Spirituality and Leadership: Interview with Dr. Prasad Kaipa

When disappointment stares me in the face and all alone, I see not one ray of light, I go back to the Bhagavad Gita. I find a verse here and a verse there, and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming tragedies.

– Mahatma Gandhi

The world looks up to great leaders in all spheres of life, whether it is political, business, sports, or spiritual. But where do great leaders look up to? It’s the Spirit that drives them, and each one of them draws this inspiration in their own ways. We have with us Dr. Prasad Kaipa, global thought leader and CXO coach to fortune 500 clients for over three decades, speaking to us on the nuances of ‘Spirituality and Leadership’.

Dr. Sreekumar (SK): People have different notions on spirituality. What, according to you, is spirituality?

Dr. Prasad Kaipa (PK): Spirituality is bringing the dimension of spirit, dimension of consciousness and dimension of divinity in practice. Instead of visualising myself as a human being with the spirit in me, it is about focusing on what is my spirit, what is my conscience saying. If I were to be bigger than myself, operating as a spiritual being with a human body, instead of as a human being with the spirit in me, what would I do differently? To a certain extent, spirituality is my highest potential operating as my daily living, that’s what spirituality is for me.

SK: Why spirituality and leadership?

PK: Ultimately, leadership is about influencing people, leading people, understanding the larger context and the wholeness from which people are operating.

Leading is not about just having some followers who are blindly doing what you tell them to do. It is about awakening the spirit in them. It is about igniting the genius within them. Another way of saying it is about developing leadership in them. For example, Green Leaf spoke about servant leadership. In India, we speak about the Dasa Bhavana (feeling of surrender to divinity). We have many examples like Ramdas, Kabir Das and the like who looked at themselves as the dasa (servant) of the divine.

Leader has to be a trustee, a steward, to quote Peter Block. Leader is not just at the top of the organisation, nor everybody else is below. We need to invert that context and say the entire organisational health and organisational future is resting on my shoulders. I have to be the servant of the organisation. I have to be the servant to all the stakeholders, whether it is customers or employees or suppliers, that huge responsibility is mine. When I operate from that particular context, from a larger frame of reference of leadership, I recognise leadership is the agency, the karta bhavana.

What is required is to tap into the spirit of each person and bring out his or her best. Organisations talk about purpose, meaning and passion as some of the very important ingredients to increase employee engagement and reduce attrition, especially during this great attrition period, great disengagement period. These are not very different from what religion talks about purpose, passion and meaning. In some respect, business organisations are becoming temples and becoming churches. Companies like Amazon, which focused only on customer service, are now saying they want to be the best company for employers. It is about business organisations becoming to a certain extent spiritual organisations, recognising the need to have greater employee engagement, creativity and take leadership.

Spirituality is going to be an extremely important part of leadership as we go forward, especially after the COVID, and especially in the current economic situation for us to survive and grow. We need to align and bring spirituality closer to leadership.

SK: What are the challenges in embracing spirituality in modern-day workplace?

PK: First of all, there is a lack of awareness. Many organisations think that they are created for profit and profit alone. Their ability to expand their scope, expand their customer base or supplier base or employee base, for all that to take place, they need to actually embrace diversity and inclusion.

Today’s corporates, be it Microsoft, Apple, Tesla, BMW, Toyota, all the way from McDonalds to Boeing, all of them are global companies, they actually do not have the same political, religious, national or cultural boundaries that the temples and religions or countries and societies have. Organisations today have to operate in a virtual environment, in virtual teams with virtual collaboration and create real products, real money and real growth. The global workforce, especially the millennial generation, seems to have shared values about the environment, climate change, non-religious spirituality and all of them.

Mindsets are going to be a challenge. The way we do things, the culture and the way in which the culture is managed are going to be challenges. Systems, processes, existing structures, old ways of doing things, these are all going to be challenges in embracing spirituality in workplace.

Organisations need to recognise that creativity, ownership, employee engagement, innovation, new product development and new customer acquisition, all of that will begin to suffer without embracing spirituality. Because without the spirit, there is no meaning, there is no purpose, there is no passion, there is no ownership, and there is no creativity. It becomes then very important for organisations to overcome the existing challenges, starting from mindset to structures and systems.

