Leading with Wisdom

Spiritual-based Leadership in Business

Peter Pruzan, Kirsten Pruzan-Mikkelsen, Debra Miller, William Miller

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351281584
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This ground-breaking book portrays an emerging global culture. It offers the experiences and perspectives of 31 top executives from 15 countries in 6 continents. These are business people who express from first-hand experience what it is like to lead a business from a spiritual basis.

Section 1
Love

In this section

In this first section, entitled Love, we have gathered the inspiring stories of four executives from four continents. Their personal styles, industries, working environments, and cultural and religious heritages are as different as their geographical locations. Nevertheless, when one distils their statements as to their spiritual views of life and how these impact on their leadership, all four of them demonstrate a strong focus on love… even if this focus finds expression in very different ways. You will meet:

Janiece Webb, Senior Vice President, Motorola, USA

In Expressing love and compassion, Janiece Webb talks about the ‘tough love’ that she may give to employees to ‘create giants out of ordinary people’ and of the love that lifts her above her ego and enables her ‘to appreciate people at all levels and express my compassion and love to others in an open way.’ Ultimately, this led her to see how business can be both competitive and compassionate—business with a soul.

Lars Kolind, former CEO, Oticon, Denmark

In Making a difference through love, Lars Kolind tells the story of a dramatic turnaround and rejuvenation of an ageing company, taking it from near bankruptcy to global eminence. He concludes that, ‘if you serve a purpose based on care and love, then you can be successful in almost anything.’

N.S. Raghavan, Joint-founder and former Joint Managing Director, Infosys, India

In Love and trust, N.S. Raghavan speaks about trust being a by-product of love, where ‘love is unconditional’ and trust is obtained simply by trusting others. ‘I am a person who implicitly trusts people. It is important to me to see the good in people and to care for people.’ From this basis, he helped create at Infosys a corporate culture, characterized by sharing both information and the power of making decisions.

Francisco Roberto Cañada, Director/Partner, Errepar S.A., Argentina

In Loving God and aiming at excellence, Francisco Roberto Cañada sums up his spiritual principles and values ‘in one word: Love’. He says, ‘I pray that all people can do their duty with love and care. Therefore, as a leader, I make an effort that all our companies do good business, do good work, and make good products in the way of God, without breaking His laws.’

1
Expressing love and compassion

Janiece Webb

Senior Vice President, Motorola, USA

When she was interviewed, Janiece Webb was 47 years old and a Senior Vice President with Motorola Corporation where she had the responsibility to ‘take the technology assets of the company and either incubate them, sell them off, get them into a business, or license the technology.’ Those technology assets included over 8,000 US patents and almost 13,000 foreign patents. Motorola is a Fortune 100 globalized technology company, known for its innovation in wireless, broadband and Internet communication technologies. In 2005, the company had roughly 70,000 employees at more than 300 facilities in over 70 countries worldwide, generating revenues of roughly US$37 billion.

Janiece Webb has had a rather amazing career, having started out as a production worker on the night shift and rising to the top echelons of Motorola Corporation’s leadership. As she told us, ‘I’ve been in marketing. I’ve run engineering, manufacturing, software, equipment businesses, and service businesses around the world. I’ve run businesses from $2 million to $3.5 billion. I’ve had from zero people to eight people to 8,000 people working for me.’

This has provided her with extensive experience in contracts, business development, engineering management, research technology, manufacturing and international businesses in Motorola’s communications businesses. For example, when she was with Motorola’s International Networks Division, she installed network-operating companies in 18 countries and managed 21 major businesses. Janiece Webb has since retired from Motorola.

Our research colleague William Miller knew Janiece Webb for almost a decade before her interview, and spoke of her reputation for being tough in her business decisions and heartful in her support for each employee. It is clear from the long interview that forms the basis of the following profile that her spirituality thoroughly permeates her leadership and her ethical standards. She has long held a spiritual view of life that starts with ‘getting in touch with the essence of God inside of me—finding God inside myself,’ and that she lovingly extends to seeing ‘God in everyone… we’re all connected.’ This expression of her love as the interconnectedness of all human beings impacts on her view of her role and responsibility as a leader: ‘I believe that you can create giants out of ordinary people when you act in balance and harmony with people. Sometimes this requires tough love and that can be done within proper bounds. And yes it can be hard to see God in everyone. I have worked with so many incredible teams of people, and I have seen parts of life that I never thought I would see. To me this is what success is all about.’

