Leadership Lessons from The greatest leader of all time – “Buddha”

I have a colleague of mine who talks, sleeps, breaths and eats Buddha. Recently with great difficulty he gave me a book about Buddhism and Buddha, he does know that I m not a spiritual man. Some times he tells me I cannot be Human at all; I feel he is true because every time I breathe you can smell leadership. I do not know should we call all human as leaders, or should we call all leaders as human. I presume second one is very true..

Today In my article about leadership, I m going to discuss about some of the great qualities of the greatest leader of all time “The Buddha”. I m not a historian to tell you tales about Buddha however I will try to explain some of his qualities. I m sure everyone at least once in our life time, have heard the name of this great leader, we may not have learned anything but we know for a fact that he is and he was considered the as the greatest monks of all, a saint, who attained much talked enlightenment. Please don’t ask me anything about enlightenment I m too too far from it…After his enlightenment when a man asked Buddha “Who are you?” you don’t seem like a human. Are you a GOD? Buddha gently said “I m just awake”.

Almost all of us are asleep recently I was addressing a group of Engineers who are just out of college about motivation and self management. I asked them a Simple question; do you guys know where you are traveling? I was appalled to know that no one knew where they were traveling to? I asked them “are you really alive, are you living for yourself or others? Everyone simple said they don’t know. It’s such an irony to breathe without knowing whether you are alive or dead. And If this is the kind of leaders we are producing for future then we should be ashamed of what we are doing? It’s not only these students! even the leaders of today do not know their responsibilities; they don’t know where they are going. How can anyone reach or take people to paradise when leader doesn’t know where he is traveling to?

Let’s not dig too deep cause the more deep you dig; you are in shit of nowhere. Let’s understand the basics of leadership first before we understand anything else.

The first thing Buddha did after getting enlightenment is to find and teach as many people as possible. That simple fact can be considered as the Vision to change the world. Vision can be defined in a very simple manner, “A dream, a thought, an Idea or even a conviction to change the world ,which will lead people, society to the paradise”. Buddha led every individual to that Vision of enlightenment he sold as the best cake available in the market. It’s like this “when you sell right product people will buy, you don’t need to spend billions in marketing”. Buddha knew the ground reality, he knew that people go thru suffering; everyone needed the product called enlightenment. A leader must and should have Vision and that vision must be aligned with the people’s concerns and it should have been meticulously designed to serve the purpose of the people. Remember you can never sell Merc to laborer that’s called foolishness.

Before I discuss about the second quality lets hear from Buddha what he said” In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true”.  The second quality which I would like to discuss is Treating people fairly, it’s very easy to say but none follows it. It’s the toughest thing to do, nobody likes looser neither they are treated fairly. But Buddha, never differentiated anyone, he made sure that everyone gets the same teachings and treatment by all. As I mentioned earlier about my friend he told me once that, when Buddha was delivering the speech, “followers felt as if he is individually addressing them. Now thats what I call Treating people fairly, no matter whether your ship is going to sink or you are going to fly high never forget people accompanied you in your Journey. Never blame people for their incapability to do certain thing.

Now the million dollar question is how can I not blame people when they don’t do their Job. Being a leader you are there to support them not to push them down, it’s very easy, if you find one of your team members isn’t performing his core duties. Then get on to basics, ask him, train him, help him, give him more support and empower him to get things done. Buddha Said “Better than a thousand hollow words, is one word that brings peace”. If nothing works then get a new a team member, ask him to do what he likes. Don’t think that every can be Sachin Tendulkar, some times it’s worth a try to make him someone which he likes. One poor performer can change the game completely, so it’s better to have a replacement in place.

The most important quality of all which I m sure each one of us fail to do is to “EMPOWER YOUR PEOPLE”. Empowering, Empowerment are the two most amazing words to add on to your management dictionary. But I can guarantee there are many secrets hidden, there are many things which you wouldn’t want your subordinates to learn. But Buddha never kept any secrets even while he was on his death bead. He asked his followers if they had any question, he said to them that there is nothing hidden in his fist as the secret. Everything he knew, he shared and he made sure that he empowered people because of that reason why we have many people embarce buddhism than any other religion.

However the Game of Leadership has changed over the years but leadership and the qualities of a leader will never change. Remember these basics qualities of leadership and lead people to a better world. I would like to end this article by saying “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit" (Aristotle).