So far we’ve seen five of the sixteen “Kalyaana Gunas” (Noble qualities) of Lord Rama, from which we’re in the process of learning some important lessons for modern day leadership. Let’s look into some more from the sixteen in today’s episode:
- Drudavrathaha – It means, A person who is self-determined, steadfast in his/her attitude towards truth, righteousness and resolute. It is said that anything in this world can be achieved with a positive attitude or intent. We can see this quite significantly in Lord Rama’s life – When he was instructed to go on an exile to the forest for fourteen years by his mother Kaikeyi, he took it in an extremely positive sense and without talking another word, proceeded forward. And when Rama’s brother, Bharata came to him later on and requested Rama to return back to the kingdom, he refused to come back. Here we can see how Rama was self-determined and steadfast towards Dharma so as to accomplish His mission in the forest for the next fourteen years.
This can be easily correlated with the modern-day talk and debate about self-determination, positive attitude and self-confidence. We might have seen in day-to-day life, numerous success stories of people with respect to their self-determination – Be it the case of our great ex President of India, Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, our cricketing legend, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, etc. If we read through the stories of these great leaders, we might be able to see ample relevance to these two aspects – Positive attitude towards their goal and in turn, the self-determination to achieve. It is believed in the context of leadership that, if the leader exhibits a positive body language towards his/her team, the entire team gets that motivation to move forward. Hence, positivity finds extreme importance in successful leadership.
- Chaarithrenacha koyuktaha – A person with an impeccable character and without any blemish. All of us might be aware of a proverb – “If wealth is lost, nothing is lost; if health is lost, something is lost; But, when character is lost, everything is lost!” Here we can see the importance given to “Character” of a human being and this is why Valmiki Maharishi lays so much stress on the character for a leader. It simply implies that, if a leader has to be a role model for his/her followers, he/she has to exhibit an impeccable character.
- Sarvabhuteshu hitaha – A person who is a benign well-wisher and takes care of all beings in the world equally. This again correlates to an extent with “Sousheelyam” which we discussed before. However, the important point to be stressed here is that, everybody should be equal under the eyes of a leader. This is an extremely important quality that was exhibited by Lord Rama throughout his life – He treats Guha – the hunter as his own brother, Sugriva – the monkey as his own brother and all the “Vaanaraas” (Monkeys) as his own brothers. There was no differentiation or discrimination against anyone in the eyes of Lord Rama, and also when He later became the King of Ayodhya after his fourteen years of exile, he made sure that he treated all people in his kingdom with equality. To add more to this point, Lord Rama is also known to have given equal status to women, in the erstwhile male-dominated society.
Modern-day world has given us both good and bad examples of this quality – Be it politics or corporate. Today we talk about “Dynasty politics”, “Family rule”, etc. which is proving to be detrimental to a country’s progress. We also speak about a concept in modern day Human Resources Management called “Nepotism” or “Favoritism”, wherein one person might be “favored” more than the other just on the pretext of closeness to a leader. Such things have the huge risk of demoralizing the entire organization and those people who put in their heart and soul to their work may develop a feeling of being left out from the organization, if they’re not given the appropriate recognition for their extraordinary contribution. All these finally lead to “job dissatisfaction” amongst employees and finally the organization might face the grave risk of losing its potential employees to the competitor. Hence, this quality of “Sarvabhuteshu hitaha” assumes lot of significance in today’s leadership arena!
What are the other important qualities that make a leader successful? Let’s discuss in the next episode!!
The Indian Dharma 