Everyone is a manager. A man may not
having big factories and unions to manage, but he, as a house holder, may have
a few children and some relatives and friends to manage. Wife has to manage her
husband and husband has to manage his wife. Parents have to manage their
children and children have to manage their parents to get things done. You find
that management is involved everywhere whether one occupies a managerial
position or not. Thus everyone is a manager.
A manager is a leader and a leader must
set an example. I find that the following verse of the Bhagawad Gita is very
relevant to this :
Yadyadacarati
sresthastattadevetaro janah
Sa
yatpramanam kurute lokastadanuvartate
Whatever a leader does, another person
does that very thing. Whatever he upholds as authority, an ordinary person
follows that.
A srestha is person who is looked upto
by others: he or she is supposed to know, supposed to lead. In a family, the
eldest person becomes the srestha and all others look upto him or her. In
factories, mills and commercial organisations, you have a person at the top, a
chairperson – who can be a man or woman – who is also a srestha because the
position gives that status to the person in the setup.
Then again, we find a hierarchy, line of
srestha. There may be a group of people reporting to the chairperson and every
person in that group is a srestha for a few others working under him or her,
and so on. Thus every person becomes srestha for some people and so it is clear
that there is not just one person who is srestha. Everyone is a srestha for a
few. Even if a man is a nobody, an unemployed, he is still a srestha for a few
family members who have not yet given up their looking upto him.
This srestha, the one who is a leader,
the one others look upto – whatever he does, whatever life style he follows –
is followed by others who look upto him.
If a man works for eighteen hours a day,
without any expectation of appreciation or applause, if he works day in and day
out in this manner, how can people who look upto him remain idle...? If you are
a srestha in a given set up and keep doing whatever is to be done at a given
time in a given situation, you find people who look upto you also doing
whatever is to be done by them.
Again, whatever this srestha purusa
accepts a pramana, whatever he upholds as authority, whatever he considers valuable,
people around him will also follow that value.
Thus Lord Krishna, in effect, says to
Arjuna, “If you run away from this battle-field, I tell you, all others will
also follow you. If you fail to do what is to be done, others will also do
exactly that, because you are a srestha purusa whether you like it or not.”
If you are occupying a managerial
position, you cannot afford to be lackadaisical, you cannot be loose in your
value structure, because others will follow whatever you set as an example. If
the top man in an organization takes lakhs of rupees in bribe, the office peon
will at least ask for five rupees to move papers from one desk to another..!!!
So , this is a very simple element in
managing things set an example.
Love
What You Do
You should have love for whatever you
do. If you have lost love for what you are doing, you can change your job and
take up another one where you can do what you love. Or, discover love for
whatever you are doing at present. People often tell me, “Swamiji, I don’t like my job.” I tell them, “ Why don’t
you give up this job and take up another one..?” The reply comes, “I love the
money that the job brings, but not the job. I am satisfied with the emoluments,
but not with the job..!” In fact, you naturally will not have job satisfaction
because you do not love what you do.
There are some people who complain
wherever they are. They manage to find some reason or the other for their
dissatisfaction. This is only because they do
not love the act what they are doing. They remain in problem always and
even they do not try to love their act.
There was a traffic policeman in Delhi.
His post of duty was right in front of Rashtrapati Bhavan. The only thing he
has to do was to watch the traffic and give signals with his hands. But do you
know what I once found there..? I found that the traffic was not moving even
when signalled to move. Why...? Because people were watching him...! He was
moving his hands in such an artistic manner that it was a joy to watch him. He
had converted his job into an art. You could see how much this man was enjoying
his job. A traffic policeman has one of the most mechanical jobs and I used to
sympathize with these people because all they have to do, for the whole day, is
to move their hands up and down and sideways. But this one was thoroughly
enjoying his job. If you enjoy what you do, you will find others also enjoy
whatever they do.
If you are dissatisfied with yourself,
you can never manage anybody. Even when I am talking to you, if I keep saying
something without myself being involved in the very subject-matter, you would
prefer to do something other than listening to this talk.
Your dissatisfaction with your job quite
often has nothing to do with the job. IT is the dissatisfaction with yourself
as a person. You will find yourself dissatisfied, no matter what you do, if you
are dissatisfied with yourself as a person. In that case, there will be no job
in the world that will satisfy you.
Suppose, you are an engineer by profession,
but not too happy with your job. Suppose, you happen to be a good in music and
you decide to turn into a professional musician. I tell you, it will take three
days for you to be dissatisfied with yourself as a professional musician.
Presently, you enjoy singing and your friends enjoy listening to you. But, once
you become a professional, the situation would be very demanding and you lose
to love your own self. There is a keen competition, you may not find an
applauding audience etc etc. The old problem may return in your mind for
creating dissatisfaction for your work. You will be dissatisfied in any work, any
duty, if you do not love it by heart. And for that you have to be satisfied
firstly with your own self.
(Source : Talk with Swami Dayanand Saraswati)
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