Leadership influencing Culture - A Vedic and Stoic Perspective

The simplest definition of a 'Leader' is someone who leads. A leader leads 'his' or 'her' people. The concept of 'his' or 'her' people is to be studied a little closely.  'His' or 'her' people are those who are bound by something common.

In a business context, that common element would be a company the people work for. When people follow, most of the time it's because they are fine to follow the leader. They don't want to take on the risk, the additional headache of leading.  This also means that most of the time they do not challenge the leader. They might trust enough that the leader knows what he or she is doing.

In May 2018, Nike was in the news. Nike CEO Mark Parker apologized to employees for permitting a workplace culture where some felt excluded and management didn’t take complaints seriously. Parker said this has been “a painful moment” for him. He told employees someone recently told him they didn’t feel they fit the Nike profile, according to a copy of his prepared remarks. He said it hurt him to hear that because “there is no Nike profile.”

I think Mark didn't quite understand what the employee was trying to convey to him. My understanding is that he/she didn't feel comfortable with Nike's culture.  He/she did not feel she could work in a company where the culture was draining them personally.

It was published in an Inc. article that in a response to the survey, Parker issued a statement that said, "It has pained me to hear that there are pockets of our company where behaviors inconsistent with our values have prevented some employees from feeling respected and doing their best work." If it's really true that he was unaware of these issues, then Parker might qualify as the most clueless leader of a $112 billion corporation the world has ever seen. 

Women who worked at Nike used everything short of skywriting to alert upper management that something was very wrong. Many made official complaints to HR, often to be told that they themselves were the source of the problem. After observing men receive coveted promotions over more experienced women, several highly-placed executives left for other companies. 

A Vedic perspective on leadership influencing culture :

There is a pattern you see in a lot of fast-growing companies. Leadership gravitates towards behavior that they are comfortable with.  There is an implicit belief that certain behaviors were the reason why the company grew and will continue to help the company grow.  In Nike's example, the senior leadership exhibited behaviors that others in the organization simply followed.

Here is a powerful leadership statement from the Bhagawad Gita (Chapter 3:21) :



The English translation would be :

A Stoic perspective on this :

After the 6th century B.C, after coins were introduced in Greece, an industry around coins got created. Instead of minting coins with silver or gold to hold their value, a whole counterfeit industry was founded making coins of lead and other inferior metal. This industry also had coin testers who were equipped to detect counterfeits. The energy required to do a trade in the later centuries was higher because of the smart counterfeits and the processes the testers put in place to detect these fake currencies.

The amount of process and thought put into a financial transaction is higher than the amount of energy put into understanding if the leadership behavior is principled and affects the organization.