Why We Must Look At Leadership Through A New Perspective

Sometimes some insightful observations make you think deeper. I remember having read somewhere that “ as you mature in life, you feel like meeting more kind hearted people than intelligent people”. Our basic human desire is to be with people who are kind and humanitarian in nature compared to any other type, including intelligent people.?

The best amongst us may be those people who are kind as well as intelligent. This is a golden ratio as the mixture of these two qualities has potential to benefit humanity because a kind heart with intelligence would not be blind to the realities of humanity.?Such a lighted soul would use their intellect to avoid creating humanitarian problems and would more likely strife to carve out solutions from the complex problems. The least such souls would do is at least feel the pain of the suffering humanity and understand their rightful problems.

There is one more important observation that came to my mind along with this discussion. If we observe sagaciously we realise that that the power as well as the resources of the world are accumulated more in the hands of the intelligent people rather than the kind people. This is an open truth lying before us which we hardly see and realise. This truth is the mother of all problems including war, destruction, poverty,inequality,discrimination,racism,xenophobia etc.?

This deliberation brings me to the larger issue of Leadership. When we talk about power & resources being in the hands of the intelligent people, it mainly means the Leadership of the day spanning across all sectors of our existence like the political, economic, social, educational, technological etc. Our leadership from such ecosystem may be intelligent, but are they kind and compassionate? That is what the main issue is about as far as I am concerned.

Someone would ask me as to how I came to this particular conclusion that the power as well as the majority of the resources of the world are in the hands of the intelligent people rather than the kind people. The truth is lying open before us and if we have those eyes and the heart to feel and see it we all would come to the same conclusion.?Sometimes we do not require hair splitting research and tons of statistics to prove the open and the naked truth. Such open truth would only be doubted by the intelligent beings rather than by the compassionate humans.

Let me explain the above contention through a simple litmus test. If the power and resources of the world would have been in the hands of kind, softhearted and compassionate people then the situation would have been much better than what it is now. There is widespread war, destruction, poverty inequality, discrimination, racism, xenophobia etc existing in our world today and we see negligible compassionate leadership coming forward to end the world chaos. This proves my? contention that it is the mere intelligent mortals ruling the world rather than the humanitarian souls.?

The? “kind and compassionate”? people would not have allowed our world to become such a dangerous place to live. They would have done much better than intelligent people. I can tell you with confidence that the “kind and compassionate” people are more likely to share and distribute their wealth than the intelligent ones.?

The “kind and compassionate” leader is more likely to desire peace and tranquility than war and chaos. Also such a type of leadership is more likely to try harder to dismantle racism, discrimination and all sorts of inhuman evils in the society. They are more likely to think for humanity than mere intelligent leaders. That is why the greatest leader among us would be the one who would be kind, compassionate as well as intelligent.?

Our formal education system must give more consideration to developing kind and compassionate leadership rather than? produce mere intelligent species.? It may sound a bit strange but this seems to be true in the context of our present world. The word “compassionate & kindness” is missing from the Leadership discourse in our educational and academic ecosystem. That is why we are producing mere intelligent beings bereft of the “softer and illuminated heart”.?

If we notice carefully we would realise that we are inundated with the terms like visionary, achiever, change maker etc etc when we talk about the leadership subject. We even talk about vision statements and mission statements but we will hardly find the words like kindness, compassionate, illuminated, affectionate, gracious etc in those bulky documents. It seems as if the soul of humanity is absent from the leadership subject and discourses. If the soul is absent the mere mind can only produce selfish, individualistic and materialistic leadership.?

I think the time has come to make kindness, compassion, humanity etc the? essential feature of leadership.

Do you agree with me ??

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