Leadership

A recent zdnet article IT ethics and the recession examined the ethics of IT workers in three countries. The punch line: a large percentage of folks surveyed would steal confidential company data in the event of layoff rumors. The results are fairly ugly, painting a negative picture of ethics in the workplace.

What this demonstrates is that for many people ethics are situational, that is to say: ethical behaviour is acceptable when it produces a desired result. When desired results and ethical behaviour diverge, ethical behaviour goes out the window, and chasing results by whatever means necessary becomes the modus operandi.

These people are not Doing the Right Thing(tm) under normal circumstances. They are Pretending to Do the Right Thing. That their actions are ethical under normal circumstances is a matter of convenience - it's an appearance only. Their underlying orientation and attachment to the material outcomes of action is the cause of sinful behaviour.

A devotee performs his or her actions as a means of pleasing the Supreme Lord. That is the single motivation for action ("one-pointed intelligence"). Thus their commitment to right action (dharma) is unaffected by the "good" and "bad" results that may or may not eventuate. Those with irresolute intelligence are chasing many different goals (in terms of the results of activities - different material outcomes). They will modify their actions and misalign themselves with dharma if they perceive that it will allow them to achieve their goals.

The Right Thing to Do is always the right thing to do.
- Dr. John C. Maxwell

Always choose the hard right over the easy wrong
- Andy Stanley

Related posts:
The Right Thing
The Right Thing Part 2

This post is about Ethics from Bhagavad-gita.

If you scanned the second chapter of Bhagavad-gita looking for the verse where Krishna explains the difference between "Doing the Right Thing" and "Pretending to Do the Right Thing" you were probably surprised when you couldn't find it.

I scanned it and I couldn't find it. I could, however, remember writing about it in a commentary on the second chapter that I wrote while I was in Ecuador in 2001, pre-9/11.

I dug around and found it - it's old school, written on paper with a pen.

Here's the relevant section, picking up from 2.37:

2001 "Ecuador" Gita Commentary

Krishna has now redirected Arjuna's compassion to the spiritual platform, removing the conflict between this and Arjuna's duty. He has at once validated Arjuna's compassion (2.11) and his varnashram duty.

Krishna then proceeds to demonstrate that there is no conflict between varnashram duty and material enjoyment, as Arjuna had presented. Arjuna's presentation was more the product of his compassion, an attempt to justify his not fighting on other terms than a serious analysis of the situation, as revealed by the exchange in 2.2-2.4. Krishna has now finished with that presentation. "Even if you are after enjoyment, following your duty is the way to get it, so fight"

In text 38, Krishna answers Arjuna's concern about incurring sinful reactions for his actions. The answer lies not in some pop notion of sin, based on sentimentality, but in performing one's duty in a particular state of consciousness - without calculation such as Arjuna has made [ed: emphasis added 2009]. Krishna has shown that varnashram duty is not incompatible with either compassion or material enjoyment, the two objections that Arjuna raised. Now he is signalling that sinful activity arises when one makes calculations which, due to a lack of knowledge, contradict one's duty and thus one deviates from his dharma [ed: emphasis added 2009]. In order to avoid this, one should simply carry out his duty without considerations of factors.

Note that this does not advocate blind following. Krishna has demonstrated the superiority of dharma over Arjuna's faulty calculations in this specific case, and now he lets it be known that this is also the general rule.

Although here it is not stated whether one receives sinful reactions simply by carrying out one's duty in a calculative fashion, or by calculating one inevitably deviates from his duty, Krishna will explain this in the balance of the chapter* [ed: see the 2009 commentary on this point, below]. This calculating mentality arises from attachment to the results.

2.39: "O Arjuna - thus far I have minutely analyzed the situation according to so many constituent factors (sankhya), and the conclusion is that you should fight. Now I will give you the general rule, the holistic approach that does not rely on specific factors, and which produces the same result. I have proved the specific case, now I will give the general rule."

or

"I have explained this in an analysis that relied on your material desires. Now I will explain it in terms of an approach that does not rely on your material desires, and that allows you to become free from the reaction of activity"

Summary and Analysis of Krishna's Instructions on Buddhi-Yoga

In this section Krishna is doing two things - he is instructing Arjuna in how one can follow his dharma without being deviated, or in other words without incurring sin. He also answers Arjuna's deeper concern: the fact that the promise of sense gratification in the heavenly planets is no longer sufficient to keep him on the path of dharma. Due to this, Arjuna requires a higher consideration to motivate him, and Krishna explains how the two are one - it is precisely the attachment to the fruitive results promised by the Vedas as an inducement to follow dharma that leads one to the calculative mentality that inevitably causes one to deviate. Without coming to the crisis point Arjuna has come to, one cannot discover the true purpose of dharma.

In other words, Arjuna has tired of karma, and through speculative knowledge (jnana) was seeking to renounce action.

2.41 Those working with resolute intelligence have only one goal - to discharge their duty. Those with irresolute intelligence have many goals in terms of the different superficial results of their duties. They are attached to the results, not to the duty. Thus when duty and a desired result diverge, they deviate from dharma.

* Some 2009 commentary on Motivation and Sin

I now have a thought about whether sin is incurred when following dharma with a calculative mentality, or attachment to the result. I think it is.

