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Keywords Transformational leadership, Ethics, Ideologies (philosophy)
Abstract This paper presents both conceptual insights and practical examples about spiritually transformed leadership. The Yoga-Vedanta spiritual model is its anchor. Some profound Western thinkers, besides Indian realizers, have provided clues relevant to this approach. This paper explores a much wider vista for transformational leadership beyond business success or political strategy. Transformed leaders are the cause, transformation of followers the effect.
Setting the tone
The authors of this paper feel that "leadership" is a "soft" field. It turns even more so when it begins to be looked at from the "transformational" angle, and when the "spiritual" perspective is attempted to be infused into it, the "softness" of this subject becomes deep. So, every idea or view is not expected to be acceptable to all readers. A little taste for spirituality might however help.
The transformational angle to the leadership process has been with us for 25 years. James Burns had pioneered this viewpoint in a monumental study on leadership (Burns, 1978). He has argued that "transactional" leadership is characterized by a "swapping", or a "trading", or a "bargaining" motive in an exchange process between a leader and the led. It lacks durable engagement between the two sides. They "use" one another mutually - so to say. "Transforming" leadership, on the other hand, involves the mutual "raising" of both sides to higher levels of motivation and morality. The example of Gandhi has been given. The same paragraph also mentions "transcending" leadership, but it is not explained, nor does the index mention it. Similarly, "spirituality" also does not figure in the index (Burns, 1978).
Burns, a political scientist, has elaborately formulated his ideas against the canvas of managing nations and peoples, not business. Therefore, he proceeds to "fashion a general theory of political leadership". He does speak of "mutual stimulation and elevation" among leaders and followers. But his "transforming" leader is assigned the role of "recognizing and exploiting" the wants, ungratified needs, demands, crushed expectations etc. of followers or potential followers. Then he is supposed to go beyond all this and engage the whole person in a moral process (Burns, 1978). Consciousness arousal has also been interpreted in terms of the ability to "discern signs of dissatisfaction", grounded in the...