Inspired Leadership and Indian Wisdom in Managing Crisis

Abstract

Leadership is a combination of various behaviors exhibited by leaders across various contexts. Leadership studies based on management, industrialization and motivation have been in vogue in business practice. The leadership competencies as cited earlier by researchers include ‘Demonstrate strong sense of ethics and integrity, a sense of Empowering others to self-organize, Fostering Connection, Fostering Growth’ (Giles in The most important leadership competencies, according to leaders around the world. Harvard Business Review, 2016). They are now examined in the perspective of Indian spiritual discourse and would include competencies such as courage, leading with a Higher Purpose, Display extreme empathy and Commitment to selfless action. This paper explores the practices of Leadership Development followed by five large Indian organizations through their leadership frameworks, their competency models, assessment systems and coaching interventions and multifactor leadership questionnaires to get 360 feedback on the behaviors of their senior leaders, besides results of psychometric assessments administered, and behavioral event interviews are done. These are used to describe the effectiveness of these leaders and their strengths and weaknesses. The results from the studies were compared with an organization with leadership development approach inspired by the Bhagavad Geeta Chapter 16 and Patanjali Panchakoshas. The Indian scriptures and philosophy prescribe leadership as an integration of self-leadership, spiritual leadership and professional behaviors. With the COVID-19 pandemic, demands on leadership behaviors have changed. The impact of leadership behaviors on well-being of the employees and other stakeholders has become crucial. The paper ends by recommending a Leadership Model that builds leaders who lead Physical Well-Being, Communication Well-Being, Emotional Well-Being, Intellectual Well-Being and source inspiration from Spiritual Well-Being.