I have a thought experiment for you, arising from two things that I've studied since 2001. One is the compulsory ethics training that all employees, associates and managers alike, at my work must take each year. This year we had a module named "International Bribery and Corruption". It was quite a laugh to receive a certificate in this subject. The other thing is Transparency International's "Confronting Corruption: The Elements of a National Integrity System"

Anyway, think about this scenario:

You work in an office where vehicle registrations are issued. The cost of a vehicle registration is officially $100, but due to rampant corruption officials in the registry are able to charge $150 or more. You routinely charge people higher than the standard price.

I don't think that anyone has trouble identifying this as corrupt behavior.

One day your friend comes in. Rather than charge him $150 you charge him $100. Is that a corrupt action?

YES. Although you are charging him the official amount, your action is part of a pattern of corrupt behavior, where you preferentially treat personal friends. Therefore this action, while appearing to conform with official standards, is also corrupt.

That sentence above is the kind of explanatory sentence that will appear after you answer the multichoice yes/no in the online ethics training.

I've thought a lot about this, and right now I think this is correct. The person charging $100 to a friend is not Doing the Right Thing. They are Pretending to Do the Right Thing. There is a difference, and it is noted by the universe.

The inverse of this example / thought experiment is also illustrative: you are a sheriff who lets his friend get away with murder. Then when you are punishing some other criminal you are still not Doing the Right Thing, you're just Pretending to Do the Right Thing. Again, your pattern of behavior is corrupt, and this action is part of that pattern.

The terrible thing about this is that in a corrupted system all actions are essential corrupt, even those that superficially appear to be the Right Thing. If the fundamentals are askew, it is not possible to Do the Right Thing, ever. Thus we have personalities like Duryodhana, who, even while superficially appearing to follow dharma, are completely deviated.

There is a subtle but important difference between someone who is doing the Right Thing(tm), and someone who is pretending to do the Right Thing.

Someone doing the Right Thing because it's the Right Thing is really doing the Right Thing.

Someone doing the Right Thing because it's the convenient thing is pretending to the Right Thing.

In fact, they are really doing the Convenient Thing.

Krishna explains this to Arjuna in the second chapter of Bhagavad-gita. (more after harinam...)

Some more than others...

That is my opinion.

- Sri Krishna, Bhagavad-gita 6.36

Opinions are important.

Some time ago I sat with members of my team who disagreed with a decision I had made. They explained their perspective to me - "their opinion".

I didn't agree with their analysis, but I thought two things:

1. I am an individual and subject to illusion and error. I may be wrong.
2. Even if I am not, and this is what I said to them: "These things you have mentioned are not important to me, but you are important to me, so I will do as you say."

You see, if I didn't honor their right to have an opinion, and value them bringing their opinion and their conscience to their participation in the group, then I couldn't continue to count on their participation. It's a volunteer movement.

The combination of that very consequentialist consideration with the first one, which is concerned less with diplomacy and more with principles, is a very powerful argument.

The result? I retained their faith and their future cooperation, even though they disagreed with my decision and the reasoning behind it.

Looking back at it now? I'm not sure that I had made the wrong decision, but I am sure that I made the right decision in honoring and valuing the opinions of my team members.

Opinions matter.

Sometimes opinions are just wrong, and you don't need to care about them so much. If you don't rely on the person's cooperation then there is less weight. In the Open Source community, a secular volunteer movement that I am involved with, participation and contribution carry weight. It's a meritocracy.

Critics can give you useful insights, but you don't need to be swayed by everything that everyone says.

Discerning which opinions matter the most is part of the art of leadership.

This is part two of a review of Newton Maloney's Living with Paradox: Religious Leadership and the Genius of Double Vision. Part 1 of the review is here.

Paradox, something that involves an inherent contradiction, is central to religion. Paradoxes of religious leadership involve two essentially true propositions that appear to contradict each other.

As an initial example, Maloney presents a discussion on evangelism by the late Christian theologian Karl Barth. On the one hand people choose God - they make a choice when they become religious. In a practical sense a lot of preaching is convincing people that choosing God is good for them. In this sense the decision to become religious is like other important choices that people make in life - they weigh up the options and make an informed decision.

At the same time Barth was convinced that God chooses people rather than being chosen by them. When people dedicate their lives to the Lord they are acknowledging that they have been chosen by Him. In that sense Barth saw only one difference between those in the church and those outside it: those inside realized that they had been chosen, while the people outside didn't yet.

So these two truths are seemingly opposed. One is psychological: that people choose God. The other is theological: God chooses people.

This is just one of the paradoxes that pervade religious life.

Maloney then goes on to describe how a number of meetings, of both secular and religious groups, might look alike to observers from another planet. Eric Berne's book "The Structure and Dynamics of Organizations", a book I read while in Melbourne for the recent Yoga Asana Championship, describes the mechanics of groups and organizations of human beings who come together to achieve specific goals. In this sense they are all alike. However, a religious organization is distinct in that it has faith in a supernatural reality as a central ingredient.

To a secularist this would simply be a special case of psychological motivation. Richard Dawkins would compare it to belief in the tooth fairy, or Santa Claus. However, it is not so to Maloney, who accepts the existence of this supernatural reality, and thus acknowledges a fundamental, categorical distinction between religious and secular organizations. No doubt he would also draw a distinction between religious and pseudo-religious organizations.

