The Karma of Leadership

About this time, every year, some of the most popular business magazines round up their list of “top picks” and describe what we can all learn from them. You know the lists I’m talking about: “World’s Most Influential People”, “Richest People in the World”, and “Most Powerful (fill in the blank).” Included among these is a recent article providing “career lessons” from Forbes’ 100 most powerful women. The article focuses on valuing nonconformity, truly believing in and having a passion for your work and demonstrating the tenacity and perseverance to pursue your goals. I agree with all of these lessons. However, there’s a very important one missing. I call it:  “Shape Your Leadership Karma.”

Karma is the law of cause and effect. It’s an ancient Hindu and Buddhist concept that applies to the decisions and actions that you take in your life. But it also relates to how you behave as a leader. Karma suggests what we send out into the world will come back to us — the good, the bad and the ugly. More than the admonition we heard as children about “treating others as we would like to be treated,” karma predicts ramifications for our actions. Whether you believe karma is real doesn’t matter. Your actions as a leader are undoubtedly being replicated across the organization. Even if you think you are not directly experiencing the karma you’ve created, trust me, others are. Indeed, what you put out as a leader comes back. Where it lands is the larger question.
So, what’s the karma you want to create? Here are some options to consider:

• You can create a culture of respect, or you can behave as a domineering, Machiavellian leader.
• You can micromanage your best people or you can trust individuals to be committed to doing their best.
• You can act with integrity or you can backtrack on promises and shift accountability to someone else.
• You can work diligently to know yourself, strengths and weaknesses included, or you can use bravado to mask your shortcomings so that you never really remedy them.
• You can selfishly focus on working your own agenda, or you can generously support others in reaching their goals (and celebrate when they do).
• You can willingly share information, or choose to hoard it because you believe it imbues you with power.
• You can manipulate others like pawns on a chessboard, or you can honestly tell them what you need and want, and engage them in supporting your goals.
• You can actively grow other leaders or spend all of your time demanding that people follow you.
• You can lead from a place of purpose and passion or you can drive for results through power and fear.
• You can focus on possibility and abundance or you can embrace scarcity and defeat.

The choices are many, but all of them are yours. What karma will you foster in your organization, and what will you invite back into your life?
 

Alaina Love is a speaker, an author and president of Purpose Linked Consulting, an international leadership development company. Since 1994 she has conducted research on leadership purpose and passion and has found that individual fulfillment and inspirational leadership are the keys to employee engagement, outstanding business results and a sustained competitive advantage. 

Love is co-author with Marc Cugnon of The Purpose Linked Organization: How Passionate Leaders Inspire Winning Teams and Great Results (McGraw-Hill). The book identifies and explores the impact of the ‘Passion Archetypes’ of great leaders, provides a process for leaders to maximize the individual passions on their teams, and offers an access code to The Passion Profiler™ online tool, where readers can discover their top three passions and how to apply them to their roles at work.

Follow Alaina on Twitter: @workwithpassion. Contact her at info@thepurposelink.com and learn more about purpose and passion at work at www.thepurposelink.com.