I think that God intends us to find a way to not be judgemental, to not be envious and greedy, all those cravings that keep us separate. I think that my spiritual path is to leave all of these cravings behind me and to replace them with compassion and love.

Janiece Webb’s career with Motorola Corporation started in 1972 as a night shift employee on the production line. ‘People ask me all the time how I became a Senior Vice President of technology at a major corporation like this. Truthfully, I don’t know. It wasn’t something I had planned. I came here because I needed a pay cheque in order to eat. I moved out of my parents’ home when I was 16 years old and I wanted to go to school, so I worked the night shift in order to go to school during the day.’

When the production lines were down, Janiece Webb started listening and watching what the engineer was doing, wrote it down, and fixed the problem herself the next time it happened. When she began writing training programmes, an inspiring enthusiasm developed among her co-workers and productivity increased considerably. It was only a matter of time before management realized she should be in the office and not on the production line. She went on to receive a graduate degree in Business Administration and postgraduate training in electronics engineering and management (the Leadership Institute at Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management).

‘How I progressed, which is the same pattern over and over in my career, is that there was always a problem that needed to be solved and I had the courage to tackle it. I’ve always known that I could push a barrier. I have always been a visionary and have always found the problems that nobody else wanted to solve but needed to be solved.

‘I feel that I’m in a very good place right now in my career because I do not feel lost in my ego and I like that. What that means is that I can appreciate people at all levels and I can express my compassion and love to others in an open way.’

A spiritual purpose

‘I have known that I have a spiritual purpose ever since I was ten years old. I grew up in a very poor dysfunctional family yet somehow I knew that life would be okay. I remember running home from school one day in the desert and feeling somewhat afraid. I thought to myself that I will find my way and I will be all right. I knew this even at ten years old.

‘I know that I am to inspire and coach people. I know that, when people are feeling downtrodden, I am supposed to pick them up and give them some wind to their backs so they can move forward. I know that I love to mentor people who feel wounded. I know that I practise courage and I love to break through barriers.

‘I know that my spiritual purpose includes a deep practice of spirituality, but I do not completely know the details. It’s exciting and it’s troubling because I don’t have my finger on it. I also think that my years of work have given me wisdom and comprehension of life and the issues that people walk around with every day, and that plays a part in my soul’s work.

‘For me, spirituality is getting in touch with the essence of God inside of me… if I really get quiet, let my brain quit talking to me and get a feel for the essence, I can find God within me. Someone asked me the other day what my goal in life was and I said, “To take all of the chatter out of my head”. I will know that I’ve made it spiritually when I can sit and not jabber, when both my mind and mouth can be quiet.

‘I read a lot of different things on spirituality because I did not get a lot of formal spiritual education growing up. I took classes on Islam when I was in college. I’ve gone through Christianity. I’ve read a lot of the Buddhist teachings. And I listen to a lot of tapes dealing with religious and spiritual matters.

‘I think spirituality is taking the principles that are taught in most religions and living them as a natural way of life. I very much relate to and appreciate the Buddhist practices, even though for me God is the higher power, the creator of our earth and creator of all this magic. I think that all religions are connected. I see people manifesting their God in a way that works for them. I am searching for my own personal relationship and I know it doesn’t have to be like anyone else’s.

‘I pray every day, several times a day. I ask for guidance and am humbly grateful, and I let that be known. I do not try to control things, whether it’s my work environment, my husband, or my family. I come to work to live; I do not live to work. I can feel my spiritual growth as I realize that I do not need material things in order to live. I could go back to living in a shack and I would be fine.’

Building trust through integrity

‘I believe that God put us on earth to find joy and happiness and to become enlightened. I believe He will test us with a thousand episodes and it’s our job to learn how to walk through them. Numerous times people outside of the company have asked me to cheat in the name of business. I have run into this all over the world. Within myself, I have always known that I didn’t have to go behind the law.

‘I have stood firm many times to not paying bribes and as a result people realize that they can trust me. I have had people that worked for me in the past come and tell me that I have the highest ethics of anyone they have worked for. This is always a surprise to me when people say these things because to me this way of operating in business is so natural.

‘A wealthy man in an Asian country once attempted to get me to hire a person so that he could buy some property for his personal use through Motorola. I stood firm that I would not do that. He reminded me that he was one of our largest customers in that country and I told him I didn’t care. To this day my contacts in that country tell me that they want to deal with me because they know they can trust me.’