SK: How do we really operationalise spirituality?

PK: As I have been saying before, spirituality shows up in our productivity, our creativity, the way in which we find meaning and chemistry, how we connect within a team, connect with customers, connect with organisational objectives, and how we show our passion, and connect with the overarching larger purpose. These are all directly connected with spirituality.

We talk about leadership competencies. Even if we hire people with exactly similar competencies, their productivity can be very different. How you apply those competencies is where spirituality comes to the ground. So where the rubber meets the road, unless you are working for a Boeing company, where the rubber meets the sky, you need to figure out a way to operationalise that spirituality, because that is the foundation for everything else.

You need to ask: Who is the person operating? Is he the person who is tamasic, who is just saying, give me my task. Give me my four-hour job. I will come back at the end of four hours. Whether I finished it in one hour or whether I finished it in four hours, because if I do not finish it, you would not give me what I want, and if I finish it early, you are going to give me more work but not necessarily more money. So I am going to do just like a tamasic way.

In Rajasic way, they will bring in and say, Okay, if you give me a bonus, if you give me a promotion, if you promise me great benefits, then I will do more.

But when we look the Sattvic way, whoever can look at, when to go fast, when to go slow, when to focus on the quality, when to focus on the deadline, when to focus on the customer when to focus on my team, when you have the ability to think through, become agile, flexible and innovative and all the while being anchored within. Then your spirituality is getting operational.

There are many good examples of such leaders and organisations. When Alan Mulally went to Ford from 2006 to 2012, those were six years of continuous and significant profitability after several years of losses in billions of dollars. How did he do that? He operationalised spirituality. He brought appreciative inquiry. He focused on what works on the whole picture. What Alan called ‘working together’, that he helped design in Boeing company, he brought the same positivity. We can see the difference in performance in Boeing and in Ford during his tenure and after. Similar example we can see in State Bank of India during O. P. Bhatt’s tenure, how he embraced spirituality that enabled growth.

I believe, operationalising spirituality in organisations is going to produce significant competitive benefits, greater employee engagement and creativity, and they will reflect in your stock prices and market capitalisation.

SK: In today’s business world, where the focus is mostly on profits, how can spiritual values get ingrained in organisational culture?

PK: Organisational culture is like air, you can feel it all the time. Culture is the environment that provides safety, security and oxygen that we need to survive properly and enjoy what we are doing. Profits are what you might call a delayed outcome. If you are driving the organisation forward based on last year’s profit, it is like driving a car using the rear-view mirror, instead of using the steering wheel. The rear-view mirror is where the vision is very clear, where you know where you have been. But when you are going forward, you do not know the kind of topology of this street, and you cannot actually fully see. But you need to navigate without having that clarity. You only see a few feet in front of you. But if you got the values right, those values are like four tyres. If you buy a fantastic car, and you skimp on getting the best tyres for your car, it is completely useless, because the safety, speed and the comfort of the car is not going to depend upon how great the car is inside. The intersection between the car and the ground is happening through your wheels. In a way, the wheels of the organisation are your values.

If you don’t have quality as a value, obviously customer satisfaction is going to be seriously compromised. In service-based organisations like hotels, if you don’t do very well, they do not give you feedback, they just don’t come back to you. So how do you value customer feedback or employee feedback, how do you pay attention to organisational ethics, all these become very important. There are many case studies where shortcuts and compromises on company values prove fatal for the organisation.

Everybody says, customer service. We can do the same thing in different ways. In Singapore, once there was a ground rule called GST—greet, smile and thank—for customers coming into the store. This is one way you can try to bring the deeper values into the structural component. Another way, a little deeper, on employee focus for example is how you look at the salaries that you are paying. Are you putting them as expenses or as an investment? And when you look at the profits, are all the profits going to shareholders, or how? What percentage of this is going towards employee benefits?

If you look at customer service, Costco for example has a conscious choice to create a brand identity for superior customer service. You can return anything to Costco anytime, with no questions asked. Of course, there are many people who take advantage of them but when they looked at it, and said, if I can get a brand identity as superior customer service, if I buy something at Costco, I can return it any time because of that if I am actually getting more customer acquisition or if they are buying more things from me instead of best buy, or from somewhere else. The loss of returns is going to be much smaller in number. So they built the brand value based on that particular one. Other people may look at the same thing and say, our policy is no receipts, no return. I know you took it three hours ago, but you did not bring any receipt, Sorry.