Remaining aware of both the similarities and the distinction between religious and secular organizations is another of the paradoxes that religious leaders must bear in mind. The organizational life of a religious organization has a theological basis. At the same time it is involved in a day-to-day practical reality. Keeping both of these in sight at once is vital for success.

Maloney cites Jim Collins and Jerry Porras' book Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, a study of uber-successful businesses. These two researchers discovered that the leadership of these companies had developed the ability to live with paradox without fanatically trying to suppress one side of it or the other. They referred to this ability as the "Genius of the And", as opposed to the "Tyranny of the Or".

The types of paradoxes that religious leaders must grapple with differ from those that business leaders must face, but the skill with which they must do so it no less vital to their success.

In the case of the paradox of evangelism, neither side encompasses the entire truth. To emphasis either the human side or the divine side to the exclusion of the other would be artificial. Both effort and grace are needed. Both divine mercy and free will are involved.

Those who deride any effort to convince people on logical or rational grounds or to "meet them where they are at" in terms of their temporary identity and self-interest miss the human side. Those who rely entirely on material arrangements and see themselves and their efforts as the exclusive cause of evangelical success miss the divine side. Both are incomplete and in that sense "wrong". Both are at the same time "right", but only complete in their understanding when they equally and simultaneously acknowledge the other side of the paradox.

Maloney divides the eight central paradoxes of religious leadership into four distinct categories. They are:

• Paradoxes in the Religious Leader's Role
• Paradoxes of Perspective
• Paradoxes Built into the Structure of Religious Congregations
• Paradoxes of Congregational Mission

In the next post I will summarize the first of the two "Paradoxes in the Religious Leader's Role".

All quotes in this post are taken from the back cover of the paperback edition.

An ordained minister and licensed psychologist examines eight central paradoxes faced by religious leaders, showing how to embrace, rather than fight, the double truths they represent.

- Publisher's Blurb

I had Living with Paradox: Religious Leadership and the Genius of Double Vision in my Amazon.com wish list for nearly a year before I bought it. I'm really glad that I finally got it. It took me about three days to read this book. It's only a 130-odd pages, and it is written in a very engaging and easy-to-read style, peppered with practical examples that illustrate and illuminate the points author Newton Maloney makes.

Maloney has both secular and religious credentials, and in this sense embodies a paradox himself. He does not fall into the secularist's trap of ascribing all religious experience to purely subjective psychological phenomenon, neither does he fall into the religionist's trap of viewing everything that happens in the Church (or any other religious organization, such as ISKCON) as being "purely transcendental".

Instead he is able to discern which aspects of individual and corporate religious expression and experience arise from which aspects of the interaction between the mundane and the divine, the eternal and the ephemeral, and is able to describe both.

His keen discrimination and penetrating insight, combined with his strong faith and realization of spiritual reality, make him a unique commentator on the inherent paradoxes of religious life and leadership.

Individuals who are in religious leadership positions will immediately recognize the dilemmas or paradoxes described in this book. The good news is that Malony offers sound practical advice on how to deal with them. This book is accurately descriptive and helpfully prescriptive.

- William E. Hull, Samford University

Hull hits the nail on the head here. This book is filled with "aha!" moments for those involved in leadership in a religious context. Frustration and vague appreciation of the cause of a problem is transformed into recognition as Maloney maps out the underlying causes of tensions and conflicts and provides concrete examples to illustrate them.

Dr. Maloney presents a helpful analysis using insights from psychology, theology, management theory, conflict resolution, practical experience, love of the Church, and an irenic spirit. Anyone reading this study will no longer see conflict as an interruption of the Church's mission, but an opportunity to be in ministry.

- Mark Trotter, First United Methodist Church, San Diego, California

Irenic means "promoting peace" [wiktionary]. Maloney points out that both sides of the eight paradoxes that he presents are valid and have value. They are in this sense irreconcilable. Rather than trying to do away with them religious leaders (or rather, leaders in religious organizations) must learn to understand and appreciate why they exist, and learn to live with them. Rather than fearing conflict and seeking to suppress it by eliminating one side of the paradox, religious leaders must embrace the paradox and lead others through harmonizing its various attributes.

With over forty years of academic experience teaching church management and consulting in the secular arena, Newton Maloney is well qualified to speak to religious leaders.

- Earl E. Grant, Haggard Graduate School of Theology, Azusa Pacific University

I will present a summary of each of the eight paradoxes that Maloney examines, and give some commentary and examples from my personal experience in ISKCON.

Further to yesterday's post about the "incompetent and ignorant", here are a few thoughts on the subject that I jotted down this morning. Far be it from me to just call people losers and and leave it at that.

Actually, this is an excerpt from my as yet unpublished book on Leadership. it's a little long, but it really is good stuff - if I do say so.

Get Real

“Keep it real”

- Ali G

The first thing you have to do is to get real, as real as you can get, and keep getting more and more real.

The fundamental quality of a leader, and a fundamental factor in personal success and effective execution of leadership is realism. To be realistic in the context of the purpose of leadership means to understand things as they are; essentially to understand the relationship between three things – ourselves, this world, and the Supreme Lord. To be realistic in the context of the practice of leadership means to be able to accurately measure things.

Sometimes people criticize devotees for being pessimistic about material life. Go to a party and drop the line: “We're all going to die,” and watch the faces fall. However, that's a fact. Whereas a pessimist sees the glass of material life as half empty, and an optimist sees it as half full, a realist sees the reality of a glass tipped up and emptying out.

