picked up 5 coconuts and threw them onto the ground for my brothers and sisters to pick up. When I was on my way down the coconut, my father too kept quiet. But he cautioned me to be careful about 8 feet from the ground level.

My father’s friend asked why did he not cautioned me when I was at 20 feet ? My father said that “ right up at the top, my son is conscious of the danger,. And of himself takes care. But near the end when one begins to feel safe, this is when accidents occur. “

That happening always reminded me that my father had his moment by moment of wisdom. My father put me in a challenging position, he knew I could handle when the situation was dangerous. My father was watching my progress and knew when to keep silent and when to speak. He had the emotional intelligence – he did not get worried when I was at a dangerous height, he managed not only the anxiety but even the crowd. My father knew the tendencies of my mind at every moment so that he could caution at the time when he knew I might think the job over and might “ slack off “ – “ Take care, take care ! “

The story may sound simple. It is an extraordinary ability of a leader to know the mind of his followers and to act precisely and wisely at the time – for the good for both the task and the follower.



My father trusted me when I was at the most dangerous position up in the coconut tree.; and I trusted my father because he believed in me of being able to perform the job well.



I read a similar story from the Zen Buddhist tradition where the story helped monks to remain alert during all instances in their training, to encourage the mind to be awake and fully in the present. Zen is the Japanese word for meditation. Zen aims to help people free their minds from constructed, acquired concepts and mental habits that limit and distort the view we have of reality. It challenges the idea that we are all separate people – separate selves operating in our individually constructed world views. It aims to develop life wisdom – a seeing into the direct nature of reality, not one constructed through individual opinions and acquired ideas. It boldly suggests that only when we are free from intellectual constraints and egotistical concerns can we then experienced the world clearly and fully participate in life.

This leadership wisdom is not a definable concept but is directly observable, practical and effective in the moment. My father would probably not have heard of situational/transformational or transactional leadership not had attended any management training but was able to be an effective leader. But this wisdom of knowing when to talk and when to keep complete silence.

A leader also needs to know to be in the present – to see what is happenings without preconceived ideas or distractions. This involves a conversation with a monk:-

“ do you ever make an effort to get disciplined in the truth ?

Yes, I do.



How do you exercise yourself ?

When I am hungry, I eat: when I am tired, I sleep.



This is everybody does, can they be said to be exercising themselves in the same way as you do ?
No

Why Not ?

Because when they eat, they do not eat, but are thinking of various other things, thereby allowing themselves to be disturbed; when they sleep they do not sleep, but dream of a thousand and one things; this is why they are not like myself ( Schloegl, 1975 )



This story simply and clearly emphasizes much of what the average person of today’s world is missing. Almost everyone is so involved with thoughts that they do not experience what is actually going on around them. The average person has about 100 thoughts per minute which means about 6,000 thoughts per hour, Over the course of a day, this would be about 100,000 thoughts !



Much of the thinking process involves self talk – a voice in the head commenting, judging, justifying, or planning on some past or future event or action. Often the same comment is said over again, involves negative comments about a situation not being the way “ I “ want it to be or the way it should have been. While all of this is going on a person only partially sees what is actually in front of him or her.



Conclusion

This week, I shared 1 true story of mine when I was 10 years old climbing a coconut to pick up coconut fruits, and the Zen story.

These two stories simplified that leaders need to uphold wisdom – when to talk, when to inspire, when to motivate and when to comment. Leadership is not to do with telling people what to do, but express concern – to point out what I knew was true – that rushing, with all the mental chatter going on, was not good, and that being in the present was something I needed to do. By expressing that, I had done my job – I pointed out what I needed.

Leadership for me was seeing what was needed in the moment and letting go of the “ stuff” that blocked or inhibited the things that needed to happen.

Leadership is quite mysterious since I did not know really whether we would make it back in time or not. It just took confidence that if I did what I knew was true, things would turn out all right.