Your willingness to serve brings empowerment and makes your service highly effective. Empowerment from the divine realm comes when you gladly offer all your expertise to help others. Then these divine transcendental connections will reciprocate by awarding you increased responsibilities. There is nothing unusual in this; a similar[pullquote]If you do not properly use the resources and position that you have, then even if you temporarily live “well,” eventually you will be brought down by those you lead as they realize that you do not have their best interests at heart.[/pullquote] process occurs with those working in your office, administering your government, or helping you manage your corporation. As you notice those who provide excellent service by giving fully of themselves, you arrange to give them more complicated, difficult duties, promoting and rewarding them because you appreciate their dedication.

Correspondingly, as you use what you have wisely, committing your leadership to the service of others, you will surely benefit. However, the converse is also true. If you do not properly use the resources and position that you have, then even if you temporarily live “well,” eventually you will be brought down by those you lead as they realize that you do not have their best interests at heart.

This is an important fact to understand, because inevitably some of your plans may prove ineffective or disappointing to others. Such mistakes become unbearable when people sense that the leader does not have their best interests in heart. However, if people understand that their leader has been attempting to help them in good faith, then such mistakes will not cause serious difficulties and may even increase their loyalty.

One last caution about the simple yet complicated phenomenon of love: you should constantly try to anticipate beforehand and review afterwards how each of your policies increases the love of those whom you lead. Indeed, one of your main functions as a leader is to express love and help others develop their experience of love. If you fail to understand basic point in this (first) chapter, you stand to lose position, prestige, co-operative association, your good health, your sanity, or perhaps even your life.

By Bhakti-tirtha Swami
(From “Leadership for an Age of Higher Consciousness”)

Author: Bhakti-tirtha Swami was born John E. Favors in a pious, God-fearing family. As a child evangelist he appeared regularly on television. As a young man he was a leader in Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s civil rights movement. At Princeton University he became president of the student council and also served as the chairman of the Third World Coalition. Although his main degree is in psychology, he has received accolades in many other fields, including politics, African studies, and international law.