I have done my best in these pages to make this book rich in meaning. As a result, what is a slender volume is still packed with ideas, exercises, and suggestions. It’s a lot to absorb. But the basic message is simple. We all have a still place inside us that is the source of everything that gives our lives meaning. This is the soul, and it is the place great leaders turn to for their inspiration, and for the answers to all their important questions.
How will you know that you are drawing from the soul’s unique perspective? We have looked at a number of ways to know that you are being true to the highest calling of spirit, so let me close this book by pulling together ten basic principles that function as a template for awareness, which is the wellspring of the universe. When you recognize these principles in action, you will know that you are truly on the soul’s path.
1. Leaders and followers co-create each other. Followers express a need, and the leader supplies a response. Both arise together. When they don’t, there is a leadership vacuum; at such times, needs become more intense and eventually desperate, paving the way for exploitation and dictatorship.
2. Just as individuals grow from the inside out, so do groups. The group’s needs must be met wherever they are. Sometimes a group needs a parent or protector, at other times a motivator, healer, or spiritual guide. Needs fuel change. The leader operates from the soul level to cause inner change, which then gets expressed on the surface as success.
3. The outcome of any situation is defined in advance by the vision that goes into solving it. Therefore inner qualities determine results.
4. The responses shared by leaders and followers are built into us, guiding us to evolve and progress. The soul is aware of how to unfold our evolution to produce the highest and best outcome in any situation.
5. Needs are designed to evolve, and a leader must be aware of this in order to foresee the future of the group and anticipate its needs. In rising order the group’s needs are for safety and security, achievement, cooperation, understanding, creativity, moral values, and spiritual fulfillment. All these are inner and outer needs that have evolved over time in the life of every society.
6. For every need, a leader must play the right role. The need for security calls for a protector; achievement calls for a motivator; cooperation calls for a team builder; understanding calls for a nurturer; creativity calls for an innovator; moral values call for a transformer; spiritual fulfillment calls for a sage, or seer. This matchup is organic—the soul knows how to fulfill any need with the least effort and struggle. A leader who can tap directly into this knowledge gains tremendous power for good, far beyond that of someone who concentrates only on external goals and rewards.
7. The leader who understands the hierarchy of needs and responses will succeed; the leader who aims only for external goals (money, victory, power) will falter in the area that counts most: guiding the evolution of his followers.
8. By ascending the hierarchy of needs, any group can be made to feel inspired and unified. Great leaders are in touch with every level of human experience. They understand that their followers yearn for freedom, love, and spiritual worth; therefore they are not afraid to hold out higher goals that lie beyond mere material rewards. But at the same time they don’t lead from the mountaintop. Every leader is also everyman. A lower need like the need to feel safe must be understood, genuinely felt, and then fully met before moving to a higher need. The challenge at hand can be as seemingly small as a guided discussion in which people feel safe to express their innermost feelings or as profound as leading a society out of oppression. The soul knows every level of life; a great leader aspires to know the same.
9. Leading from the soul means giving of yourself. It means you supply trust, stability, compassion, and hope. You spend time investing in relationships with those who turn to you for answers. Unafraid of forming emotional bonds, you don’t hide from any need as it unfolds. By contrast, leaders who are led astray by the desire to protect themselves emotionally, who limit their responses, or who cling to their egos, wind up being failures. They may have success in material terms, but if they do, it will be devoid of inner worth.
10. The soul brings order out of disorder. It brings creative leaps, unexpected answers, and synchronicities that are like gifts from the heart of mystery. No matter how complex and confusing a situation looks, leadership is possible when you are comfortable with uncertainty. Once they see the hidden spiritual order that lies beneath what seems to be chaos, inspired leaders thrive on uncertainty. You must learn how to manage the fact that situations are tangled, otherwise the group you lead will be crippled by turmoil. There is always a jumble of needs and responses that must be sorted out. Fear and survival, competition and creativity, beliefs and personalities make their demands. They each have a voice, whether we hear them or not, but underneath the jumbled surface there is only one voice, the silent whisper of spirit, which understands everything.
Think of these ten principles as a template for awareness. Ideally, you would apply it to everything you do. All models of leadership give much the same general advice when it comes to managing tasks and motivating other people. But they leave out the most important thing: a basis in Being. Being is the ground of everything. It is pure awareness, the womb of creativity, the generator of evolution. When the final story is told, leadership is the most crucial choice one can make—the decision to be. Only someone who turns for wisdom to the silent domain of the soul can thrive in the midst of chaos. Such a person will be remembered as a great leader. Yet being is everyone’s birthright; awareness is built into our brains as well as our spirit. There is always a new phase of evolution, and evolution is guided by need.
The world’s wisdom traditions define truth as a single spark that burns down the whole forest. If a leader is willing to be that spark, others will see the truth within him. Craving direction and the fulfillment of their needs, they will value what he offers, which is the first step toward valuing it in themselves. As a leader, you may find occasion to tell your followers why you wanted to raise them to a higher level, but in your heart you will know that you did it for yourself. To walk your own path is enough.