You are not a fatalist. As a leader you are travelling towards a better future, and you are taking others there with you. In this sense some might think of you as optimistic.

However, you are not at all blind to the present realities. That's what distinguishes an effective leader from a dreamer. Most people lose their nerve when they understand the full import of their situation. You don't. You don't rely on hiding your head in the sand to maintain your morale, neither do you waste time wallowing in all that is wrong with the world. You need to see things as they are in order to make the right decisions. You may feel the fear, but you do it anyway. That's what distinguishes an effective leader from a whiner.

Basically there are two things that you will be measuring – yourself, and the environment. To be effective you have to accurately measure yourself, accurately measure the environment, and then match the two up.

Depending on what level you are operating at, yourself will refer to you personally, your team, or your organization. The environment will be defined as others on your team, others in your organization, or the big bad world outside.

You have to be able to accurately measure these things, and therefore your first order of the day is to develop the ability to measure them with increasing accuracy.

The yogis, abandoning attachment, act with body, mind, intelligence and even with the senses, only for the purpose of purification.

- Bhagavad-gita 5.11

Your initial engagements are for the purpose of discovering things about yourself. You may or may not achieve external objectives, but you should be growing in self-knowledge, understanding more about your character and your abilities. Someone may say to you: “Oh, bad luck – you failed to achieve that objective”. However, you know that you did achieve your objective – you learned more accurately how to measure yourself.

Just a child develops a sense of self and learns about her limits by interacting with and exploring the environment around her, you do the same thing.

When I arrived in South America I came confident from a three year winning streak in New Zealand. A team of four of us had gone to a new city and opened a center there. Three years later we left a community behind us. I had a good sense of myself in many respects, however, I lacked two crucial things that reduced my effectiveness in my new environment.

First of all, I lacked awareness of aspects of my personality that arose from cultural
conditioning. You learn about yourself by experiencing yourself in relation to the “other”. In New Zealand, all the “others” were New Zealanders, so although I could distinguish myself in areas where we differed from each other, in areas where we shared our Kiwi cultural conditioning I remained blind. A fish doesn't see the water it's swimming in until you take it out, and we don't see shared cultural biases and assumptions as long as we remain in them. In South America I got some awareness of that. It was painful, but I did it.

The second thing that I lacked was knowledge of the environment of a large ISKCON yatra. In New Zealand we operated in a small community of up to thirty devotees, all with the same values and on the same mission. In South America I was taking part in a complex organization with many different programs and individuals with their own outlooks and objectives. There was also the political dimension of the interaction of different levels of formal leadership. Leadership in ISKCON is a complex, full-spectrum affair. It includes political, corporate, and community dimensions. In addition to the external environmental factors that I mentioned in the introduction, I had to face this reality of this organizational environment, one which up to this point I knew nothing about.

The Value of Evaluated Experience

A few weeks before we left South America behind to begin a new chapter in Australia, Param Satya, Vraja Dhama, and I met together and attempted to replay the events of the past three years to analyze our performance. What mistakes had we made? What should we have done differently? Where were we successful? What were our most outstanding failures, and what were the contributive factors? What lessons had we learned?

Experience can be a good teacher - when it is evaluated experience.

All your activities and engagements should include a phase of analysis where you look with uncompromising honesty at what happened – what worked and what did not work. You do this as an individual, as a team, or as an organization, depending the context of your leadership at the time. Develop the discipline to evaluate what happens, and do it better the next time as a result. Always file an “after-action report”. Did you measure up to your expectations? Why not? Do you adjust your expectations, your execution, or both for the next one? You are not trying to defend or justify, you are trying to accurately measure, in order to be able to more effectively match capabilities with needs in the future.

As you move into helping others to discover and develop their leadership potential, especially the initial tasks you give them are for this purpose – to help them develop the ability to accurately measure. Don't engage people for the purpose of attaining external objectives, engage them with the aim of helping them to purify themselves – to develop an accurate ability to measure reality, in both a temporal and eternal sense. Use external objectives for this purpose, just as you would use a stone to sharpen a knife.

Just as you use a stone to sharpen a knife, use engagements to sharpen the sense and awareness of self

Over time, by practising this discipline you can develop a sense of your shape – where your strengths are and where your weaknesses are. Hey, guess what – you're not good at everything. You are good at some things. You have to discover what these things are. In areas of strength, you have the potential to lead. In areas of weakness you just suck – so don't blow it by not being able to tell the difference between the two.

Humility and Reality

There is a famous story involving Srila Prabhupada and one leader in ISKCON.

Srila Prabhupada, wanting to help this leader deal with pride that had crept in, began to describe to him that the material world represents a covered portion of one small corner of the spiritual sky. Into this covered portion the Lord expands as Karanodaksayi Visnu. He lays down in the Causal Ocean at the bottom of the material world and millions of universes emanate from the pores of His skin as he breathes out. He expands Himself into each and every one of these universes as Garbhodaksayi Visnu. In even the smallest of these universes there millions of planets and stars. Among these millions of stars and planets is one planet with millions of people living in cities. In one of those cities there are so many thousands of buildings. In one of those buildings is (the leader he was speaking to), and he is thinking he is very important.

Don't try to be humble, just get real.

The other day a devotee approached me for some advice. While he was describing his situation to me he said: “I have no good qualities”.

