uddhared ātmanātmānaṁ nātmānam avasādayet

ātmaiva hyātmano bandhur ātmaiva ripur ātmanaḥ

— B.G. 6.5—

It is the inner quest of leaders or their learnt consciousness that brought them closer to Indic perspectives. For example, one can understand how Steve Jobs was associated with Paramhansa Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi. Successful Indian business leaders such as Ajay Piramal, Mukesh Ambani, and G.M. Rao have been influenced by the Bhagavad Gita. Ray Dalio and Marc Benioff align themselves with meditation, self-awareness and equanimity. One can see the influence of Indic perspectives in the work of Psychologists such as Carl Jung. His ideas resonated deeply with the Upanishads and Indian philosophy, paving the way for explorations of the Self, consciousness, and individuation.

Modern interpreters like Swami Vivekananda, Aurobindo, and Thengadi shaped Indic perspectives, which contemporary thinkers like Gurumurthy, Mahadevan, Dhiman and Balasubramaniam extended to contemporary leadership and management.

It is typical human tenacity to learn everything possible on earth. Be competitive, understand the world, lead others, lead people, processes, and organizations, earn money, control the quality of what we do, and whatnot. In management education, we teach learners to understand markets, manage organizations, lead teams, handle competition, and make decisions in difficult situations. What we procrastinate on is diving in and seeing what’s held inside. In these situations, we unconsciously forget an important question: how well does the person making these decisions truly understand themselves? In his book Inner Charioteer, Balasubramaniam argues that humans tend to rush to manage and lead others without first learning how to govern ourselves. We are the prisoners of our thoughts. Unless we overcome them, we cannot unbind ourselves and explore ourselves to the fullest.

Many such lessons contribute to quality control within. Indic Leadership can help us find a conscious call within. Not just learning but implementing its principles in life can help one build consciousness, a self-quality control within. For example, Verse 6.26 of the Bhagavad Gita prescribes self-regulation by one becoming aware of the wandering, restless mind and implementing methods to establish conscious self-control.

Yato yato niścarati manaś cañcalam asthiram |

Tatas tato niyamyaitad ātmany eva vaśaṁ nayet

— B.G. 6.26—

An interesting understanding of this perspective can be drawn from recent research published in the Journal of Organizational Behaviour. Feng and coworkers established not only that mindful leadership helps employees develop social mindfulness, but also that it provides more family social support at home.  For example, Verse 2.48 of the Srimad Bhagavad Gita can help leaders establish conation to develop mindfulness, equanimity, clear judgment and conscious actions.

Yogasthaḥ kuru karmāṇi saṅgaṁ tyaktvā dhanañjaya |

Siddhyasiddhyoḥ samo bhūtvā samatvaṁ yoga ucyate ||   

— B.G. 2.48—

The values and self awareness about own thought process will lead to holistic view and improve decision making which reflects in system and institutional improvements. Our motivation at IIM Mumbai to align with Indic perspectives emerges from these spaces.  In the age of artificial intelligence, these perspectives become even more relevant. Researchers have claimed that artificial intelligence augments intelligence and can complement inner judgment. It is even more indispensable to make human actions conscious than to rely on machine judgments. It is prudent to learn to govern ourselves first before rushing to manage and lead others.

Our perspective at IIM Mumbai is not just to add a course on Indic Leadership, but to explore how India’s knowledge traditions can contribute not only to Viksit Bharat-2047 but also to developing global thinking on leadership and management.