What I’m saying is, you can do customer service as lip service or according to the rules approach, or as a process or you can do customer service as the spirit of what you do around which you can build a brand value. So in what way are you embracing values such as quality, customer service, innovation or meritocracy. Does that show up in giving promotions? Does it show up in giving raises? Does it show up as my customer feedback or employee feedback? If you are doing that, then the culture will change. That is how you ingrain values into the organisational culture.

If as a leader, you say I want teamwork, and I want you to be really good in collaborating with other team members. But at the same time, you do not want to collaborate with your peers in other departments and work in organisational fiefdoms, people are going to see that. Everybody is going to compete about their own role because they have seen me very clearly. So they look at what I talk only after they see how I walk. If my walk and talk are in two different directions, they will follow my walk, but they will never pay attention to my talk.

If you want to ingrain spiritual values into organisational culture, you have to look at level one, level two, level three, level four of actually taking some value, and see how is it incorporated in structure, how is it incorporated in a process, in employee assessment, or any of the other things. When you put that, then people know that you are serious about it, and then they will practice.

SK: In your experience, what has worked well for organisations that have embraced spirituality?

PK: Several of the ideas when applied translate into greater employee morale, employee engagement, employee creativity and overall growth of the organisation. There are many organisations that I know where these ideas have been practised. There is one very small organisation, Women’s Bank of Sri Lanka, which is not much known in the world. This was started by a gentleman who worked as a shipyard worker’s son. I went to Sri Lanka and met them a few times. I was in their 25th-anniversary meeting. The president of that bank for the entire nation makes only 8,000 rupees a month salary. Another thing I observed was a photo when Hillary Clinton came and met them, and it was just lying around. The president of the bank does not even speak English. Some people compare this with the Grameen organisation in Bangladesh, which Muhammad Unus started. One thing I notice is wherever the Women’s Bank of Sri Lanka is there, the community develops. Women are in power, children are more educated, husbands drink less alcohol and the like. So many international non-profit organisations come from around the world to learn from them.

For Women’s Bank of Sri Lanka, spirituality is not very different from doing. We say, Manava seva is Madhava seva (serving mankind is serving God). That is exactly what they were practising. They believed their bank was not just a cooperative which tried to get more interest and more. It was about we are here to really make sure how the poor downtrodden people’s lives can be lifted up. I feel the Women’s Bank of Sri Lanka has really embraced spirituality and is growing in a beautiful way.

For such leaders and their organisations, there is a clear alignment of purpose. There is more of an egalitarian spirit. Look at Narayana Murthy, Nandan Nilekani, Gururaj Deshpande, Ratan Tata and others who operated on certain values and were able to build multi-billion dollar organisations. They focused on the purpose a lot more meaningfully, they respected people who work for their organisation, and they bring together people not just products and processes. Tata Group, for example, has focus on nation-building. Embracing spiritual values will only create lasting benefits for the organisation, their communities and the nation at large.

SK: In your wide experience as a CXO coach, what leader characteristics truly matter? How does spirituality play a role?

PK: Leadership in earlier days was called administration, people were hospital administrators, government administrators, school administrators, etc. We call Indian administrative service and MBA is Master of business administration. Maybe 80 years ago, it used to be administration then became management which then became leadership.

Leadership can also become mis-leadership as Peter Drucker said, because at some level we need to recognise that leadership is contextual. There is visionary leadership, trait-based leadership, transformational leadership, transactional leadership, etc. There are so many models that come and go. Competencies, characteristics, traits and processes become important. What I found from 1990, over 30 years of being a coach, is that, what people consider as characteristics of a true leader changes like flavour of the month. New books come in, new philosophy comes in, re-engineering was famous a few years ago, then came in smartness, people even declared the 2010s as the decade of smartness. Smart computers, smartphones, smart TV, smart refrigerators and smart homes, everything was smart. Now, we are beginning to pay attention to wisdom.