“Yes you do,” I replied. “You have some good qualities and some not good qualities, just like everyone else. You have to be realistic about your situation – that will enable you to deal with it intelligently and effectively.”

Once a devotee fell down at Srila Prabhupada's feet and cried out: “Oh Srila Prabhupada, I am the most fallen!” Srila Prabhupada responded with the humorous dismissal: “You're not the most anything!”

“But in His Siksastakam Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu says that we should be more humble than a blade of grass!” I hear you say. If there is one thing that we can say about a blade of grass, it's that it is realistic. Have you ever seen a blade of grass with an unrealistic assessment of itself and the environment? A blade of grass is exemplary in knowing its place and its purpose. Overestimating yourself is commonly known as pride. Underestimating yourself is the other side of the same counterfeit coin of unrealism. Don't waste your time trying to imitate a blade of grass, instead follow its example – get real.

If there is one thing we can say about grass, it's that it is extremely realistic about itself

Here are three ways that you can increase the effectiveness of evaluated experience and get real.

1. Increase the clarity of your consciousness

We can never be completely objective. We experience through our consciousness. Because consciousness is an integral feature of identity, and we each have a unique identity, we each have a unique consciousness, giving us a unique experience and a unique perspective. No two people see the same thing the same way. Read the book Radha Damodara Vilasa by famous kirtan musician Vaiyasaki das and note his indepth descriptions of the musical score of the pastimes he recounts. Read Great Transcendental Adventure by world-renown vegetarian guru Kurma das and relish his elaborate recountings of the menus of the lila.

While our unique identity lends a particular perspective or flavour to our perception, an additional factor is that our consciousness can be clear or muddy. Imagine that you are seeing through tinted glasses. They may be tinted blue or red, which influences what you see. If your glasses are tinted red, you will not be able to see red things, if tinted blue, blue objects will appear black. In addition to this unchangeable feature, they might also be dusty or streaked with grime, which also influences your perception, but can be changed.

In his song Suddha-bhakata Bhaktivinode Thakur sings that when he performs the arati ceremony, his home is transformed into Vaikuntha. I can't say that I've seen Vaikuntha, a name for the spiritual world that means “without anxiety”, but I have felt it. At home I worship Sri Dustara Rama, a saligrama-sila entrusted to my care by Jayatirtha Charan das. When I worship him at home in Brisbane, Australia where I am currently living, I am transported to the same space that I was in worshiping Sri Sri Gaura Nitai in Lima, Peru. With all that was going on around us, and the austerities of our living situation, whenever I would go in to dress Gaura Nitai or to perform the arati ceremony time stood still. The material mind stopped in its tracks, all anxieties evaporated, and for that time I was in contact with eternity.

Regulated Deity worship clarifies consciousness. Regulation is a function of sattva. Clarity is a quality of sattva.

Spiritual practices such as Deity worship, maha-mantra meditation, and study of Vedic scriptures put you in touch with eternity. The more time you spend in that space, in contact with eternity, the more the clarity of your consciousness will increase. As the clarity of your consciousness increases your ability to accurately measure yourself and the environment also increases.

Study of scriptures is very important. Think about how many hours you've spent absorbing a picture of reality through information from mundane sources such as television, newspapers, and mundane books. This information carries with it an implicit value structure that becomes part of your mental makeup. Studying scriptures will reformat your brain and change the way you see things. In one sense it is about replacing your intelligence module, unplugging the one you have installed now and installing another one. In another sense it is not simply about information gathering, but is an act of association with transcendence. The more time you dedicate to this, the more you will counteract the covering influences of your past that are affecting you in the present.

Here are a few things that will increase the potency of these practices, and further aid you to clarify your consciousness:

Sleep early and rise early in the morning, before sunrise. The old adage: “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise” is a fact. The hours before sunrise are very peaceful and powerful for practices that distill and purify consciousness.

Eliminate meat, fish and eggs from your diet. These foods pull your consciousness toward the animal side of your nature, and blunt your human capacity for self-awareness and self-analysis. You should additionally avoid processed foods, foods with many additives or preservatives, and foods which are prepared by persons with clouded consciousness. The consciousness of the cook affects the eater - grains especially transmit consciousness. Eliminating grains prepared by persons of clouded consciousness will increase your clarity. Conversely, taking food prepared by persons of purified consciousness will have a positive effect.

Avoid changing the chemistry of your body beyond what is necessary for its natural maintenance. Intoxicants (poisons) such as alcohol, mind altering chemicals, ingredients which upset the body's natural balance such as caffeine, and even activities which cause your body to produce excessive adrenaline and other hormones, will all disturb your ability to discern reality dispassionately and accurately.

Unregulated or excessive contact with the opposite sex will have the same effect (I'm assuming that you're heterosexual here). In recent years scientists have come to recognise that not only the brain, but the entire endocrinal system is involved in thinking. Overstimulated hormone production and imbalance will affect your capacity to reason.

Avoid dishonesty in all its forms. Dishonesty is based on unreality, so the more you are in contact with this, the harder it is to be real. As the saying has it: “If a man presents one face to the world and another to himself, eventually he will become confused as to which is which.” Irresponsibility is another form of dishonesty. Attempting to enjoy the results of an activity without paying for the consequences is another. Endeavour to make your life as straightforward, natural, and real as possible.