Spiritual fitness in the ups and downs of a career

‘In my career I have been through some extremely difficult downsizing situations and personal attacks. I have been put into some impossible situations when I felt that I was under intense pressure by those in power above me to solve an unsolvable problem, or when the organization just wouldn’t work together to get things done. Every once in a while I have lost my way and those were really dark periods. And yet I knew I would be okay. I’ve been demoted and I’ve been celebrated and through it all I have learned not to get attached because none of this is what’s real.

‘If your goal is to be successful, there will be a day when you will come down—someone else will come to replace you. If your goal is to live your principles and make sure that you leave life better than you found it, then you will be able to ride through the ups and downs and accomplish many things.

‘In my 30-year career, I have experienced all kinds of bosses. I have seen numerous executives rise all the way to the top and then at some point they came back down. When an executive rose to the top by taking advantage of people, then on their way down people ganged up against them. But, when an executive rose to the top in a spiritual, respectful way, then on their way down the people caught them and cushioned their fall.

‘Most often people do not know why they succeed or why they fail. They are afraid to look closely at themselves because they don’t want to see their own frailties, or the things they may have done wrong. It is important to know why you are succeeding and why you are failing. It’s also important to know what you contributed and what you didn’t contribute; both are just as valuable. I think it is just as important to accept the perfection in each of us, as it is to accept the imperfections, the parts that are so fallible.

‘I used to affirm that I wanted to be intellectually fit, physically fit, emotionally fit and spiritually fit. But now I realize that if I get in touch with my spirituality, then the rest takes care of itself. I don’t even have to worry about all of those others things—they happen naturally when I am spiritually fit.

‘For me, the single most important issue we have to conquer in life is fear. And the way I conquer fear is by getting in touch with my spiritual Self. I believe that faith is an important part of life; it’s what gets me through the bumps. Faith is a heart- and soulful knowing. I don’t have faith in man-made systems or man-made judgements, but I have faith that I will survive them. I know that my relationship is with God and that’s where I place my faith.

‘I have had several companies come to me and offer me a CEO position in the last few years and I have turned them down. Why? If I took a new job like that it would take my husband and me completely off the spiritual path we are walking in our lives, and I am not willing to do that.’

Seeing others as equals

‘I’ve never looked at people in high power positions and been in awe. I’ve always been able to talk to the janitor, to the street person, or to the CEO, or to the president of our country, because to me they are all the same. Yes, some have different circumstances or environments or experiences, but inside they are all the same. I also think that we don’t need to be embarrassed with our feelings of love for each other. At work, I embarrass people with my warmth, and I don’t care.

‘What I have done is make sure that I communicate in every meeting that anyone can speak up and say whatever they need to say to me. I tell them that I am just as fallible as they are and that I don’t have any more grand ideas than they do. I encourage them to enlighten me if I say dumb things. I remind them that we are all trying to solve this problem together.

‘In truth, I believe that a position of power is a position of serving the people around you. I feel it is my job to serve people. No one gets anywhere by themselves. I am only as good as the people around me. I can only achieve our organizational goals by nurturing the people. I encourage people to believe in themselves and not let the system dictate who they are. I also encourage them to forget about the corporate hierarchy structure. I don’t identify myself with my title; that’s a label someone decided to put on me, and I ask them to not let that get in the way.

‘I do believe in the pure potentiality of every single being. It really is unlimited and we are the ones who put limits on it. I believe that you can create giants out of ordinary people when you act in balance and harmony with people. Sometimes this requires tough love and that can be done within proper bounds. And, yes, it can be hard to see God in everyone, especially in a large corporation like this one where there are people who can be quite cruel with blind ambition. God gives us such potential and we can take it in any direction we want.’

Being competitive with compassion

‘I believe that a corporation has a soul and what that means to me is that, yes, you do perform in a capitalistic model, but you do it with integrity, with absolute deep respect for people—not hollow words, but really treating them with dignity. A company that has soul has compassion. It doesn’t mean they can’t be tough and it doesn’t mean they can’t strive for big goals. You can be competitive with compassion, but if you a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Original Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Spirituality as the basis of leadership
• Section 1: Love
• Section 2: Looking and listening within
• Section 3: Live it and serve!
• Section 4: Compassion
• Section 5: Divinity
• Section 6: Purpose
• Section 7: Balance and grace
• Section 8: Harvesting the wisdom
• Epilogue: Spiritual-based leadership beyond business
• Appendix A: Research methodology
• Appendix B: Business topics addressed in the profiles
• About the authors