When we ask how does spirituality play a role in leadership, I think we are essentially asking a question—It is not how you do what you do, but in doing what you are doing, who are you truly being? That is my question. Are you being a dad? Then you will create a paternalistic organisation, are you being a kind mom? You create a maternalistic organisation, are you being a great customer? Customer-centric organisations. We create organisations that are in some way a reflection of who we are.

That’s why Steve Jobs became the spiritual father for Apple, even though Steve, Wozniak and other people are also cofounders. The spirit of Apple is mostly coming from Steve Jobs right. Jonathan Ive cut off his relationships with the company saying Apple is no longer focused on product technology but more on operational efficiency. Why? That is the spirit that Tim Cook brings in. He is really smart and a great supply chain expert. After Steve, products are incrementally good enough but we have not had a revolution for a long time.

The values, the culture, what you consider the HP way, or the Apple way, or the Infosys way or the Tata way, in some respect the spirit of the leadership, the spirit of the leader, if that is aligned with the spirit of the organisation, then organisational growth, culture and values will become more sustainable. Without that, it becomes a one-trick phoney, or even decades phoney, but slowly it will die. What keeps organisational values and culture alive is the organisational spirit. That is how this spirituality plays a role in organisational context, and the leader is the custodian.

SK: Your book From Smart to Wise talks about acting and leading with wisdom. Could you share the idea of wisdom-based leadership?

PK: Whether it is yin-yang as in China or when you talk about the wisdom—Sthitaprajnalakshana (hallmarks of a wise person) as in the Bhagavad Gita, the key idea is balance, the idea of equanimity, the idea of collective good over self-interest. My growth is included in the growth of my industry and not at the cost of it.

Wise leadership is about the application of intelligence for larger good. It is having the balance between action, reflection and introspection. It is about how you reconcile your long-term vision with the short-term delivery, bringing an alignment of the head, heart and hands. Wisdom is something that emerges. I, along with my co-writer, Navi, defined wisdom as smart plus plus. It is not giving up your smartness but recognising who you are. When you have an ethical compass, values-driven wheels and a larger purpose, your smartness will be a very useful servant for you too. The time is now ripe for wisdom-based leadership.

SK: What spiritual values can leaders cultivate for corporate and personal growth?

PK: In my opinion, the most important spiritual value first of all is self-reflection. A group of us, you are part of it, for the past one year we have been co-evolving, really looking at what it means to bring Yoga-based, Vedanta-based and Spirituality-based values for leaders. We are recognising that there are four primary powers that we need to operate with, and we need to develop in each one of us. These are Iccha Shakti (power of desire/will), Jnana Shakti (power of knowledge), Kriya Shakti (power of execution) and Cit Shakti (power of consciousness).

First of all, we need to have clarity of Sankalpa (intention) and the power of Iccha. This is about desire, will, and in a way the quality of your desire. Our Iccha should not only be about self-interest and personal benefits, but it should serve a larger purpose, collective good and that is first.

For that to happen, you need to have Jnana Shakti or the power of knowledge. You need to have a perspective of your organisation yesterday, today and tomorrow. How is your organisation shaping the industry you are in, how is it part of a certain national culture, and how is it benefiting the community and the nation? Are people proud of your organisation? Knowledge without perspective is useless, perspective without knowledge is empty and vain. We need to develop that power of perspective, power of knowledge to give us guidance, that is the second one.

The third one is the Kriya Shakti, we need to be able to execute in the world. Even without government support, without subsidies, we need to be able to prove that we actually deserve a place among the best of the best. We cannot complain about what is wrong with others. Kriya Shakti is about execution, it is about bringing our best, focusing on sustainable growth, designing something for the larger good, and you know, having a certain wise decision-making capability.

And the fourth one Cit Shakti (the power of consciousness) is not in your hands. It comes when we surrender, let go and operate not for the outcome but operate with a larger purpose. To a certain extent kartrutva bhavam (sense of I am the doer) and boktrutva bhavam (sense of I am the enjoyer) have to be surrendered. You have to do what you need to do, but you also need grace, and that may come from your partners, employees or from your community if you can bring grace to them. It is a reciprocating process. What you appreciate appreciates.