2. Guidance - the Not-So-Secret Secret to Success

The problem with trying to get real using only your senses and consciousness is that while it works when you know you don't know something - the weakness is when you don't know that you don't know something. Luckily, there are people who are more perceptive than you are, either in different areas, or overall. This can be due to greater experience, greater clarity of consciousness, or both. You can transcend your current limitations, exceed your current abilities to measure reality by getting guidance from someone who can see further and more accurately than you can. This is the principle of guidance given by Sri Krishna in Bhagavad-gita 4.34. Find someone who can see the truth, inquire submissively from them and render service to them – such a guru will reveal the truth to you.

Taking a guru is not a fashion statement. The guru is not a fashion accessory, a picture to hang on the wall. It's not a matter of getting a spiritual name to belong to a group, or becoming “saved” by being “born again”. The process of taking instruction from a guru is one of finding someone more realistic than you, and taking their help to get real – to get self-realized. There are three types of gurus – the vartma-pradarsaka, the person who first helps you out; a siksa-guru, someone who gives you guidance; and the diksa-guru, the person with whom you establish a strong connection that develops into a formal relationship.

Prior to meeting the devotees, I read all the books on yoga in the Auckland Public Library System. After processing all the information in them I was left with three loose threads:

• All yoga comes from Bhagavad-gita
• You can only go so far by self-study of books - you have to find a guru to go further
• When the student is ready, his guru will appear

I then embarked on a hitch-hiking pilgrimage around the country, to find a guru. I had read all the books I could get my hands on, and now they were simply repeating themselves, telling me that to go further I needed a personal guide. It was time to find the guru. In my mind two thoughts were playing over and over again. First of all: “I need to find a guru. I need to find a guru. I need to find a guru.” And at the same time, in the background: “What's a guru?”

I met many people on that trip, including His Holiness Bhaktisiddhanta Swami, who approached me in the street in his sannyasa robes with the Bhagavad-gita in his outstretched hand. “I'm looking for that book!” I exclaimed and immediately took it, giving him the $7 donation he suggested. He was curious to know how I knew of Bhagavad-gita and wanted to talk with me further. In my mind the mantra continued to play: “I need to find a guru. I need to find a guru”. “Sorry, I've got to go,” I told him, and walked away. After all, I was on a mission to find a guru.

However, I didn't know what a guru was, or how to recognise one. How do we know who is our guru, our guide? What's the qualification of the guru?

After two weeks of travel I returned home, without finding my guru. I repeated the mantra over and over again: “When the student is ready, the guru will appear. When the student is ready, the guru will appear”. No guru had appeared. Why not? Then I realized – I wasn't yet ready.

What's the qualification of the student? That he can recognize the guru. If you want to buy gold, you have to know what gold is, otherwise you will be cheated. So similarly the qualification of the student is that they can ascertain who is guru. It does have a mystical component – but it's not blind faith. The guru has to be more advanced according to an objective standard that you can, and must check. Scriptures provide the standard of reality against which we can measure everything. By studying scripture we understand the standard by which to measure guru. The scriptures provide us with the bigger picture that helps us to locate and identify all the elements in our local environment, beginning with ourselves, and including our guides.

After reading the Bhagavad-gita for four months I met my guru – and at the moment I laid eyes on him, I felt it, and as soon as he spoke, I knew it.

Basically it's up to you. In ISKCON we have a system where certain devotees are ratified by their peers and seniors to become formally initiating gurus. However, as has been made explicitly clear, the rubber stamp of the “ISKCON brand guru” does not carry with it a life-time guarantee. It's a case of buyer beware. Officially sanctioned gurus have given up the path – we are all independent, eternally.

In his guide book to the process of getting real, called Hari-bhakti-vilasa (Part One, verse 73 if you want to look it up), Sanatana Goswami recommends that both the guru and the prospective disciple should spend one year living together in order to get to know each other, and assess each other's qualification. You are looking for help to get real. Choose wisely, and make an informed decision – study the scriptures.

3. 360 Degree Feedback

In addition to guru and scripture, our enhanced process for getting real relies on a third principle, called sadhu in Sanskrit. It's the process of using the perceptions of other practitioners to enhance your own perception. Recall that everyone has a different perception, due to being a unique individual. This means that everyone potentially has something of value to share with you.

You need to get feedback from everyone around you. This is one of the first places that you can feel the fear and do it anyway. You need to destroy the false perception of yourself that is stopping you from really understanding what you are capable of, and what you are not capable of. Unrealism about yourself is limiting your effectiveness – your ability to successfully match your capabilities with the needs of the environment.

Let me tell you two stories about the glories of feedback, to help you feel the fear:
Once, at the airport as my spiritual master was preparing to leave, a godsister approached him. She was angry about something he had done, or that she thought he had done. She really ripped into him and let him have it six ways from Sunday. After some time her tirade subsided. My spiritual master, who had listened quietly through the whole thing then said: “Thank you. That was really beneficial for me. I don't know how good it will be for you, though”.

I had a similar experience, and I thought of this pastime when it happened. I was responsible for an ISKCON preaching center. At a yatra management meeting I called out another manager for doing something at that center that was against ISKCON policy, even though I had explicitly told her not to do it. She was a lady devotee, my godsister in fact. From where I am now, I would handle it differently. I might speak to her husband, who was not on the council, rather than to her directly (like I said, it's complex and multi-dimensional). I ended up having to deal with him anyway. He showed up to a later management meeting and proceded to rip into me. I opened my mouth to defend myself, and then I thought: “A Vaisnava will fight to the death to defend others, but does not defend himself”, so I remained quiet and let his cutting words sink into me. He really let me have it.

