Dr Glenville Ash­by

Deep­ak Chopra can be likened to a mod­ern day Sai Ba­ba, of course, with­out the malas, tila­ka and saf­fron robes. Very much West­ern and with an ef­fu­sion of calm elo­quence, he is read­i­ly sought by celebri­ties, the rich, and not so rich. Af­ter count­less books, tele­vi­sion ap­pear­ances and sem­i­nars, his ap­peal is un­re­lent­ing.In his lat­est ef­fort, The Soul of Lead­er­ship, Chopra dab­bles in a callaloo of dis­ci­plines, name­ly, or­gan­i­sa­tion­al the­o­ry and be­hav­iour, and mys­ti­cism. Chopra painstak­ing­ly at­tempts to elic­it the great­ness in us all."We are all po­ten­tial lead­ers," is his mantra. On­ly this time he de­bunks the tra­di­tion­al con­cept of the "ul­ti­mate leader." Chopra's lead­ers are not the pro­tag­o­nists of His­to­ry. They are not ro­bust­ly per­sua­sive and au­thor­i­ta­tive. The do not wield pow­er that make us cow­er and fol­low sheep­ish­ly. No, they are more like sages and seers, able to tap in­to a reser­voir of in­tu­ition, cre­ativ­i­ty and com­pas­sion.

We are em­pow­ered by their tran­scen­dence. The au­thor un­abashed­ly says so him­self. He writes: "Your role (as leader) is pure light. You have reached the high­est state of aware­ness. As a role mod­el you are saint­ly, a pu­ri­fied soul. You walk the walk by em­a­nat­ing the very qual­i­ties of Be­ing, love truth, peace and deep know­ing­ness."In­ter­est­ing­ly, Chopra posits that we have the very abil­i­ties that de­fined the Man­de­las, Churchills and Gand­his of the world. He deft­ly presents the word "Lead­ers," in the form of an acronym: Look and Lis­ten; Emo­tion­al Bond­ing; Aware­ness; Do­ing; Em­pow­er­ment; Re­spon­si­bil­i­ty; Syn­chronic­i­ty.He of­fers some handy ad­vice in the area of con­flict res­o­lu­tion, "feel that the oth­er side has a right to their po­si­tion and win-win should be the ul­ti­mate goal." He of­fers com­pelling strate­gies for op­ti­mis­ing pro­duc­tiv­i­ty through syn­er­gy and group par­tic­i­pa­tion. "Be cen­tred and have clear in­ten­tion," he ad­vis­es. He us­es re­cent Gallup polls on or­gan­i­sa­tion­al cul­ture to ad­vance his the­o­ry that a leader, who in­vests time and self in em­ploy­ees, cre­ates a healthy en­vi­ron­ment.He em­ploys very Jun­gian con­cepts. For ex­am­ple, he asks that we sum­mon the "ar­che­type" of a leader who we ad­mire. He per­sists in Jung as he warns lead­ers against self de­struc­tion by the forces of "the shad­ow," char­ac­terised by en­vy, anger, self­ish­ness and greed. And he in­vokes the ex­is­ten­tial­ism of Vik­tor Fran­kl, as he chal­lenges us to sur­mount un­favourable cir­cum­stances.

But his ir­refutable ad­ju­ra­tions for the work­place are con­sis­tent­ly in­ter­spersed with the es­o­teric. His al­most Zen like philosophis­ing may lose some read­ers. His "transper­son­al" goal for lead­ers; his con­cept of aware­ness, of soul, and of "non-do­ing," are cryp­tic if the read­er is un­fa­mil­iar with east­ern tra­di­tions.His "syn­chronic­i­ty" tells vol­umes of his re­liance on the "hid­den" for ul­ti­mate suc­cess. He writes: "This (syn­chronic­i­ty) is a mys­te­ri­ous el­e­ment from the uni­ver­sal field of con­scious­ness that all great lead­ers har­ness. It is the abil­i­ty to cre­ate good luck and find in­vis­i­ble sup­port that car­ries one be­yond pre­dict­ed out­comes to a high­er plane."To Chopra, "the think­ing mind is on­ly the tip of the ice­berg." In "Lead­er­ship," he, as in so many of his books, is ped­alling the at­trib­ut­es and pow­ers of the soul. He ar­gues that log­ic and rea­son­ing will not take us to the fin­ish line. Rather, he ar­tic­u­lates: "As you be­come more aware, in­vis­i­ble pow­ers be­gin to sup­port your vi­sion."Sure­ly, the soul can be un­locked and its pow­er to get the job done is not as dif­fi­cult as one might sur­mise. But at this junc­ture, Chopra un­der­stands that he must tread light­ly.

"If ap­pro­pri­ate," he ad­vis­es that lead­ers should en­cour­age med­i­ta­tive ex­er­cis­es in the work place. If un­re­al­is­tic, lead­ers who seeks transper­son­al aware­ness, are beck­oned to med­i­tate alone, on the re­gion of the so­lar plexus; to ef­fort­less­ly fol­low their breath­ing, un­til still­ness and qui­etude are re­alised. It is at this very mo­ment that an­swers and so­lu­tions are gleaned, ac­cord­ing to the au­thor.The Soul of Lead­er­ship, is vin­tage Chopra. His de­trac­tors may view this lat­est un­der­tak­ing as re­hashed ide­al­ism with lit­tle ap­plic­a­bil­i­ty in a digi­tised world. Noth­ing could be fur­ther from the truth. Chopra, like the sages of yore, has nev­er swerved. In en­vi­ron­ments re­plete with ego­ma­ni­a­cal be­hav­iour and dis­en­fran­chise­ment, it be­hooves us to pay clos­er at­ten­tion to what Chopra has been say­ing all along.

glenvil­leash­by@gmail.com