Being Leaders
An excerpt from the book:
“Political leaders play a critical role in the evolution of our societies’ values through their example and how they guide our imagination, direct our attention, and frame the debate. Like institutions, they can harness the worst or the best of people to conquer and hold on to power. “Here and now, I give you my word: if you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us, not the worst. I will be an ally of the light, not of the darkness,” promised Joe Biden before becoming president. How would the Indian independence movement or South Africa’s transition to a postapartheid regime or the civil rights movement have happened had they not been respectively led by Gandhi, Mandela, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr? What is the responsibility of people such as Trump or Bolsonaro in rousing and liberating anger, hate, and discrimination?
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The politics of being calls for awakened leadership. How can leaders govern their countries or organizations if they can’t govern themselves? We need wise leaders, inspired by a spirit of service, that can connect with the soul of their nations or organizations to guide them and activate their evolutionary potentials. The wiser we grow collectively, the less we will tolerate any other type of leadership, and the more we will prepare our future leaders to develop this connection. From this connection springs what is often called “spiritual intelligence.”
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Indeed, the politics of being is not merely about implementing a good plan. “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans,” says an old Yiddish proverb. Social reality is by nature hyper-complex and, as such, unpredictable. “We may well know that everything that has happened of importance in world history or in our lives was totally unexpected, but we continue to act as if the unexpected will never again appear,” warned Edgar Morin, long before the COVID-19 crisis.
What seems at the surface objectively impossible often occurs because great leaders, through their intimate connection with the inner states and needs of their nation—a sense that goes well beyond the power of reason—are able to develop a greater vision of what they can become. They invoke its manifestation and harness every opportunity to give birth to this vision. This connection to the soul of their nation, in its purest form, is a connection to the spirit itself, which guides and supports awakened leaders.”