I do think that this experience was very good for me. As for what my spiritual master said: “I don't know how good it will be for you” - that devotee, and the others who listened without intervening and defending my execution of my duty, or protecting him from what he was doing, all experienced difficulties afterwards. I'm not saying that the two are necessarily connected, but I would personally avoid giving feedback like this.

Receiving feedback like this is valuable, although it is painful. It will help cut you down to size if you take it on the chin, and I'm telling you about this to help prepare you for it, because if you step up to responsibility, rest assured, it will come. At the same time, it doesn't have to be like this, and you should implement a strategy of proactively seeking feedback to avoid situations like this. Hopefully my introduction makes the following idea less scary and a more attractive alternative.

You should regularly approach people around you and ask them for feedback. You can approach them and ask for their advice, posing such questions as:

• What areas do you see me as having potential in?
• What do you think I'm good at?
• What am I doing right?
• What do you think I can improve?
• I'm quite busy - if you could identify one thing that I should work on, what would it be?

The quality of the feedback you get will in each case be subject to the ability of the person giving it to measure the reality of something in their environment – you. By soliciting feedback from multiple persons you will be able to cross-reference it, and mute out individual biases. Sometimes, however, a particular person will give you a critical insight.

The ability to measure reality is not uniform. People may be completely unrealistic in some areas, and totally onto it in others. You can get useful feedback from anyone and everyone, and you should. The newest guy may see something that no-one else sees. Everyone is a unique individual, and they bring a unique experience to the table.

Feedback from members of your team helps you to see yourself, and it also helps you to see them. By cross-referencing their perceptions you build a better picture of the people who give you feedback. At the individual level of leadership your team represents part of your environment, at the team level of leadership it represents part of your self.

Know what you know – and what you don't

You don't know everything. Seems pretty obvious doesn't it? Unfortunately many people, when put into a leadership role, start to think that they have to know everything. Sometimes people around them reinforce this by having an expectation that the formally titled leader has all the answers.

You don't know everything, and you don't have to know everything. What you do have to know is what you do know, and what you don't know. Stay inside your area of expertise and defer to others who have expertise that supercedes or complements your own. It's always helpful to remember that everyone knows more than you about something. Learn to recognise expertise in others and draw on this as a resource.

It took me a while to get this. Having people coming to you asking for you to make a pronouncement about “the ways things are” has an effect. You can start to think that because people are hanging off your answer and have faith in whatever you say, that whatever you say is in fact true – in other words, it's realistic. But reality is not a matter of popular vote. Know what your limitations are. Know what you know and what you don't know. Then you'll be able to be effective. Don't let a title or formal position and the accompanying expectations of others overinflate your self-estimation.

People will respect you more and you will be more effective if you know what you know, and know what you don't know. You are able to value the contributions of others, and make your own contribution where it is most valuable.

Knowing what you don't know you don't know

Knowing what you know is one thing. Things that you know you don't know are another; however, knowing that you don't know them means that you do know something about them. What catches you by surprise are the things that you don't know that you don't know – your blind spots. These are the things that don't keep you awake at night, because you are completely, blissfully unaware of them. Those are the ones that get you.

You can deal with this by creating a network around yourself, designed to bring the unknown unknown in to the light, either as something known and understood, or failing that as at least a known unknown.

You create this network by assembling a team of varied persons who advise you from different perspectives. These advisors may be in contact with each other, such as a board of some description, or they may be individual relationships that you maintain in order to get this input. Good bets for this advisory network are:

• People who have done what you are doing, before you
• People who have a different way of seeing the world
• People who have differences of opinion with you

The last thing you want to do is surround yourself with people who see things exactly the way that you see them. Then you all sit around nodding your heads going: “Man, are we onto it”, right up until the moment that a metaphorical 18-wheeler slams into your blind spot. Critics, while tough on your ego, are a great source of alternative perspectives. It's better to choose to feel some pain than to end up feeling a whole lot involuntarily.

Your advisory network is not there simply to answer questions that you ask. It is there to help you ask the right questions. Things that you know, you have the answer for. Things that you know you don't know, you have the question for. Things that you don't know you don't know you have neither an answer or a question. Your advisory network helps you to ask the right questions. The key question is: “What do you know, that I don't?”. Another way of putting it is: “What's missing from this picture?”.

When you read the picture of the yatra situation that I gave in the introduction you are not seeing things through my eyes - you are seeing them through the advisory network that I assembled and tapped into while I was there. A really smart guy once said: “Most of my best ideas are someone else's.” It's a fact that truly successful people became successful because of the assistance they received. You can never have too much quality help. At the same time you need to be focused and decisive. It's not about taking a vote, it's about making an informed decision. Choose your advisors carefully, not because they make you feel good, but because they help to make you more effective. Evaluate the effectiveness of your advisory network just like you evaluate your own performance. Hold them accountable for the outcome of their advice. Continually evaluate. If you get blind-sided, try to identify what's missing from your advisory network. If you act on some bad advice, does an advisory source need to be replaced (either with another advisor, or by understanding that “she's not the go-to person on that particular issue”), or did you rely too much on one person and not use your network?