Cit Shakti or consciousness is that collective. We talk about bhavana and tatvam. Bhavana is when I am sitting and thinking about the world. Tatvam is while sharing it, correcting it, learning from it and modifying it so that this no longer is mine. It is not just my vision, it is a shared vision, and suddenly the organisational capability increases significantly and that is where Cit Shakti comes alive.

When we tap into these four powers, automatically we bring in humility, gratitude and a larger focus. We look at stakeholders not just stockholders, and we bring compassion and wisdom in total.

SK: What message will you have for leaders and future leaders?

PK: It doesn’t matter whether you are a wise leader or transactional leader or visionary leader or operational leader. Ultimately leaders have to do three things. Leaders need to communicate, communicate even difficult things in a way that other people are willing to listen and follow. Communicating difficult things is more important than just communicating easy things. Anybody can communicate easy things, but to tell that you are fired, but at the same time to leave you as a friend, requires certain serious communication capability. Both listening and speaking. The second is decision-making. You have to make tough decisions that nobody is willing to make. Third is taking action. Communicating, deciding and acting are what leaders do, and if you can do this with a feeling that you are the trustee, you are the servant leader, that is what is needed. Knowing that you are not going to be a leader forever.

There is a story in one of the Upanishads. Indra, the Lord of Gods was boasting to Brahma, the creator about his greatness. Brahma was not listening and was watching something else. Indra got angry and said what are you looking at so seriously? Brahma said, ‘I’m watching all the previous Indras going by, showing all the ants that were moving forward. There were so many Indras before you, there will be so many Indras after you. Your term is only this much and you are thinking you are the greatest. The key part is you need to recognise that you are an agent for change. So the kartrutva bhavam you need to have, to do the right thing at the right time for the right people but with the right reason.’ How do you do that?

You need to develop sakhitvam. You need to become the best friend your people have, whether they are your customers, employees, suppliers or partners, you need to think for them not just for you. We need to be able to develop the ability to see from a longer perspective and a larger point of view, how I can resonate with you as a Sakhi (friend) and build things with you. I will become your partner.

We also need to develop the Sakshi (witness) state of mind. In the best case, I will actually be a sacred mirror for you. In the worst case, I will be a sounding board for you. I will tell the truth, even if the emperor has no clothes. I will help give you the right reflection. When you think you are a lion and if you are a simple cat, I will tell you are a street cat. But if you are a lion pretending to be part of the sheep, because you grew up with the sheep, I will tell you are much bigger than the sheep, pretending to be so. Stop doing that. You can roar, you’re a much bigger person. So that’s what is required as a Sakshi.

Finally, these days we need healing and some amount of protection. There are so many wounded souls, the stress levels are so high. Mental illness around the world is so high. People are really in a large amount of mental and emotional distress. We need deeper healing, and we need the space to hold them with a certain affection, Vatsalya. We need to have matrutva bhavam, which is kindness, love and compassion.

As a leader, we need to bring in the above four roles—Kartrutvam (I am the agent), sakhitvam (friend), Sakshitvam (witness) and Matrutvam (kindness, love and compassion). A leader needs to know who requires what and apply contextual intelligence. Some people might need a just go-do-it approach or I-trust-you kind of leadership. Or whether you need to really look at it and say, I’m your best friend. Tell me your strategy, let me think with you, and let me share my ideas so that your execution becomes much better. Or I’ll be a witness to what you have done, and let me just navigate a little bit here, ethical guidance here, value balance here, so you can go as a witness. Or times when I need to do, and times when I need to protect you, let you heal, let you recuperate.

For leaders, the biggest message is to lead, you have to become a better karta, and you need to unfold the layers of matrutvam, sakhitvam, sakshitvam and kartrutvam. This inner transformation is needed for the leader to bring about a lasting positive transformation for their people, organisation, community and the nation at large. This work on our own inner transformation is called the path of Antaranga Yoga (Yoga of the inner faculties).

If you can play these four roles, then you will actually bring in the presence of the Indian spirituality, the yogic presence. You’ll be able to bring it not only in the leader that you are, but that awakens the spirit and awakens the genius that is within the organisation. The organisation becomes more of a living organism, which will pulsate, vibrate, innovate and create what it needs to create and sustain for whatever amount of time it is needed to make a lasting contribution to the rest of the country. That’s what is possible.