In the previous episode, we had witnessed a very important Shloka wherein Bhagawan Krishna clearly explains how we should be able to balance between heat & cold, success & failure, achievement & challenge, happiness & sorrow, etc. This comes at a time when Arjuna is overwhelmed and carried away by the sorrow of seeing all his family members around him, ready to have a go at each other in the battlefield. As Arjuna is emotionally down, Bhagawan tries to motivate Arjuna by explaining how he should develop the balance in handling such ups and downs in life. He explains how heat and cold are two things that keep alternating in this world every now and then, and similarly, happiness and sorrow are two things in life that keep alternating every now and then. One should not get carried away to the extreme contours of happiness and sorrows, if he / she has to become a great leader. We’ve also seen this in our present day management and leadership context too, wherein emotional stability is very important while making decisions in the organization, because the decisions of the leader would have a potential impact on the entire organization in some way or the other. Of course, no decision can be perfect, but having said that, leaders should apply a solid thought process while making decisions, by not getting carried away with just one side of the argument.
This also points out to yet another important leadership lesson – As a leader, one should always thread the neutral line. A leader should always try to balance between all his / her employees in the organization and be fair to everyone. A leader should never take sides and support the cause of one set of employees in the organization and leave the others in the lurch. This again pertains to how a leader manages to strike a neutral stance. When will the leader be able to strike this neutral stance? Only if the leader is able to balance his / her emotions, isn’t it? This is exactly what Bhagawan Krishna explains here. So when He says that we should be able to strike a balance between happiness and sorrow, He is talking more from an emotional point of view. The problem with many of us is that we tend to get carried away by the heat of the moment and would end up supporting one side by ditching the other! This is where we’ve to be very careful as leaders. Fairness is a very important aspect in leadership – Are we giving fair opportunities to all people in the organization to perform to their best of abilities? Or, are we entering into a more judgemental mode by assuming certain things about people even before we give an opportunity to people? The latter is quite dangerous to do, as the leader might face backlash very badly! Hence, it is always better to give a fair amount of opportunities to people and then take a decision to judge their performance.
Thus, the lesson here for all of us is that, there might be days when the situations might be favourable to us, and there might be days wherein we would face extremely harsh challenges. So we need to learn to balance between tough challenges and otherwise, and this is a hallmark characteristic of a leader. If the leader gets carried away by the toughness of the situation, he / she might end up making erroneous decisions which might potentially impact the organization in a big way. However, we’ve to understand one important thing here – Even though we understand that the situation is tough and challenging, will we be able to change it? The answer is “No” most of the time! This is what we call in management terms as “uncontrollables”. For instance, heat and cold are uncontrollables – Can we change the sun’s temperature with human intervention? All that we can do is to resist the heat / cold by taking appropriate measures. If it is too hot, we install air conditioners to beat the heat. Similarly, if it is too cold, we install heaters to protect ourselves! Similarly, if the situation at office is challenging, we can only resist it and react as per the merit of the situation. We cannot change the situation completely in our favour to make it conducive, isn’t it?
Hence, what we need to understand today is that, there might be situations that would be favourable / unfavourable to us. These are uncontrollables. However, the way in which we adapt to these changing situations indicate the hallmark of a successful leader! So for today, let us understand this point very clearly and let us wait till the next episode to continue further! Stay tuned! 🙂
The Indian Dharma 