We are able to judge distances because we have two eyes. Our brain receives slightly different input from each one, and uses this to triangulate and calculate the distance. People with one eye cannot judge distances accurately. At the other end of the spectrum, flies have multi-faceted eyes which provide their brains with a plethora of signals. From this a fly is able fly about at high speed and with great accuracy. In the same way, your advisory network functions to increase your ability to measure and respond accurately.

Understanding Your Personality

It is important to understand your own personality, for two reasons. Number one is that experience is subjective. We don't experience things directly, we experience them by means of our consciousness. Personality is a function of consciousness, so our personality affects how we perceive things. We need to calibrate our perception by understanding the biases that our personality introduces.

Number two is that other people have a different consciousness, therefore a different personality, therefore a different experience. When we fail to realize this we unconsciously establish our particular perception as an objective standard of reality, which is not a fact, and is disastrous to personal relationships and organization.

We are all unique individuals. No two of us are exactly the same. However, we are to a greater or lesser degree alike. It is as if we are all assembled out of factory made parts. There is a big bin of small parts, and nature assembles each person out of these parts. The overall person is unique, but different aspects of persons are shared. You have met people with whom you resonate, and others with whom you clash. This is due to aspects of personality. By understanding this you can understand where your strengths lie, where your area of significant contribution to a team lies, and you can learn to appreciate and value the strengths and contribution of those who are different from you.

Now in case you're going to say something like: “But we're not the body or the mind, we're pure spirit soul”, might I just point out that this book is not available in the spiritual world, so keep it real. There is no “pure spirit soul” restroom – there is a men's and a women's, and you use one of those two when you pass. So your body and your mind does influence your experience in this world, and so does your personality.

One classic example of this from my personal experience is the values clash between progress and harmony. You will value one more than the other, and which one you value the most is a function of your personality. You might think: “Well, I value both of those”, and of course you do. But when it comes down to it and there is a clear conflict between the two, you will fall on one side or the other. You will make a decision, or if you can't do that, at least manifest a preference through inaction, for moving ahead even though it means dissension, or standing around holding hands even though you missed the opportunity to move forward.

Different people will feel comfortable with different things. They are not right or wrong, just different, and understanding what your own preferences are will help you to be more understanding of the majority of others who differ.

Most incompetent people do not know that they are incompetent. People who do things badly, are usually supremely confident of their abilities -- more confident, in fact, than people who do things well.

One reason that the ignorant also tend to be the blissfully self-assured, the researchers believe, is that the skills required for competence often are the same skills necessary to recognize competence. The incompetent, therefore, suffer doubly. "Not only do they reach erroneous conclusions and make unfortunate choices, but their incompetence robs them of the ability to realize it,''

- Incompetent People Really Have No Clue, Studies Find:They're blind to own failings, others' skills, San Francisco Chronicle

Ye Gods, it's so obvious! I haven't been able to put my finger on it, but in dealing with a large number of people over the years I have consistently encountered people like this. They are Losers, but they just cannot and will not realize it and make the changes necessary to get out of their losing streak. Although they consistently make bad decisions and get bad results, they persist in doing this, and have a completely unrealistic assessment of themselves and their abilities.

For them, it's always some external factor that caused the failure of their strategy, never their own incompetence.

The reason for this is explained in the study described in the article above, Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One's Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments:

The skills that engender competence in a particular domain are often the very same skills necessary to evaluate competence in that domain - one's own or anyone else's. Because of this, incompetent individuals lack what cognitive psychologists variously term metacognition, metamemory, metacomprehension, or self-monitoring skills.

Based on my own experience (so it's anecdotal, and not rigorously scientific), I think that people who stay stuck in this zone of (in)competence do so because they are holding on to something in their own psychology that prevents them from going further. I mean, beginners are always beginners and have difficulty assessing themselves and others in that particular area. However, it becomes pathological when a person constructs and reinforces a self-image or an organizational profile way out of step with their actual level of competence, and focuses on reinforcing that projection, rather than increasing their level of competence.

That's beyond the scope of the study, but this study is interesting and insightful research.

In the Hagakure, 18th century samurai Yamamoto Tsunetomo writes:

In one's life. there are levels in the pursuit of study. In the lowest level, a person studies but nothing comes of it, and he feels that both he and others are unskillful. At this point he is worthless. In the middle level he is still useless but is aware of his own insufficiencies and can also see the insufficiencies of others. In a higher level he has pride concerning his own ability, rejoices in praise from others, and laments the lack of ability in his fellows. This man has worth. In the highest level a man has the look of knowing nothing.

Srila B.R. Sridhar Maharaja would often explain that progress is spiritual life is measured in a negative way. The more advanced we become the more we become aware of how far we have in reality to go...

Eternal principles are universally applicable.

In the weekend I downloaded and listened to the free audio download of Seth Godin's new book Tribes.

(You have to sign up with Audible.com and use their proprietary software to get the free download)

The book is awesome. It summarizes a lot of the realizations that I've been having in the area of leadership and is good for those who want to create Krishna Conscious tribes in the modern context.

There is also a companion Q&A book, created by a tribe of volunteers:

I'll post some excerpts from the book. In the meantime, here's a rebroadcast of a podcast I did in March of this year: Varnashram is Tribal

My first political cartoon.